Sociology Test 1

Front 1

Altruistic Suicide

Back 1

Type of suicide that occurs where ties to the group or community are considered more important than individual identity.

Front 2

Anomic Suicide

Back 2

Type of suicide that ovvurs when the structure of society is weakened or disrupted and people feel hopeless and disillusioned.

Front 3

Comparative Method

Back 3

Research technique that compares existing official statistics and historical records across groups to test a theory about some social phenomenon.

Front 4

Egoistic Suicide

Back 4

Type of suicide that occurs in settings where the individual is emphasized over group or community connections.

Front 5

Individualistic Explanation

Back 5

Tendency to attribute people's achievements and failures to their personal qualities.

Front 6

Sociological Imaginaton

Back 6

Ability to see the impact of social foreces on our private lives.

Front 7

Achieved Status

Back 7

Social position acquired through our own efforts or accimplishments or taken on voluntarily.

Front 8

Ascribed Status

Back 8

Social position acquired at birth or taken on involuntarily later in life.

Front 9

Coalition

Back 9

Subgroup of a triad, formed when two members unite against the third member.

Front 10

Conflict Perspective

Back 10

Theoretical perspective that views the structure of society as a source of inequality, which always benefits some groups at the expense of other groups.

Front 11

Culture

Back 11

Language, values, beliefs, rules, behaviors, and artifacts that characterize a society.

Front 12

Dyad

Back 12

Group consisting of two people.

Front 13

Feminist Perspective

Back 13

Theoretical perspective that focuses on gender as the most importance source of conflict and inequality in social life.

Front 14

Globalization

Back 14

Process through which people's lives all around the world become economically, politically, environmentally, and culturally interconnected.

Front 15

Group

Back 15

Set of people who interact more or less regularly and who are conscious of their identity as a unit.

Front 16

Latent Function

Back 16

Unintended, unrecognized consequences of activities designed to help some part of the social system.

Front 17

Manifest Function

Back 17

Intended, obvious consequences of activities designed to help some part of the social system.

Front 18

Norm

Back 18

Culturally defined standard or rule of conduct.

Front 19

Organization

Back 19

Large, complex network of positions, created for a specific prupose and characterized by a hierarchical division of labor.

Front 20

Primary Group

Back 20

Collection of individuals who are together over a relatively long period, whose members have direct contact with and feel emotional attachment to one another.

Front 21

Role

Back 21

Set of expectations- rights, obligations, behaviors, duties- associated with a particular status.

Front 22

Role Conflict

Back 22

Frustration people feel when the demnads of one role they are expected to fulfill clash with the demands of another role.

Front 23

Secondary Group

Back 23

Relatively impersonal collection of individuals that is established to perform a specific task.

Front 24

Social Institution

Back 24

Stable set of roles, statuses, groups, and organiztions- such as the institutio of education, family, politics, religion, health care, or the economy- that provides a foundation for behavior in some major area of social life.

Front 25

Society

Back 25

Population of people living in the same geographic rea who share a culture and a common identity and whose members fall under the same political authority.

Front 26

Status

Back 26

Any names social position that people can occupy.

Front 27

Structural-Functionalist Perspective

Back 27

Theoretical perspective that posits that social institutions are structured to maintain stability and order in society.

Front 28

Symbol

Back 28

Something used to represnet or stand for something else.

Front 29

Symbolic Interactionalism

Back 29

Theoretical perspective that explains soceity and social structure through an examination of the micro-level, peronal, day-to-day exchanges of people as individuals, pairs, or groups.

Front 30

Triad

Back 30

Group consisting of three people.

Front 31

Value

Back 31

Standard of judgment by which people decide on desirable goals and outcomes.

Front 32

Analysis of Existing Data

Back 32

Type of unobtrusive research that relies on data gathered ealier by someone else for some other purpose.

Front 33

Content Analysis

Back 33

Form of unobtrusive research that studies the content of recorded messages, such as books, speeches, poems, songs, television shows, Web sites, and advertisements.

Front 34

Dependent Variable

Back 34

Experimental variable that is assumed to be caused by, or to change as a result of, the independent variable.

Front 35

Empirical Research

Back 35

Research that operates from the ideological poisiton that questions about human behavior can be answered only through controlled, systematic observations in the real world.

Front 36

Experiment

Back 36

Research methid designed to elicit some sort of behavior, typically conducted under closely controlled laboratory circumstances.

Front 37

Field research

Back 37

Type of social research in which the researcher observes events as they actually occur.

Front 38

Historical Analysis

Back 38

Form of social researc hthat relies on existing historical documents as a source of data.

Front 39

Hypothesis

Back 39

Researchable prediction that specifies the relationship between two or more variables.

Front 40

Incorrigible Proposition

Back 40

Unquestioned cultural belief that cannot be proved wrong no matter what happens to dispute it.

Front 41

Independent Variable

Back 41

Experimental variable presumed to cause of influence the dependent variable.

Front 42

Indicator

Back 42

Measurable event, characteristic, or behavior commonly thought to reflect a particular concept.

Front 43

Moral Entrepreneurs

Back 43

Groups that work to have their moral concerns translated into law.

Front 44

Nonparticipant Observation

Back 44

Form of field research in which the researcher observes people without directly interacting with them and without letting them know that they are being observed.

Front 45

Participant Observation

Back 45

Form of fiel research in which the researcher interacts with subjects, sometimes hiding his or her identity.

Front 46

Probabilistic

Back 46

Capable of identifying only those forces that have ahigh lifelihood, but not a certainty, of influencing human action.

Front 47

Qualitative Research

Back 47

Sociological research based on nonnumerical information (text, written words, phrases, symbols, observations) that describes people, actions, or events in social life.

Front 48

Quantitative Research

Back 48

Sociological research based on the collection of numerical data that uses precise statistical analysis.

Front 49

Representative

Back 49

Typical of the whole population being studied.

Front 50

Sample

Back 50

Subgroup chosen for a study because its characteristics approximate those of the entire population.

Front 51

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

Back 51

Assumption or prediction that in itself causes the expected event to occur, thus seeming to confirm the prophecy's accuracy.

Front 52

Social Construction of Reality

Back 52

Process through which the members of a society discover, make known, reaffirm, and alter a collective version of facts, knowledge, and "truth".