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CLEP Sociology

Subjects : clep, humanities
Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
  • If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
  • Match each statement with the correct term.
  • Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. A term used by Erving Goffman to refer to the efforts of people to maintain the proper image and avoid embarrassment in public.






2. Use of a church - primarily Roman Catholicism - in a political effort to eliminate poverty - discrimination - and other forms of injustice evident in a secular society.






3. The notion that criminal victimization increases when there is a convergence of motivated offenders and suitable targets.






4. A factor held constant to test the relative impact of an independent variable.






5. A kinship system that favors the relatives of the mother.






6. The relationship between a condition or variable and a particular consequence - with one event leading to the other.






7. The practice of placing students in specific curriculum groups on the basis of test scores and other criteria.






8. A formal - impersonal group in which there is little social intimacy or mutual understanding.






9. An abstract system of word meanings and symbols for all aspects of culture. It also includes gestures and other nonverbal communication.






10. Specialized language used by members of a group or subculture.






11. Failures that are inevitable - given the manner in which human and technological systems are organized.






12. The social institution through which goods and services are produced - distributed - and consumed.






13. A view of conformity and deviance that suggests that our connection to members of society leads us to systematically conform to society's norms.






14. A segment of society that shares a distinctive pattern of mores - folkways - and values that differs from the pattern of the larger society.






15. A theory of urban growth that sees growth in terms of a series of rings radiating from the central business district.






16. An approach to deviance that emphasizes the role of culture in the creation of the deviant identity.






17. A theory developed by Robert Merton that explains deviance as an adaptation either of socially prescribed goals or of the norms governing their attainment - or both.






18. A term used by Parsons and Bales to refer to concern for maintenance of harmony and the internal emotional affairs of the family.






19. The study of various aspects of human society.






20. A school of criminology that argues that criminal behavior is learned through social interactions.






21. A functionalist approach that proposes that modernization and development will gradually improve the lives of people in peripheral nations.






22. The combination of existing cultural items into a form that did not previously exist.






23. A group or category to which people feel they do not belong.






24. A form of polygamy in which a husband can have several wives at the same time.






25. Long term trend in human societies that results from the interplay of innovation - continuity - and selection.






26. A structured ranking of entire groups of people that perpetuates unequal economic rewards and power in a society.






27. A sociological approach that assumes that social behavior is best understood in terms of conflict or tension between competing groups.






28. The denial of opportunities and equal rights to individuals and groups that results from the normal operations of a society.






29. Legitimate power conferred by custom and accepted practice.






30. The most technologically advanced form of preindustrial society. Members are primarily engaged in the production of food but increase their crop yield through such innovations as the plow.






31. The systematic - widespread withdrawal of investment in basic aspects of productivity such as factories and plants.






32. The process by which a person forsakes his or her own cultural tradition to become part of a different culture.






33. A small group characterized by intimate - face-to-face association and cooperation.






34. In a legal sense - a process that allows for the transfer of the legal rights - responsibilities - and privileges of parenthood to a new legal parent or parents.






35. A technique for measuring social class that assigns individuals to classes on the basis of criteria such as occupation - education - income - and place of residence.






36. A term coined by Robert N. Butler to refer to prejudice and discrimination against the elderly.






37. A technologically sophisticated society that is preoccupied with consumer goods and media images.






38. A status that dominates others and thereby determines a person's general position within society.






39. Someone who - through day-to-day personal contacts and communication - influences the opinions and discussions of others.






40. Sociological investigation that concentrates on large-scale phenomena or entire civilizations.






41. Durkheim's term for the loss of direction felt in a society when social control of individual behavior has become ineffective.






42. A term used by C. Wright Mills for a small group of military - industrial - and government leaders who control the fate of the United States.






43. Mutual respect between the various groups in a society for one another's cultures - which allows minorities to express their own cultures without experiencing prejudice.






44. A sense of virility - personal worth - and pride in one's maleness.






45. Continuing dependence of former colonies on foreign countries.






46. A system of enforced servitude in which people are legally owned by others and in which enslaved status is transferred from parents to children.






47. A floating standard of deprivation by which people at the bottom of a society - whatever their lifestyles - are judged to be disadvantaged in comparison with the nation as a whole.






48. The condition of being estranged or disassociated from the surrounding society.






49. Standards of behavior that are deemed proper by society and are taught subtly in schools.






50. An interactionist perspective that states that interracial contact between people of equal status in cooperative circumstances will reduce prejudice.