NAME (PRINT):

LasUSurname First /Given Name

STUDENT#:

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO MISSISSAUGA

DECEMBER 2016 FINAL EXAMINATION
SOC100H5F
Introduction to Sociology
Nathan lnnocente
Duration - 2 hours
Aids: dictionary

The University of Toronto Mississauga and you, as a student, share a commitment to

academic integrity You are reminded that you may be charged with an academic
offence for possessing any unauthorized aids during the writing of an exam. Clear,
sea/able, plastic bags have been provided for all electronic devices with storage,
including but not limited to: cell phones, SMART devices, tablets, laptops, calculators,
and MP3 players. Please tum off all devices, seal them in the bag provided, and
place the bag under your desk for the duration of the examination. You will not be
able to touch the bag or its contents until the exam is over.

If, during an exam, any of these items are found on your person or in the area of your
desk other than in the clear, sea/able, plastic bag, you may be charged with an
academic offence. A typical penalty for an academic offence may cause you to fail
the course. - - -

Please note, once this exam has begun, you CANNOT re-write it.

TOTAL MARKS: 75

65 multiple choice x 1 mark each

2 short answer x 5 marks each

Instructions:
1. Answer multiple choice questions on the scantron provided
2. Answer short answer questions in the space provided on the exam sheet

1
1. A sociology student is examining aggregate Statistics Canada trends in earnings and
level of education. What might the student conclude about the relationship between
earnings and education?
a. That more education leads to higher earnings
b. That more education does not necessarily lead to higher earnings
c. That university and college education produce about the same earnings
d. That undergrad and graduate degrees produce about the same earnings

2. A sociologist is studying education. She wishes to understand how schools teach

social norms like hard work, respect for authority, and the efficient use of time. What is
the sociologist studying?
a. Manifest functions of education
b. Cultural capital
c. Educational streaming
d. Hidden curriculum

3. A sociology student is examining Statistics Canada data about educational

attainment and parental social class. What might the student conclude about the
relationship between parental social class and educational attainment?
a. Social class is not related to the distribution of university degrees
b. Children of higher-class parents are more likely to attend university
c. The cost of university is not an issue for students who want to attend
d. Good students are able to attend university regardless of parental class

4. A student is being streamed into a new school. At this school, students are expected
to analyse social systems as part of their work. Into what class of school is the student
being streamed?
a. Working class
b. Middle class
c. Affluent professional
d. Executive elite

5. A sociologist studies the education system and observes that education also acts as
a marriage market. What has the sociologist observed of education?
a. Its social role
b. Its use value
c. Its hidden curriculum
d. Its latent function

6. Widely shared, high-status cultural signals, such as upper class preferences, is

known as what?
a. Cultural capital
b. Human capital
c. Social capital
d. Class capital.

2
7. As discussed in lecture, research in the US shows what to be as good a predictor of
future success as a university degree?
a. Money and power
b. Talent and family background
c. Personality and disposition
d. Neighbourhood and family

8. The negative impact of stereotypes on the school performance of disadvantaged

groups is known as what?
a. Stereotype threat
b. Organized racism
c. Organized classism
d. Educational profiling

9. Vinay belongs to a group of people who have extensive formal education and who
regulate their own training. To what group does Vinay belong?
a. Occupation
b. Profession
c. Skilled trade
d. Paraprofession

10. Because of protests, a proposed pipeline was diverted away from a middle class
community. The pipeline will now run close to a low-income aboriginal reserve. While
the leaders on the reserve have protested the pipeline, the state and the company are
not going to divert it. How might a sociologist classify this?
a. Environmental terrorism
b. Environmental bias
c. Environmental discrimination
d. Environmental racism

11. A country has a Gini coefficient of 0.9. What can a sociologist conclude about the
health of citizens in that country?
a. Citizens have better overall health
b. Citizens have worse overall health
c. If it were a wealthy country, citizen health would be good
d. Even if it were a poor country, citizen health would be good

12. A politician is interested in improving the healt.h of an underdeveloped country. If

she could change one thing about a country, which thing would have the greatest
impact on health?
a. Increase the number of hospitals
b. Increase public access to nurses
c. Increase overall scientific literacy
d. Increase the public health system

3
13. What is one of the main gender inequalities in the North American health care
system?
a. Lower morbidity among women
b. Men are given preferential treatment for surgery
c. Gender bias in medical research
d. Gender bias in per patient funding

14. Smoking cigarettes, consuming excessive amounts of alcohol, having a poor diet,
and not exercising represent what kind of illness?
a. Human-environmental
b. Public health
c. Epidemiological
d. Lifestyle

15. As people move down the social hierarchy, health deteriorates and death rates
increase. Which of the following is also associated with a lower position on the social
hierarchy?
a. More reliance on prenatal care
b. Higher levels of stress
c. More incidences of schizophrenia
d. Lower IQ

16. As discussed in lecture, the process by which people gain control and authority over
their occupation and clients is known as what?
a. Professional project
b. Professionalization
c. Professional capital
d. Professional dominance

17. A heath practitioner examines a patient. She diagnoses a disease based on the
presence of specific symptoms. What model of medicine is she practicing?
a. Biomedical
b. Complementary
c. Alternative
d. Holistic

18. Generalized fear and anxiety caused by the risks associated with modern
technology and industrialization is a characteristic of what?
a. Modernity
b. Risk incubation
c. Risk society
d. Postmodernity

19. In the lecture on media and technology, what word did your professor spell using
Morse code?
a. Exam
b. Study
c. Morse
d. Comms

4
20. Through Canadian radio and television, the government ensures that Canadians
have access to important national issues, values, and culture. Which function of media
is the government fulfilling?
a. Entertainment
b. Socialization
c. Coordination
d. Social control

21. News agencies rely heavily upon official press releases, news conferences, and
interviews organized by large corporations and government agencies. Both routinely
slant information to reflect upon themselves more favourably. How would a sociologist
refer to this process?
a. Advertising.
b. Focusing
c. Sourcing
d. Flak

22. Vinay is upset that most of the content on the internet is from a small number of
sources, most of which reflect the national culture of the United States. Using social
media, he urges people to create their own internet content. What is Vinay fighting
against?
a. Media diffusion
b. Media imperialism
c. Media convergence
d. Media conglomeration

23. A student is reading The Medium and comes across a story about student cheating
at UTM. The story features several students who were caught cheating and punished by
the University. The student thinks to herself, "Wow, I'm never going to cheat!" What
theory explains this interaction with media?
a. Conflict
b. lnteractionism
c. Functionalism
d. Feminism

24. One of the distinct features of social media compared to traditional media is that it is
almost everywhere. What term describes this feature?
a. Hybridity
b. Networked
c. Interactive
d. Ubiquity

25. What is one of the key ways that social media changes social relations?
a. Social media augments our existing social relations
b. Social media replaces our existing social relations
c. Social media causes us to withdraw from face-to-face interactions
d. Social media creates greater isolation

5
26. Sarah has a part-time job, she goes to school full-time, and she has an active social
life. According to information from your textbook, if Sarah is like most Canadians, what
does she spend a significant amount of her daily time doing?
a. Reading print media
b. Playing video games
c. Surfing online
· d. Watching TV

27. Sarah and Vinay are talking about the relative benefits of nuclear power in light of
the problems experienced by the tsunami that damaged the nuclear reactor at the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan. Sarah defends the overall safety of nuclear
energy by pointing out that damage was caused by a natural disaster and not human
error. Vi nay argues that disasters are predictable consequences of the complexity of
new technology. How would a sociologist refer to these events?
a. Normal accident
b. Statistical anomaly
c. Catastrophic outlier
d. Planned obsolescence

28. Students at UTM stage rallies, boycotts, and sit-ins to protest ever-increasing tuition
fees. The protest catches on, and students across Ontario begin to protest against
tuition fee increases at their respective universities. How would a sociologist most likely
classify this?
a. Social movement
b. Collective action
c. Collective behavior
d. Social protest

29. Just before a strike by union employees on a university campus, the union spends a
lot of money on pamphlets stating why students have the same interests as the soon-to-
be-striking employees, and why they should support them. How would a sociologist of
social movements classify the union's actions?
a. Impression management
b. Frame alignment
c. Solidarity
d. Strategic marketing

30. Which of the following best supports the view that market forces alone cannot
resolve environmental problems?
a. The pace of social change lags behind technological change
b. Consumers chose technological innovations rather than any other solution
c. Market forces affect only the producers, not consumers
d. Prices follow consumer behaviour

6
31. According to resource mobilization theory, which of the following circumstances are
associated with an increase in strike activity?
a. When businesses refuse to make concessions
b. When state surveillance is decreasing
c. When collective violence is high
d. When there is growing prosperity

32. Vinay and a few of his classmates are still upset about tuition increases. They want
to start a student group to protest the increases. He decides to employ strategies
outlined in frame alignment. Which of the following strategies would frame alignment
suggest he pursue?
a. Build up solidarity with student unions in other provinces
b. Reach out to other marginalized students to form a core leadership
c. Build up a network of contacts in the government and in business
d. Reach out to other groups who might be sympathetic, such as anti-poverty
groups or parent groups

33. Sarah is trying to make her heart-broken friend Aesha feel better about Aesha's
impending divorce by explaining that many people get divorced because women have
more economic options and higher education today than in the past. What is Sarah
using to persuade her friend?
a. Sociological imagination
b. Global structural analysis
c. Feminist rhetoric
d. Contextual persuasion

34. What was one of the key finings from Durkheim's study of suicide?
a. Suicide rates vary by degree of social solidarity
b. Suicide is related to individual pathology
c. Suicide rates are inversely proportional to religious belief
d. Suicide is spread uniformly throughout the population

Vinay studies white-collar crime. He wishes to know whether organizational context

causes crime or whether individual characteristics cause crime. He defines
organizational context as workplace culture and opportunities for crime. He defines
individual characteristics as personality and tendency to commit crime. Vinay relies
upon police data about white-collar crimes for his research. Upon completing the
research, Vinay finds more support for individual characteristics.

35. What is the independent variable in this study?

a. Organizational context
b. Crime
c. Culture
d. White-collar crime

7
36. What term is operationalized in this study?
a. Individual characteristics
b. Crime
· c. Culture
d. White-collar crime

37. What methodology does the criminologist use?

a. Organizational analysis
b. Survey
c. Field research
d. Official sources

38. Sarah decides to replicate the above study using the same police data. However,
she does not find the same results as Vinay. Instead, she finds that organizational
culture predicts crime. What might she reasonably concluded about the above study.
a. That it was biased
b. That it was not reliable
c. That it was not valid
d. That it was falsified

39. Sarah tells Vinay that she found different results when she analysed his data. Vinay
goes back to the data to see if anything was wrong. He discovers that his measures for
individual characteristics were not very good and did hot truly measure individual
characteristic as he defined them. What would he say about his study?
a. That the measures were biased
b. That the measures were not reliable
c. That the measures were not valid
d. That the measures were falsified

40. Vinay and Sarah are discussing the nature of crime. Vinay argues that crime serves
to reinforce our moral boundaries. Sarah argues that those with power impose criminal
labels. Which theory do they support?
a. Vinay is a functionalist and Sarah is a conflict theorist
b. Vinay is a symbolic interactionist and Sarah is a postmodernist
c. Vinay is a postmodernist and Sarah is a symbolic interactionist
d. Vinay is a functionalist and Sarah is a symbolic interactionist

41. Vinay and Sarah are discussing the ways in which social order is maintained. Vinay
argues that people consent to their own domination. Sarah argues that people consent
to social norms through interaction. Which theory do they support?
a. Vinay is a conflict theorist and Sarah is a postmodernist
b. Vinay is a postmodernist and Sarah is a symbolic interactionist
c. Vinay is a functionalist and Sarah is a conflict theorist
d. Vinay is a conflict theorist and Sarah is a symbolic interactionist

8
42 Vinay and Sarah are at it again, this time arguing about power. Vinay believes that
power is applied top-down by those in the upper strata of society. Sarah argues that
power is neither top down nor bottom up, but is instead everywhere. Which theory do
they support?
a. Vinay is a functionalist Sarah is a feminist
b. Vinay is a conflict theorist Sarah is a symbolic interactionist
c. Vinay is a postmodernist Sarah is a feminist
d. Vinay is a conflict theorist and Sarah is a postmodernist

43. A sociologist takes a postmodernist view of knowledge. Which statement below best
reflects their belief?
a. Knowledge is constructed and can limit other modes of thinking
b. Knowledge can validate unpopular views
c. Knowledge is produced by the social elite
d. Knowledge is essential for producing modern, educated workers

44. lfVinay holds up two fingers in the peace sign, what is he creating according to
sociologists?
a. A symbol
b. An abstraction
c. A statement
d. A gesture

45. If a group of teenagers has distinctive clothing, beliefs, ideas, and language that set
them apart from others in society, they can be said to belong to which of the following?
a. A counterculture
b. A postmodern culture
c. A subculture
d. A consumerist culture

46. Sarah has generally earned above average grades in university, but her grades
drop significantly when she takes a class with Prof G.P.A. Smasher. After studying for
days and failing the midterm, Sarah gets discouraged and decides not to study for the
final exam, thinking that it won't matter anyway and that it won't make a difference in her
test score. As expected, she fails the final exam. How would a sociologist classify this
situation?
a. Self-fulfilling prophecy
b. Confirmation bias
c. Self-defeating confirmation
d. Thomas theorem

47. Vinay is captured by a top-secret military group. They deliberately cause rapid
change in his values, roles, self-conception, and identity in order to transform him into a
trained killer. What process has Vinay undergone?
a. The Bourne socialization
b. Transformative socialization
c. Total socialization
d. Resocialization

9
48. Sarah works as a general floor manager in a high-end restaurant ensuring that all
customers are happy with their service and content by the end of the their meals. What
is she engaged in?
a. Emotion management
b. Emotion engagement
c. Emotion labour
d. Emotion contextualization

49. Sarah enrolls in large university course. The instructor is a part-time teacher who
uses textbook slides created by the textbook publisher to teach the course. All tests are
multiple choice and derived from the publisher's test bank. What term would a
sociologist apply to courses like this?
a. Hyper-rationality
b. McDonalization
c. Optimization
d. Institutionalization

50. A criminologist is studying Sarah. Sarah wants to get ahead in society to achieve
wealth and success. However, the means to achieve success are blocked for her
because she lives in a poor neighbourhood without good schools or other resources. As
a result, she turns to crime to achieve success. How would a criminologist explain her
criminal behaviour?
a. Strain
b. Differential association
c. Social disorganization
d. Social control

51. Vinay, a local dealer, cooks meth and deals it from the basement of his mother's
house. What kind of crime is Vinay committing?
a. Victimless crime
b. Street crime
c. Organized crime
d. Enterprise crime

52. Sarah believes that crime is not inherent in certain actions, but it exists because
some are in a position to establish norms and pass laws that stigmatize others. What
theory is she using?
a. Social control theory
b. Subculture theory
c. Strain theory
d. Conflict theory

53. Vinay and Sarah are crazy. They decide to engage in a spree of crime that includes
embezzlement, tax evasion, and fraud. In what kind of crime are they engaging?
a. State crime
b. White-collar crime
c. Public-order crime
d. Victimless crime

10
54. Vinay is interested in working at a multinational corporation as a manager. In order
to get hired he has enrolled in the Management program at UTM. What is Vinay
investing in by going to university?
a. Cultural capital
b. Social capital
c. Educational capital
d. Human capital

55. Vinay lives in a country where one's social status is based on the class into which
they were born, and they have very limited social mobility. Vinay's social status is set at
birth and his mobility is limited. What kind of status does Vinay have?
a. Ascribed
b. Achieved
c. Positional
d. Referential

56. Which of the following most affects the distribution of the opportunities and rewards
that shape the patterns of inequality in Canada?
a. Demographics
b. International trade
c. Education
d. Social policy

57. Sarah argues that society needs to create incentives so that the most talented
people are motivated to train for the most important jobs. What theory does Sarah
support?
a. Functionalism
b. Marxism
c. Weberianism
d. Conflict

58. Vinay identifies himself as Canadian. However, many people impose upon him the
label of Indian. The process he might undertake to negotiate his racial identity is best
studied through which theory?
a. Symbolic interactionism
b. Conflict
c. Postmodernism
d. Postcolonialism

59. The following is a Bill Nye quote circulating on Facebook: "Researchers have
proven, scientifically, that humans are all one people. The colour of our ancestor's skin
and ultimately my skin and your skin is a consequence of ultra-violet light, of latitude
and climate ... there is no such thing, scientifically, as race." Why, then, do we continue
to talk about "race" and treat it like it was real?
a. We are holding on to past categorizations of people
b. Because it still has implications for people's lives
c. Because there really are differences between races
d. Because governments need to know how to classify populations

11
60. Only about 2-3% of people identify as homosexual, yet as many as 30% of female
undergraduate students and 18% of male undergraduate students admit having same-
sex activity or desire. What does this data tell us about sexuality?
a. That people are dishonest on these kinds of surveys
b. That social norms put people in denial about their sexual orientation
c. That it's just a university fad to be bisexual
d. That the relationship between identity, behaviour, and desire is not linear

61. In what kind of country would you expect to find the greatest risk to women?
a. A nonsecular country without a policy supporting human rights
b. A impoverished country with low GDP
c. A country where patriarchal beliefs are institutionalized
d. A country where a very high percentage of the population is religious

62. Vinay argues that religious institutions, actions, and consciousness are on the
decline. What position does he support?
a. Demystification thesis
b. Rationalization thesis
c. Educationalization thesis
d. Secularization thesis

63. Vinay and Sarah were both raised as devoutly religious, but Vinay has become
disillusioned with religion. Although Vinay still considers himself a believer, and still
attends religious services, unlike Sarah the strength of his belief and the intensity of his
emotional commitment to his faith are not as strong as they used to be. What do
sociologists call the difference in the intensity of their commitment?
a. Difference in religiosity
b. Sectarian intensification
c. Adult disillusionment
d. Difference in faith threshold

64. During the lecture on families and relationships, your professor described how he
met his wife at the gym. What was the main factor that your professor identified as
having led to her interest in him?
a. Propinquity
b. Social homogamy
c. Affective individualism
d. Evolution-based attraction

65. In 2005 Canada changed the definition of legal marriage to include same-sex
marriages. Some people were concerned about what might happen to children of same-
sex couples. What has current research revealed about the effects of same-sex parents
on their children?
a. Children of same-sex parents are more likely to exhibit homosexuality
b. Children of same-sex parents develop very different gender norms
c. Children of same-sex parents suffer from the absence of parents of
different genders
d. Children of same-sex parents are just as well adjusted as other children

12
Section I: Answer ONE of the following (5 marks)
1. Describe how group behaviour and group factors can cause otherwise normal
people to engage in violence.
2. What is the biomedical model? Why would someone choose complimentary or
alternative medicine instead of biomedicine?

13
Name: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Student ID: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __

Section II: Answer ONE of the following (5 marks)

1. Compare the conflict and functionalist interpretations of education.
2. What is the nuclear family? Describe how trends in Canadian families signal the
decline of or change in the traditional nuclear family. ·

14