Social Problems

Delaware County Community College
Final Exam

Name _______________________________

Dec 2008
J. Ferry, Instructor

Rules for test: The test is open book- you may refer to your class notes, textbook, articles you have read, and internet sources that might be helpful; you are NOT to confer with your classmates about the test. Select (circle) best answer of the multiple choice questions (each correct answer is worth 3 points).

Write two essays in response to the essay questions (there are four questions; pick whichever two you would like to use, ignore the other two questions)- essays to be approx 200 words, no more than three hundred words.
NOTE: Essays will be graded according to accuracy, evidence of study, logical organization, and clarity of expression. Each essay will be worth a maximum of 35 points each.

Overall, it is possible to achieve 100 points for this exam (25% of final grade)

1. Who is the thinker that advanced the argument that every human society has a problem with criminality, i.e. crime is normal in society.
a. Herbert Spencer
b. Karl Marx
c. Auguste Comte
d. Max Weber
e. Emile Durkheim

2.Prostitution, gambling, vagrancy, disorderly conduct are all forms of _____________ crime.
a. conventional
b. public order
c. immoral
d. occupational
e. white collar

3. The entire range of attitudes, beliefs, policies, laws, and behaviors discriminating against the interests of people based on their sex is called:
a – homophobia
b – gender wars
c – feminazism and chauvinism
d - sexism

4. In the year 1996 and each year after, more bachelor degrees were awarded to women than to men.
a – true
b – false

5. In explaining criminality, Robert L. Merton's 'anomie theory' emphasizes:
a. insufficient access to the approved means of attaining socially approved goals.
b. contact with others in criminal groups from whom one learns attitudes and values supportive of criminality.
c. social class inequalities that reflect exploitation of the poor by the well-to-do.
d. criminal and delinquent subcultures that form to express adolescent rebellion.
e. the process of developing a criminal self-identit.yl

6. According to the text's discussion of the difficulties couples encounter in juggling work and family roles, marital happiness _____________ when children are born.
a. is unaffected
b. fluctuates wildly
c. increases slightly
d. increases dramatically
e. often decreases

7. In the past 40 years, teenage birthrates in the United States have
a. increased by 50 percent
b. fallen by almost 50 percent
c. increased by 25 percent
d. increased, but then stabilized
e. remained the same

8. By the term ____________, social scientists refer to the growing tendency for goods and services to be produced in one nation or region and consumed in another, and for the companies that produce those goods and services to engage in business activities in many different nations and regions of the world.
a. Transnational Economics
b. Economic Globalization
c. International Trade Zones
d. NAFTA
e. International Free Trade

9. Many social scientist argue that after the shift from manufacturing to service work, the single most significant trend in the labor force in the twentieth century was the:
a. enormous increase in women as paid workers
b. decline in farm and agricultural work
c. increase in minority group members who are corporate executives
d. decline in blue collar occupations
e. fluctuation in service-related work.

10. The world's population is growing because:
a. fertility (birth) rates are higher than in the past
b. death rates have declined
c. people have been forced to migrate because of wars, famines and civil strife
d. all of the above
e. none of the above are reasons for the increase

11. In the text, Kendall asserts that modern media creates and perpetuates _______________
about the characteristics of groups, which has consequences in society, creating distorted expectations about people within those groups.
a. myths
b. statistics
c. profiles
d. stereotypes

12. According to our text, the______________________________ in schools refers to how certain cultural values and attitudes, such as conformity and obedience to authority, are transmitted through the implied demands in the everyday rules and routines of school.
a. bullying
b. curriculum
c. hidden curriculum
d. secular religion

Essays Questions (answer on a separate sheet of paper or the back of this, and make sure your name is on it,). Your essays are an opportunity to show me what you have learned. I'm not testing you for what you have not learned. Pick two of the four questions and compose an essay response.

Essay 1. Write about three matters you have learned in the past four months about social problem(s). In what ways do you think differently about these matters now than at the beginning of this session. Who/what were sources that led you to think more deeply or differently on these matters, and how/where did you come upon these sources. What difference does it make that you now know these things?

Essay 2. Is gender diversity a social problem, a social benefit, neither, or both?

Essay 3. Consider the ways that a new technology, a new social tool, such as texting (or 'facebook' or 'call waiting' or television or antibiotics) can generate social problems.

Essay 4. There are huge differences in access to social goods (health, health care, income, wealth, learning, opportunity for fairly compensated work) whether we look locally, nationally, or globally. Social inequity has always been a primary inquiry of sociology and sociologists. Discuss how racial and ethnic diversity (or discrimination) work in a globalized economy, in "the global village".