Test one, sp12 True/False Indicate whether the statement is true or false. ____ 1. Humans are essentially social beings. ____ 2. America is so powerful that it doesn’t need the support of other nations. ____ 3. Unlike other aspects of society, like the economy, the media have not become truly global in nature. ____ 4. The most widely accepted definitions of sociology as a discipline are those that are narrow and focused. ____ 5. When we ask psychologists to help us understand the behavior of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who murdered 13 people and injured 24 more at Columbine High School in 1999, we are using our sociological imaginations. ____ 6. If a sociologist attempts to study whether men are really less emotional than women, she is taking the role of the social analyst, rather than the everyday actor. ____ 7. The poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant” suggests that there is only one correct approach to understanding social life. ____ 8. Conflict theory uses a dynamic model of historical change that presents change as constant, ongoing, and inevitable. ____ 9. W. E. B. Du Bois became so disillusioned with the United States that he voluntarily exiled himself to Ghana near the end of his life. ____ 10. Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science, argues that truth is relative, in that it is dependent on the paradigm through which one understands the world. ____ 11. You are about to do a series of interviews about drug abuse and academic performance. In order to make people feel more comfortable, you tell them that these interviews are about student satisfaction with the university and have them sign a form showing that they’ve willingly agreed to participate. You have the informed consent of your research subjects. ____ 12. The order in which a questionnaire asks about different issues cannot affect the way people respond. ____ 13. Codes of ethics in the social sciences provide very strict guidelines for researchers to follow. ____ 14. Market research is probably the most common use of sociological methods for nonacademic purposes. ____ 15. Marxists are among the strongest supporters of value-free sociology. Multiple Choice Identify the choice that best completes the statement or answers the question. ____ 16. Sociologists observe society: a. by studying the various parts of a society and the ways they interact and influence each other b. by studying the shape and boundaries of society as a whole c. by studying society as if it were a concrete object, in the same way that a geologist studies rocks d. by utilizing the preconceptions, assumptions, and beliefs that come from living in a society e. through the use of special scientific tools that allow unmediated access to the very heart of society ____ 17. Even though a small number of people have been academically trained as sociologists, we all can be described as “natural sociologists” because: a. we are born with certain skills .

1. Test one, sp12
True/False
Indicate whether the statement is true or false.
____ 1. Humans are essentially social beings.
____ 2. America is so powerful that it doesn’t need the
support of other nations.
____ 3. Unlike other aspects of society, like the economy, the
media have not become truly global in nature.
____ 4. The most widely accepted definitions of sociology as
a discipline are those that are narrow and focused.
____ 5. When we ask psychologists to help us understand the
behavior of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who murdered 13
people and injured 24 more at Columbine High School in 1999,
we are using our sociological imaginations.

2. ____ 6. If a sociologist attempts to study whether men are
really less emotional than women, she is taking the role of the
social analyst, rather than the everyday actor.
____ 7. The poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant” suggests
that there is only one correct approach to understanding social
life.
____ 8. Conflict theory uses a dynamic model of historical
change that presents change as constant, ongoing, and
inevitable.
____ 9. W. E. B. Du Bois became so disillusioned with the
United States that he voluntarily exiled himself to Ghana near
the end of his life.
____ 10. Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science, argues that
truth is relative, in that it is dependent on the paradigm through
which one understands the world.
____ 11. You are about to do a series of interviews about drug
abuse and academic performance. In order to make people feel
more comfortable, you tell them that these interviews are about
student satisfaction with the university and have them sign a
form showing that they’ve willingly agreed to participate. You

3. have the informed consent of your research subjects.
____ 12. The order in which a questionnaire asks about
different issues cannot affect the way people respond.
____ 13. Codes of ethics in the social sciences provide very
strict guidelines for researchers to follow.
____ 14. Market research is probably the most common use of
sociological methods for nonacademic purposes.
____ 15. Marxists are among the strongest supporters of value-
free sociology.
Multiple Choice
Identify the choice that best completes the statement or answers
the question.
____ 16. Sociologists observe society:
a. by studying the various parts of a society and the ways
they interact and influence each other

4. b. by studying the shape and boundaries of society as a whole
c. by studying society as if it were a concrete object, in the
same way that a geologist studies rocks
d. by utilizing the preconceptions, assumptions, and beliefs
that come from living in a society
e. through the use of special scientific tools that allow
unmediated access to the very heart of society
____ 17. Even though a small number of people have been
academically trained as sociologists, we all can be described as
“natural sociologists” because:
a. we are born with certain skills that naturally allow us to
think sociologically
b. society is a part of nature, so everyone has to be a natural
sociologist
c. our parents taught us to be sociologists even before they
sent us to school
d. we are all members of society and so have a great deal of
background knowledge about how society works
e. sociologists are really just observers of conventional
wisdom

5. ____ 18. Howard Becker said that sociology can be best
understood as the study of people “doing things together.” This
definition reminds us that:
a. neither society nor the individual exists in isolation; each
is dependent on the other
b. sociology is only interested in the way people act, not in
the way they think
c. only large-scale interactions that involve many people can
be understood by sociologists
d. people must have some knowledge of each other before
they can really do anything together
e. individuals exist independently of society and can be
understood without considering social influence
____ 19. Most sociologists specialize in one particular method
of study. The first distinction is usually made between
qualitative and quantitative methodologies. What do
quantitative sociologists do differently from qualitative
sociologists?
a. Quantitative sociologists preserve the detail and diversity
of their data so that each individual piece of information can be
analyzed to determine its meaning.
b. Quantitative sociologists look for signs of social conflict

6. and tension in their data.
c. Quantitative sociologists translate their data into numbers
so that it can be analyzed mathematically or statistically.
d. Quantitative sociologists look for data exclusively in
traditional cultures.
e. Quantitative sociologists only do interviews.
____ 20. Regardless of which methodology they use, what are
all sociologists trying to do?
a. explain why social change happens
b. illuminate the connection between the individual and
society
c. explain why poverty and inequality still exist
d. compare the present with the past
e. understand how our society is different from other cultures
and other times
____ 21. What is the sociological imagination?
a. a property of society that ensures that people remain

7. ignorant of the connections between their lives and social
change
b. a particular way of understanding the criminal mind, such
as that of a serial killer
c. the sociological approach that assumes that large-scale
social institutions structure individual interactions
d. the ability to understand the connections between
biography and history, or the interplay of the self and the world
e. the sociological approach that assumes that individual
decisions and interactions create larger social institutions
____ 22. Bernard McGrane suggests we should practice using a
beginner’s mind, the opposite of an expert’s mind. Usually it’s
good to be an expert. Why should we try to think like beginners
instead?
a. An expert’s mind is so full of facts and assumptions that it
has difficulty learning anything new.
b. To better understand the world, we need to defamiliarize
ourselves with it.
c. We need to unlearn what we already know in order to
become better sociologists.
d. A beginner’s mind allows us to approach the world without
knowing in advance what we will find.

8. e. The approach of a beginner’s mind is more readily
accepted by whoever is being studied.
____ 23. What does it mean to say that America is both a
nation and an ideal?
a. All Americans have strong beliefs and ideals that are
important to them.
b. America is both a geographic location and also an ideal
concept that situates its citizens within a meaningful context.
c. America has standards, but it doesn’t always live up to
them.
d. As a geographic place, America has certain principles of
law that govern how government is organized.
e. Everyone in the United States has a different
understanding of what it means to be American.
____ 24. Most people are interested in the lives of others, but
usually we express this only through daytime talk shows and
tabloid media. Although this sort of interest is completely
understandable, sociologists would say that it is sensationalistic
and very selective. How does a sociological perspective help to
solve this problem?

9. a. It decreases our interest in daytime talk shows.
b. It helps us understand the people who appear on such
shows in terms of individual pathology.
c. It allows us to see connections between individual
experience and larger social patterns.
d. It increases the prurient value of such programs and makes
them more appealing.
e. all of the above
____ 25. Although everyday cultural practices, such as
greeting a friend, giving flowers, or using the thumbs-up sign,
seem like natural ways of acting, an awareness of how they vary
across cultures demonstrates a healthy sociological imagination
because:
a. it ensures that we don’t accidentally make a faux pas
b. it reminds us that everyday interactions are connected to
larger social structures
c. it helps us economically when we do business in different
countries
d. it lets us understand how immigrants perceive America
when they move here
e. all of the above

10. ____ 26. The work of the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard,
which inspired the movie The Matrix, is fairly pessimistic about
contemporary society. What is Baudrillard especially worried
about?
a. that there are rising levels of inequality between the
industrialized world and more traditional societies
b. that we’ve lost the ability to distinguish between reality
and illusion
c. that racial hostility will ruin any chances for a meaningful
democracy
d. that globalization will dilute the unique French identity as
McDonald’s and Disney World take over everywhere
e. that rising levels of crime will make fear and apprehension
the most common experiences of life in cities in the twenty-first
century
____ 27. According to William J. Mitchell, in The
Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era,
TV Guide once took a picture of Oprah and grafted her head
onto the body of Ann-Margret. Although this is an extreme
example, Mitchell’s larger point is that almost every photo
Americans now look at in the media has been digitally altered,
leading many to worry that:

11. a. we have lost the ability to distinguish between reality and
special effects
b. Americans are spending too much time watching television
c. we are becoming a global village, all consuming the same
media and becoming like one tribe
d. urban centers are becoming increasingly diverse, and some
are important to a postmodern world
e. the United States is becoming part of a global community
____ 28. If you didn’t know anything about Pam Fishman but
that Figure 1.2 features data from her research, what could you
logically determine about her?
a. that she is a conflict theorist
b. that she is a macrosociologist
c. that she is a structural functionalist
d. that she is very interested in inequality
e. that she is a microsociologist

12. ____ 29. Look at the graphic representation of sociology’s
Family Tree (figure 2.1). Given that they’re both very
influential in the classical stage of sociological theory, why are
Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim depicted so far apart?
a. Marx’s work is no longer considered very important.
b. Durkheim was greatly influenced by Marx, but not vice
versa.
c. Emile Durkheim wasn’t really a sociologist, he thought of
himself more as a psychologist.
d. The theoretical schools they founded are very different.
e. Durkheim was French, while Marx was born in Germany.
____ 30. Who coined the phrase “the survival of the fittest”?
a. Charles Darwin
b. Karl Marx
c. Emile Durkheim

13. d. Harriet Martineau
e. Herbert Spencer
____ 31. In Emile Durkheim’s work Suicide, he reported that
suicide rates went up when the economy slumped, but also
spiked when the economy boomed. Which of Durkheim’s
concepts from Chapter 2 explain why both positive and negative
economic conditions could increase suicide rates?
a. alienation
b. anomie
c. mechanical solidarity
d. organic solidarity
e. empiricism
____ 32. In 2008 Polish film maker Andrzej Wadja released his
film Katyn, about the massacre of 20,000 Polish officers by the
Soviet Union during World War II. When asked why he had
made this movie, Wadja said he wanted to make a film for
“those moviegoers for whom it matters that we are a society and
not just an accidental crowd.” Wadja believed that it was still
possible for people to be bound together on the basis of shared

14. traditions and experiences. In his statement, Wadja was
expressing a hope that Poland could still be united by:
a. organic solidarity
b. conflict
c. manifest functions
d. mechanical solidarity
e. positivism
____ 33. Karl Marx believed that the economy was closely
related to other social processes, including politics, values,
beliefs, and norms. As a result, he also believed that:
a. the lower classes have the power to challenge the upper
classes
b. the lower classes almost always understand the sources of
their oppression
c. the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class
d. the ruling class has relatively little control over popular
culture
e. the ruling ideas are meant to support the lower classes

15. ____ 34. What was Marx criticizing when he said that religion
is “the opiate of the masses”?
a. the lower classes
b. superstition and any belief in the supernatural
c. drug use and alcoholism
d. the use of religion by the ruling class
e. the way religion blinds people to scientific truth
____ 35. According to Karl Marx, how could a belief in heaven
as a reward for earthly suffering serve the interests of the ruling
class?
a. by keeping the lower class from demanding better
treatment in this life
b. by distracting the lower classes with gaudy spectacles
c. by using the church as a means to extract economic
resources from the poor
d. by keeping the lower classes busy with religious activities
so that they wouldn’t have time to organize
e. by making people meek

16. ____ 36. In the United States today, the richest 20 percent of
Americans have 85 percent of the country’s wealth. Marx would
call this:
a. alienation
b. bourgeoisie
c. social inequality
d. capitalism
e. organic solidarity
____ 37. In Great Britain, in the eighteenth century, there were
a series of Enclosure Acts, which broke up small farms, forced
many small farmers to move to large cities in search of wage
labor, and increased agricultural profits for landowners. What
large-scale social system was this a part of?
a. socialism
b. agrarian utopianism
c. feudalism
d. nomadism

17. e. capitalism
____ 38. If you were to hear someone singing a song with
these lines:
It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they
trade;
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of
railroad laid;
Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have
made.
You might conclude, along with Karl Marx, that the people
being described suffered from:
a. verstehen
b. anomie
c. structural dysfunctions
d. alienation
e. a lack of solidarity
____ 39. In 1987, the software company Infocom released a

18. game called Bureaucracy, scripted by the science-fiction writer
Douglas Adams. In the game, a character struggles to keep her
blood pressure low enough to avoid a heart attack while
changing her address and dealing with a large, impersonal, and
inefficient bureaucracy. Although the game is meant to be
humorous, what element of Bureaucracy would be familiar to
Max Weber?
a. nothing
b. the frustration that comes with dealing with a bureaucracy
c. the sense of humor and whimsy with which the game treats
bureaucracies
d. the lack of efficiency associated with bureaucracies
e. the impersonal nature of bureaucracy
____ 40. Which two primary forces, according to Sigmund
Freud, are essential to all human nature?
a. verstehen and disenchantment
b. Eros and Thanatos
c. ego and id
d. bourgeoisie and proletariat
e. self and society

19. ____ 41. Although she made contributions to sociology, Jane
Addams is perhaps best remembered for her embrace of praxis,
meaning that she:
a. was a pragmatist
b. acted on her intellectual convictions in practical ways
c. applied dialectics to her understanding of history
d. was the first person to translate Comte into English
e. embraced conflict theory
____ 42. Which if the following is a latent function of the
educational system in the United States?
a. teaching reading and writing
b. keeping children out of trouble while parents are at work
c. preparing a modern workforce to use technology
d. instructing new immigrants in American values and history
e. all of the above

20. ____ 43. Stricter control of the border between the United
States and Mexico was implemented to curb illegal immigration,
but it also made illegal immigrants more likely to stay in the
United States for longer periods of time, as frequent border
crossings became both dangerous and costly. The increase in the
number of illegal immigrants who stayed permanently or
semipermanently is:
a. a manifest function of the border patrol
b. a latent function of increased security
c. a serious source of anomie
d. a source of mechanical solidarity
e. a cause for repression and sublimation
____ 44. Which of the following is a major critique of conflict
theory?
a. It has a hard time explaining inequality.
b. It overemphasizes the importance of face-to-face
interaction.
c. In focusing on conflict and change, it sometimes ignores
the stable and enduring parts of society.

21. d. It overemphasizes continuity.
e. It fails to develop any theory of praxis that could help
researchers put their theories into action.
____ 45. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argue that:
Under monopoly all mass culture is identical, and the lines of
its artificial framework begin to show through. The people at
the top are no longer so interested in concealing monopoly: as
its violence becomes more open, so its power grows. Movies
and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they
are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the
rubbish they deliberately produce. They call themselves
industries; and when their directors’ incomes are published, any
doubt about the social utility of the finished products is
removed.
With which theoretical paradigm does this passage suggest that
Adorno and Horkheimer identify?
a. queer theory
b. feminist theory
c. conflict theory
d. structural functionalism

22. e. symbolic interactionism
____ 46. Which social theory was developed mostly in the
United States?
a. structural functionalism
b. positivism
c. Marxism
d. symbolic interactionism
e. conflict theory
____ 47. According to symbolic interactionism, what is the
relationship between the self and society?
a. The development of a sense of self is guided by society.
b. The self is shaped by society, but society is also shaped by
the self.
c. Society is a product of individual actions.
d. Both the self and society are created by the course of
history.

23. e. Both the self and society are shaped by larger external
forces.
____ 48. Which of the following is an important aspect of
symbolic interactionism?
a. the idea that the working class does not understand the true
source of their oppression
b. the idea that society is mainly stable, orderly, and
functional
c. the idea that individuals are mainly unaware of their role
in a larger economic system
d. the idea that society is produced and reproduced by
individuals interacting with each other, especially through
language
e. the idea that conflict is the source of all social change
____ 49. Which theoretical perspective shows how large-scale
social structures are produced by individuals at the micro level?
a. positivism
b. pragmatism

24. c. social Darwinism
d. symbolic interactionism
e. structural functionalism
____ 50. Before beginning a research project, what will a good
researcher always do?
a. use the scientific method to evaluate his survey questions
b. review the literature in order to become familiar with
earlier research that relates to his topic
c. clearly define his variables
d. look for correlations between two or more different
phenomena
e. form a hypothesis
____ 51. What do you call broad theoretical models of the
social or natural world?
a. paradigms
b. hypotheses

25. c. interviews
d. grounded theory
e. prejudice
____ 52. A paradigm shift is a major break in the assumptions
that are used to understand the world. What causes a paradigm
shift?
a. the study of history
b. new data forces a new way of looking at the world
c. religion and theology
d. increased awareness of the current paradigm
e. objective knowledge of the world
____ 53. A graduate student is almost done with his
dissertation when he is informed that twenty years ago someone
did a very similar project and already demonstrated what he had
hoped to be the first to discover. What basic step of the
scientific method could have saved him from this problem?
a. developing an operational definition

26. b. selecting a research method
c. analyzing data
d. reviewing the literature
e. creating relevant variables
____ 54. What are the goals of ethnography?
a. to explain ethnic differences using qualitative methods
b. to develop quantitative data sets that allow researchers to
discover correlations
c. to conduct interviews with people who have very different
ways of life
d. to describe activities sociologists observe and to
understand what those activities mean to the people involved
e. to develop ethics and standards for sociological research
____ 55. What does it mean if ethnographers are overt about
their roles?
a. They maintain narrow and limited definitions of

27. appropriate research methodologies.
b. They spend a great deal of time reflecting on their roles in
the research process.
c. They observe and record data without letting anyone know
they are doing research.
d. They openly admit that they are doing sociological
research.
e. They make their hypotheses explicit.
____ 56. Which of the following research techniques focuses
on gaining an insider’s perspective of the everyday lives of
subjects under investigation, often dispelling stereotypes about
the group being investigated?
a. participant observation
b. surveys
c. the analysis of existing data
d. experiments
e. content analysis

28. ____ 57. The sociologist Mitch Duneier wrote his ethnography,
Sidewalk, about street vendors in New York City’s Greenwich
Village. While writing the book, Duneier was particularly
concerned that the people he was studying would alter their
behavior when he was present, especially since his background
was very different from theirs. What do sociologists call this
problem?
a. bias
b. response rate
c. reflexivity
d. validity
e. thick description
____ 58. In her ethnography, Wheeling & Dealing, Patricia
Adler investigates the social and professional worlds of
midlevel cocaine and marijuana smugglers. Her research started
serendipitously when she discovered that her next-door
neighbor and friend was a drug smuggler; this was a huge
advantage for her because it meant that she already had
____________ with one of her informants.
a. informed consent
b. rapport
c. thick description

29. d. sampling
e. causation
____ 59. One of Mitch Duneier’s main conclusions in his
ethnography of street vendors in New York City was that,
despite the chaos and disorder they seem to bring to the street,
the opportunity to sell something actually gave vendors a sense
of purpose and dignity. Disputing aspects of New York’s
crackdown on petty and nonviolent crimes, Duneier argues that
politicians have failed to distinguish between physical signs of
decline, like graffiti, and street vendors who are working to
improve their lives. Which of the following advantages of
ethnography does Duneier’s research demonstrate?
a. The detailed nature of ethnographies can help to reshape
the stereotypes that we hold about others and that are often the
basis for social policy.
b. Ethnographies offer a means of studying groups that are
often overlooked with other methods.
c. Ethnographies allow respondents to speak in their own
words.
d. Ethnographies are not always representative.
e. Ethnographic research can be used to gather data on a
population that is too large to study by other means.

30. ____ 60. When he was writing Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual
Diversity in American Indian Culture, the ethnographer Walter
Williams was always very open about his own sexual
orientation, because he believed that being open with the people
he was studying was the only way to establish a trusting and
sharing interaction with them. What was Williams concerned
with?
a. validity
b. thick description
c. reactivity
d. rapport
e. replicability
____ 61. Researchers should try to avoid double-barreled
questions, or questions that:
a. ask about multiple issues
b. use emotional language that may bias the respondent
c. are vague or ambiguous
d. have a hidden agenda
e. allow for a wide variety of responses

31. ____ 62. Researchers are often worried that interviewees have
not been completely honest or forthcoming, especially when
asked about sensitive subjects. How did Arlie Hochschild
attempt to deal with this problem?
a. She asked each question in different ways to try to trap
respondents in contradictions.
b. She interviewed each spouse separately to see if their
stories matched.
c. She observed some respondents as they went about their
daily routines to see if their actions matched their answers.
d. She confronted respondents when they give answers that
seemed dubious.
e. When respondents seemed to be giving questionable
answers, she used leading questions.
____ 63. Which of the following is NOT a disadvantage of
using interviews to conduct social research?
a. Interviewees are allowed to speak in their own words.
b. Interviewees are not always truthful.

32. c. Interviewees can be difficult to talk to.
d. Interviews are time consuming.
e. It can be difficult to generalize from interviews because
the sample size is usually small.
____ 64. Why do social scientists who use interviews rarely
speak with large numbers of people for a project?
a. It is hard to find people willing to be interviewed.
b. The transcription process takes a long time.
c. There are usually very few people who are interesting
enough to be interviewed.
d. Face-to-face interviewing is a very time consuming
process.
e. The data is so rich that only a few interviews are needed.
____ 65. Arlie Hochschild was concerned that her sample of
interviewees was too small to guarantee representativeness.
How did Hochschild attempt to overcome this problem?
a. by very carefully selecting only totally representative
interviewees

33. b. by deciding that she didn’t need to generalize to any larger
population
c. by asking only open-ended questions
d. by doing follow-up interviews with each interviewee
e. by comparing demographic information about her
interviewees with information about her target population
____ 66. While it is always important to ask clear and
unambiguous questions regardless of the method that you use, it
is especially important to avoid confusion when conducting
surveys. Why?
a. Survey research methods commonly use statistics.
b. When using survey research methods, the researcher is
usually not present to clarify any misunderstandings.
c. Confusing and ambiguous questions create an ethical
dilemma.
d. Survey researchers talk to many people.
e. Survey research tends to look at large-scale social
patterns.

34. ____ 67. When writing questions for a survey, researchers
must avoid all of the following EXCEPT:
a. leading questions
b. double-barreled questions
c. negative questions
d. bias
e. open-ended questions
____ 68. One of the key methods used to do political polling is
random-digit dialing, in which every phone number in an area
code has an equal chance of being selected to take part in a
survey. However researchers have noticed that young people are
more likely to only use a cell phone, and people with cell
phones are less likely to answer a call from an unknown
number. As a result, polling organizations often count responses
from young people as being worth “more” than those from older
people. What is this technique called?
a. weighting
b. bias
c. probability sampling
d. Likert scales

35. e. leading questions
____ 69. In 1936 The Literary Digest conducted a survey to
predict the winner of the presidential election. It sent ten
million surveys to a variety of households identified through
phone books, automobile registries, and magazine subscriptions.
Two million people returned the surveys and showed a very
strong preference for Alf Landon over Franklin Roosevelt. What
was the response rate?
a. 20 percent
b. 10 million
c. 50 percent
d. 2 percent
e. 100 percent
____ 70. Which of the following are disadvantages of using
existing sources of data for research?
a. Researchers often seek answers to questions that the data
doesn’t directly address.
b. Researchers have to spend a great deal of time and money
to get the data.

36. c. Researchers do not always understand how the data was
interpreted or what it meant in its original context.
d. both A and B
e. both A and C
____ 71. Why are social networking sites like Facebook and
MySpace so exciting to sociologists who study social networks?
a. For the first time, social networking sites offer
sociologists a data set rich enough to test ideas that until now
have only been theorized.
b. For the first time, sociologists have realized just how much
the internet has changed social networks.
c. For the first time, sociologists don’t have to spend the time
and money to go talk to people and can do all their work from a
computer.
d. For the first time, sociologists can find out what young
people’s social networks look like.
e. For the first time, sociologists can track the spread of
urban legends.

37. ____ 72. What is the primary goal of comparative and
historical research methods?
a. to enhance the validity of experiments
b. to understand relationships between parts of society in
different times and different places
c. to uncover issues that been neglected by mainstream social
research
d. to select participants who are very similar so that the
independent variable can be isolated
e. to produce data that can be used to encourage social
change
____ 73. What does it mean for a sociologist to control for a
variable?
a. Research subjects are divided into two groups.
b. Change over time is measured in a dependent variable.
c. One group is allowed to understand the nature of the
experiment while the other group is kept in the dark.
d. Precise tools are developed with which to measure a
variable.
e. All factors except for the independent variable are taken
into account.

38. ____ 74. A recent sociological experiment sought to determine
the exact role that social support plays in the health of
expectant mothers. To conduct the experiment, the researchers
asked midwives to flip a coin each time they received a new
client, and if it came up heads to try as hard as possible to put
the client in contact with others who could provide social
support. If the coin came up tails, the midwives would not
discourage the woman from receiving social support, but would
not facilitate it. What is the dependent variable in this
experiment?
a. coin flips
b. health
c. social support
d. midwives
e. expectant mothers
____ 75. When Elton Mayo did his now-classic experiment on
worker productivity, he found that he could increase
productivity by changing variables in a work environment, but
also that changing variables back increased productivity. What
did he conclude was the true cause of the increase in
productivity?

39. a. a decrease in sick days
b. his own bias
c. the effect of being studied
d. the effect of change in the workplace, as it broke workers’
routines and made them more alert
e. increased lighting and longer breaks