Exam 1: The Sociological Perspective and Research Process.

Among the young, suicide accounts for more deaths than cancer, heart disease, and AIDS combined.

According to the __________ perspective, society is the sum of the interactions of individuals and groups.

Researchers in one study systematically analyzed the contents of the notes of suicide victims to determine recurring themes, such as feeling of despair or failure. They hoped to determine if any patterns could be found that would help in understanding why people might kill themselves. This is an example of __________.

A __________ analysis focuses on small groups rather than large-scale social structures.

With __________ research, interpretative description (words) rather than statistics (numbers) are used to analyze underlying meanings and patterns of social relationships.

Discuss what Emile Durkheim meant by the concepts of social facts and anomie.

Define sociology and explain how it helps us to better understand our social world and ourselves.

Sociology is defined as the __________.

Sociologist Robert K. Merton stated that manifest functions are intended and/or overtly recognized by the participants in a social unit. For example, a manifest function of education is the transmission of knowledge and skills from one generation to the next.

A __________ is a large social grouping that shares the same geographical territory and is subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations.

Barbara is a female, which refers to her __________, and she acts very feminine, which is her __________.

From the symbolic interactionist perspective, each person's interpretation or definition of a given situation becomes a(n) __________ from that person's viewpoint.

A __________ is defined as a set of logically interrelated statements that attempts to describe, explain, and (occasionally) predict social events.

The conflict and functionalist perspectives focus primarily on microlevel (focuses on small groups) analysis; whereas, the symbolic interactionist approaches are based on a macrolevel (examines whole societies, large-scale social structures, and social systems) analysis.

Briefly summarize at least three of Auguste Comte's contributions to early sociology.

With the increasing diversity of the population, what personal troubles and public issues do you think are most important for the U.S. society to think about?

Tom works on the assembly line at the local Ford automobile factory. Based on the Marxian framework, Tom would be considered a member of the __________ because he does not own the means of production.

In 2004, the average suicide rate in the U.S. was ____ per 100,000 population.

In an experiment, the __________ contains the subjects who are exposed to an independent variable to study its effect on them.

Sociologists obtain their knowledge of human behavior through __________, which is the process of systematically collecting information for the purpose of testing an existing theory or generating a new one.