Lecture 1: Check for Understanding

1. Sociology as a discipline emerged primarily in response to what historical event?

a) The Renaissance b) The Protestant Reformation c) The Industrial Revolution d) The American Revolution

2. A sociologist seeing high unemployment rates and explaining them by looking at economic recession is using what kind of explanation?

a) Individual b) Structural c) Psychological d) Historical

3. The concept of the "sociological imagination" involves:

a) Predicting the future of societies. b) Linking personal troubles to public issues. c) Focusing only on individual choices. d) Creating fictional societies for study.

4. What is a social system?

a) A collection of individuals with no connection to each other. b) A network of interconnected parts that work together to form a whole. c) A government's political structure. d) A type of computer network.

5. Which of the following is NOT a primary goal of early sociology?

a) To explain social stability. b) To understand institutional breakdown. c) To focus on individual psychology. d) To discover the "laws" of social order.

6. Social institutions are best described as:

a) The buildings where people gather. b) The specific people who hold power. c) The established and enduring patterns of social relationships. d) Temporary social gatherings.

7. Urbanization, a key factor in the development of sociology, refers to:

a) The spread of suburban lifestyles. b) The movement of people from cities to rural areas. c) The growth of cities. d) The decline of industrial production.

8. "Systems thinking" in sociology is useful for data science because:

a) It provides a context for interpreting data. b) It guarantees that data is unbiased. c) It replaces the need for statistical analysis. d) It focuses on individual data points.

9. The early sociologists' desire to create a "science of society" was based on the belief that:

a) Society was too complex to be studied. b) Only the natural world could be studied scientifically. c) Society could be studied with the same methods as the natural sciences. d) Individual intuition is the best way to understand society.

10. What is the main difference between a personal trouble and a public issue, according to C. Wright Mills?

a) Personal troubles are more important than public issues. b) Public issues affect more people than personal troubles. c) Personal troubles are related to individual character, while public issues are related to the larger social structure. d) There is no difference.