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Higher Education

Thinking About Sociology, Second Edition - Chapter 3

Instructions: For each question, click on the radio button beside your answer. When you have completed the entire quiz, click the Submit my answers button at the bottom of the page to receive your results.

Question 1:


a) It is not affected by the values of researchers and is uniquely free from bias.
b) Unlike other kinds of knowledge, it is resistant to falsification.
c) It is supported by tangible evidence and follows strict procedures.
d) It is not subject to ethical principles, reinforcing a fact–value distinction.

Question 2:


a) They provide guidelines for thinking in a disciplined manner about the kinds of research questions to pose.
b) They are systematic efforts to develop a unified theory that will explain all the observed uniformities of social behaviour.
c) They are part of a quantitative research strategy involving statistical analysis.
d) They are concerned with epistemological questions involving the validity of knowledge

Question 3:


a) Structural functionalism
b) Working hypotheses
c) Theories of the middle range
d) Grand theories

Question 4:


a) Cognitive authority research
b) Bloom’s taximetrics research
c) Statistical modeling research
d) Quantitative, positivist research

Question 5:


a) If reality can only be known through ideas
b) Whether or not the social world can be studied like the natural world
c) If sociologists can access what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics
d) The epistemological status of non-inferential knowledge

Question 6:


a) The only way to analyze a social problem is through symbolic meanings.
b) There is an objective, independent reality.
c) The categories we use to make sense of the world have built-in essences.
d) It often has an emancipatory interest in empowerment.

Question 7:


a) Collins
b) Bourdieu
c) Kant
d) Durkheim

Question 8:


a) It is concerned with the meaning of people’s actions.
b) It entails philosophical and methodological relativism.
c) It is best expressed through a general linear model of meanings.
d) It is partly dependent on conditional covariance between meanings.

Question 9:


a) Besserverstehen
b) Erklären
c) Verstehen
d) Geisteswissenschaften


Question 10:


a) The standpoint of a powerless group has potential for providing a good analysis.
b) The standpoint should not be affected by the social location of the researcher.
c) The dominant class is attuned to the perspectives of the subordinate class.
d) The standpoint epistemology is based on Weber’s interest in value-free analysis.



True or False Questions

Question 11:


a) True
b) False

Question 12:


a) True
b) False

Question 13:


a) True
b) False

Question 14:


a) True
b) False

Question 15:


a) True
b) False

Question 16:


a) True
b) False

Question 17:


a) True
b) False

Question 18:


a) True
b) False

Question 19:


a) True
b) False

Question 20:


a) True
b) False