Jammie Price Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice The University of North Carolina at Wilmington

If you can answer the questions below, you will likely do well on the exam.  You can use as little or as much room on a sheet of paper  to answer them.   (I apologize for any typos or formatting problems.)  

Ignore the bolded text below. It doesn't mean anything, other than these terms were defined in the chapter readings.

Population

1. Describe three of the issues that social demographers study. Some of the things you could discuss include:

• Vital Registration Systems

• Total Migration

• Population size and Growth Rate

• Birth and death rates

• Sex ratios

• Good Times Cohort

• Baby Bust Cohort

• Baby Boom

• Generation X

2.  A northern city is experiencing an increasing rate of Latino immigration.  City leaders want to identify what changes they can expect in community needs and characteristics.  You work as a community planner for the city.  Using your sociological training, identify how an increasing Latino population may change the city’s demographic characteristics and change the needs of each social institution including housing, employment, crime and deviance, health, marriage and family, education, and religion.

Environment

What was the Woburn, Massachusetts "Civil Action" case about? What happened to members of the community? How did they respond?  What happened in the legal case?  What was the outcome?

What issues did the PBS movie "Politics, People and Pollution" address? What state did they focus on?  Who was included in the dialogue?  What are the strengths and weaknesses of each perspective presented?

Health

1. Compare the real demographics of stress-related illness to popular media portrayals.  Give examples.

2. Describe the relationship between control, stress and SES.  Give examples.

3. As a citizen preparing to vote in the next presidential election, you wish to learn more about the rising cost of health care, a central issue in this year’s election.  Each candidate supports one or more of the ideas below to reduce health care costs.  Sociologically, which idea or ideas seem the most sound?  Which groups in our society would each idea hurt?  Which groups in our society would each idea help?  How might we implement and manage programs generated from each idea?  What kind of social change would we need to make programs generated from each idea successful? 

Revoke Medicare or seriously limit its coverage.

Detach insurance from jobs, and instead organize and distribute health insurance like car insurance. 

Create more urgent care centers and expand the office hours of primary care practices to evening and weekends to detour people from using expensive emergency departments for cases that do not require emergent care such as broken bones, cuts requiring stitches, etc..

Decriminalize euthanasia, based on data that shows we, as a country, spend large amounts of medical resources to provide life support to patients who wish not receive such resources.

Create socialized medicine.

4. How is alcoholism a psychological or biological disease?  From a sociological perspective, why have we medicalized alcoholism? How is alcoholism a sociological problem?

Religion

1. How do functionalism, conflict theory and symbolic interaction differ in how they explain  religion?

2. What are some of the inequalities of religion? Be sure to address class, race, gender and sexuality. 

3. Why did Marx say religion causes false consciousness among believers? What is false consciousness?

4. An assisted living organization wants to discover how satisfied their residents are with living in their community and with the various programs offered such as food, recreation, health care, and transportation services.  What data collection method(s) would you choose to answer these questions?  Will you ask residents about the role of religion in their lives?  Why or why not?  If yes, what would you ask?

Work

1. What is deskilling and automation? How are they linked?

2. What is credentialism? Why does it matter?  Provide an examples.

3. What is the difference between blue collar, pink collar and white collar jobs?  Why does it matter?

4. Create a Professional Experience section and a personal skills inventory for your resume.