Exam 1: Sociological Perspective on Social Problems

According to the __________ perspective,societies fear most the crimes that threaten their members' most cherished values,and individuals who dare to challenge those values will receive the most severe punishments.

Discuss the natural history of social problems.Be sure to mention the major stages that most social problems seem to go through,as identified by Spector and Kitsuse.

Examine a social problem like crime or deviance using the conflict perspective.

Much debate over social policy involves what the role of government should be.What has been the role of government in social policy over the past 100 years in the United States? What consequences have resulted from the role that government has played thus far?

Select a social problem,such as crime or deviance,and compare and contrast how each of the basic sociological perspectives approach the problem.

The __________ perspective on social problems is MOST commonly applied in field research.

Describe the social problems that have arisen as a result of the globalization of the world economy.Do you think that the U.S.is capable of solving its own social problems,along with those of the rest of the world?

As a type of social policy,__________ is/are usually advocated today by those who are "liberal" on the political spectrum.

The sociological student of social problems often wants information about the incidence of a phenomenon in the total population,expressed numerically in rates.As a research method,__________ is best suited to gain this information.

__________ theory stresses that a social process separates deviant and nondeviant persons not by what they do,but by how society reacts to what they do.

The "Wildcat Experiment," involving supported work for jail inmates,and Philip Zimbardo's simulated prison study,exemplifies __________.

The idea that a society should intervene to remedy conditions affecting its citizens was a new development in the __________.

According to labeling theory,a major solution to deviance is __________.

Data on unemployment,crime,public opinion,etc.,are often generated from interviews of a sample of the population.As a research method,__________ is/are best suited to gain this information.

Social policy discussions that argue over how adequate proposed answers are in achieving agreed-upon ends can be called __________ debates.

In a recent national survey of Americans' attitudes on controversial issues,researchers found that on none of the issues presented did more than __________ percent of the respondents line up on either the conservative or liberal side of the question.

As a type of social policy,__________ is/are usually advocated today by those who are "conservative" on the political spectrum.

Define a "social problem." What must happen for a social problem to develop in a society?

__________ is the subfield of sociology that studies how social conditions are distributed in human populations and how these populations are changing.

The text points out that in the second half of the twentieth century,there has been a __________ revolution.