INTRODUCTION SOCIOLOGY COMPREHENSIVE
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SET A+
✔✔CULTURAL IMPERIALISM - ✔✔THE EXTENSIVE INFUSION OF ONE CULTURE
INTO ANOTHER CULTURE WITHOUT CONSENT.
✔✔Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - ✔✔our thinking and perceptions are shaped by the
language we speak
✔✔Global Culture - ✔✔The diffusion of one single culture globally.
✔✔Mass Media - ✔✔The widespread dissemination of information and entertainment
through widely available channels of communication
✔✔Folkways - ✔✔Norms that carry very weak sanctions and are not considered
essential to the well-being of society.
✔✔Mores - ✔✔Norms that carry strong sanctions and are considered essential to the
well-being of society.
✔✔RELIABILITY - ✔✔THE LIKELIHOOD THAT A PARTICULAR MEASURE WOULD
PRODUCE THE SAME RESULTS IF THE MEASURE WERE REPEATED.
✔✔VALIDITY - ✔✔THE DEGREE TO WHICH AN INDICATOR ACCURATELY
MEASURES OR REFLECTS A CONCEPT.
✔✔HAWTHORNE EFFECT - ✔✔SUBJECTS OF A STUDY ALTER THEIR BEHAVIOR
BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY ARE BEING STUDIED.
✔✔An advantage to using surveys is that - ✔✔They can gather a lot of data quickly.
✔✔What is a disadvantage of using
, surveys to gather data - ✔✔They are word-based rather than action-based.
✔✔participant observations - ✔✔advantages:
Validity - produces rich qualitative data which shows picture of how people really live.
Researcher can see for them selves
Insight - Allows researcher to gain empathy through personal experience . By acting as
a member can get insight into their meanings, veiw points, values and problems - gives
authentic data
Flexibility - more flexible and allows for an open mind. Researcher can follow up
different directions/ideas if something interesting occurs - Whyte - 'learned answers to
questions i wouldn't have had the sense to ask'
Practical advantages - Access to more suspicious groups as can gain rapport and trust -
helpful when studying groups like gangs. Also useful to use where questioning
ineffective - Cicourel - study of how police categories juveniles through unconscious
assumptions it would be pointless questioning them
disadvantages:
Covert participation observation raises serious ethical difficulties - deceiving people to
gain info on them is wrong - or participating in illegal/immoral activity in the course of
research
Practical disadvantages - very time consuming - Whytes study took him 4 years to
complete, need a trained researcher to recognise specific details, can be very
demanding and stressful especially if done covertly
Representatives -small sample sizes as time consuming so hard to generalize from data
Bias - risk of getting to involved and therefore giving bias data, may begin to sympathise
with the group so give bias data - Willis giving romanticized view of the lads to show
them more positively
✔✔advantage of controlled experiment - ✔✔A controlled experiment allows you to find
out what exact variable is affecting your results.
✔✔disadvantage of controlled experiment - ✔✔Just like any other type of research,
experimental research is also subjected to human error and this will somehow affect the
efficiency of the results.
Other disadvantages of experimental research are personal biases, unreliable samples,
artificial results, and results that can only be applied to one situation and may be hard to
replicate and lastly difficulty in measuring human response. Another disadvantage is
that results may not be generalized into real-life situations. This research can be time
consuming and expensive. There are also several areas wherein experiments cannot
be utilized due to ethical and practical considerations.
✔✔Research Ethics - ✔✔People behave in unpredictable ways for complex reasons
Difficult to isolate and identify factors that explain behavior
"Hawthorne Effect": Research may change the behavior by studying it
Researcher's biases may intrude on the study
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SET A+
✔✔CULTURAL IMPERIALISM - ✔✔THE EXTENSIVE INFUSION OF ONE CULTURE
INTO ANOTHER CULTURE WITHOUT CONSENT.
✔✔Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - ✔✔our thinking and perceptions are shaped by the
language we speak
✔✔Global Culture - ✔✔The diffusion of one single culture globally.
✔✔Mass Media - ✔✔The widespread dissemination of information and entertainment
through widely available channels of communication
✔✔Folkways - ✔✔Norms that carry very weak sanctions and are not considered
essential to the well-being of society.
✔✔Mores - ✔✔Norms that carry strong sanctions and are considered essential to the
well-being of society.
✔✔RELIABILITY - ✔✔THE LIKELIHOOD THAT A PARTICULAR MEASURE WOULD
PRODUCE THE SAME RESULTS IF THE MEASURE WERE REPEATED.
✔✔VALIDITY - ✔✔THE DEGREE TO WHICH AN INDICATOR ACCURATELY
MEASURES OR REFLECTS A CONCEPT.
✔✔HAWTHORNE EFFECT - ✔✔SUBJECTS OF A STUDY ALTER THEIR BEHAVIOR
BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY ARE BEING STUDIED.
✔✔An advantage to using surveys is that - ✔✔They can gather a lot of data quickly.
✔✔What is a disadvantage of using
, surveys to gather data - ✔✔They are word-based rather than action-based.
✔✔participant observations - ✔✔advantages:
Validity - produces rich qualitative data which shows picture of how people really live.
Researcher can see for them selves
Insight - Allows researcher to gain empathy through personal experience . By acting as
a member can get insight into their meanings, veiw points, values and problems - gives
authentic data
Flexibility - more flexible and allows for an open mind. Researcher can follow up
different directions/ideas if something interesting occurs - Whyte - 'learned answers to
questions i wouldn't have had the sense to ask'
Practical advantages - Access to more suspicious groups as can gain rapport and trust -
helpful when studying groups like gangs. Also useful to use where questioning
ineffective - Cicourel - study of how police categories juveniles through unconscious
assumptions it would be pointless questioning them
disadvantages:
Covert participation observation raises serious ethical difficulties - deceiving people to
gain info on them is wrong - or participating in illegal/immoral activity in the course of
research
Practical disadvantages - very time consuming - Whytes study took him 4 years to
complete, need a trained researcher to recognise specific details, can be very
demanding and stressful especially if done covertly
Representatives -small sample sizes as time consuming so hard to generalize from data
Bias - risk of getting to involved and therefore giving bias data, may begin to sympathise
with the group so give bias data - Willis giving romanticized view of the lads to show
them more positively
✔✔advantage of controlled experiment - ✔✔A controlled experiment allows you to find
out what exact variable is affecting your results.
✔✔disadvantage of controlled experiment - ✔✔Just like any other type of research,
experimental research is also subjected to human error and this will somehow affect the
efficiency of the results.
Other disadvantages of experimental research are personal biases, unreliable samples,
artificial results, and results that can only be applied to one situation and may be hard to
replicate and lastly difficulty in measuring human response. Another disadvantage is
that results may not be generalized into real-life situations. This research can be time
consuming and expensive. There are also several areas wherein experiments cannot
be utilized due to ethical and practical considerations.
✔✔Research Ethics - ✔✔People behave in unpredictable ways for complex reasons
Difficult to isolate and identify factors that explain behavior
"Hawthorne Effect": Research may change the behavior by studying it
Researcher's biases may intrude on the study
