Mid-term test

Question 1

Sociological Imagination

Answer 1

The ability to connect the most basic intimate aspects of an individual’s life to seemingly impersonal and remote historical forces.

Question 2

Social Institution

Answer 2

A complex group of independent positions that, together, perform a social role and reproduce themselves over time, also defined as a narrow sense as any institution in a society that works to shape the behaviour of the group of people within it.

Question 3

Positivism

Answer 3

The approach to sociology that emphasises the scientific method as an approach to studying the objectively observable behaviour of individual’s irrespective of the meanings of those actions have for the subjects themselves.

Question 4

Verstehen

Answer 4

German for “understanding”, comes from Max Weber and its basis of interpretive sociology.

Question 5

Interpretive Sociology

Answer 5

A type of scholarship in which researchers imagine themselves experiencing the life positions of the social actors they want to understand , rather than treating people as objects to be examined.

Question 6

Anomie

Answer 6

A sense of aimlessness or despair that arises when we can no longer reasonably expect life to be predictable.

Question 7

Positivist Sociology

Answer 7

Approach that emphasises the scientific method as an approach to studying the objectivity observable behaviours of individuals irrespective of the meanings of those actions for the subjects themselves.

Question 8

Double Consciousness

Answer 8

Describes the behavioural scripts, one for moving through the world and one fir incorporating external opinions of projected loneliness.

Question 9

Functionalism

Answer 9

The theory that various social institutions and processes in society exist to save some important function to keep society running. Via social inequality as a “device”

Question 10

Conflict Theory

Answer 10

The idea that conflict between competing interests is the basic animating force of social change and society in general.

Question 11

Symbolic Interactionism

Answer 11

A micro-level theory in which shared meanings, orientations and assumptions form the basic motivations behind people’s actions -> operates on the basic premise of a cycle of meaning

Question 12

Postmodernism

Answer 12

A condition characterised by the questioning go the notion of progress and history, the replacement of a narrative.

Question 13

Social Constructions

Answer 13

An entity that exists because people behave as if it exists and whose existence is perpetual as people and social institutions act in accordance with rules.

Question 14

Midrange Theory

Answer 14

A theory that attempts to predict how certain social institutions tend to function.

Question 15

feminist Theory

Answer 15

Focuses on inequalities based on gender categories, how power relationships are defined.

Question 16

Micro-Sociology

Answer 16

A branch of sociology that seeks to understand local interactional contexts; its methods of choice are ethnographic, including participant observation and in-depth interviews.

Question 17

Macro-sociology

Answer 17

A branch of sociology concerned with social dynamics at a higher level of analysis - across societal breath.

Question 18

Ethnography

Answer 18

A qualitative method of studying people or a social setting based on systematic observation, measurements and/or experiments.

Question 19

Casual Relationships

Answer 19

The idea that one factor influences another through a chain of events; such a dynamic is different from two factors being merely associative or corrected, in which case they appear to vary together butt that could be due to chance or a third factor.

Question 20

Deductive Approach

Answer 20

A research approach that starts with a theory, forms a hypothesis, makes empirical observations, and analyses the data to confirm, reject or modify the original theory.

Question 21

Inductive Approach

Answer 21

A research approach that starts with empirical observations and then works to form a theory.

Question 22

Natural Experiment

Answer 22

Something that takes place in the world that affects people in a way that is unrelated to any other preexisting factors or their characteristics thereby.

Question 23

Reverse Causality

Answer 23

A situation in which the researcher believes that A results in a change in B, but B, in fact is causing A.

Question 24

Operationalisation

Answer 24

How a concept gets defined and measured in a given study.

Question 25

“White coat effect”

Answer 25

A phenomenon wherein a researcher’s presence affects her subjects. Often the subjects change behaviour.

Question 26

Feminist Methodology

Answer 26

A set of systems or methods that treat women’s experiences as legitimate empirical and theoretical resources that promote social science for women, and that take into account the researcher’s presence, they behave normal.