Higher Education

Health and Society: Chapter 3

Instructions: For each question, click on the radio button beside your answer. When you have completed the entire quiz, click the Submit my answers button at the bottom of the page to receive your results.

Multiple Choice Questions

Question 1:

Which of the following is NOT a primary question asked by social constructionists?
a) What counts as an illness and why?
b) Who gets sick and why?
c) How have social actors shaped the meaning of health?
d) How have the definitions of disease changed over time?

Question 2:

Which of the following is an example of medicalization?
a) Definition of childbirth from a natural process to medical event
b) Male erectile dysfunction
c) Attention deficit disorder (ADD)
d) All of the above

Question 3:

Which of the following is NOT recognized as major player in the medicalization process?
a) Pharmaceutical companies
b) The medical profession
c) Lay groups or patients
d) Social science researchers

Question 4:

Which of the following is a contested illness?
a) Fibromyalgia
b) Cardiovascular disease
c) Depression
d) Breast cancer

Question 5:

Which of the following is true with regards to the sick role?
a) It is associated with expectations that the person who is sick will seek out medical treatment
b) Sick people are expected to participate in society fully
c) People with symptoms should seek others with similar symptoms
d) Sick people are not active agents in their own health

Question 6:

Which of the following are consequences of medicalization?
a) It individualizes problems and ignores social factors
b) It depoliticizes behaviours
c) Medical labels turn individuals into victims and objects of pity
d) All of the above

Question 7:

One’s experience with illness can be influenced by what?
a) Age
b) Gender
c) Race
d) All of the above

Question 8:

Why may patients alter their medication or treatment?
a) It represents an attempt to assert themselves and feel a sense of control
b) They are trying to demedicalize their condition
c) They are trying to medicalize their condition
d) They are trying to avoid side effects

Question 9:

Which of the following is an example of healthism?
a) Smoking cessation
b) Eating fruits and vegetables
c) Exercising
d) All of the above

Question 10:

Medical discourse structures our thinking about which of the following?
a) Health and illness
b) What is normal and abnormal?
c) Who has the expertise to diagnose and treat diseases?
d) All of the above

True or False Questions

Question 11:

From a social constructionist perspective, health and illness are fixed constructs and experience little change over time.
a) True
b) False

Question 12:

Constructionists are concerned with whether a particular condition is really a disease.
a) True
b) False

Question 13:

The social context—including cultural attitudes, social practices, corporate and government interests—can influence the success of health claims.
a) True
b) False

Question 14:

In some cases, drugs have been available to treat conditions before an official diagnosis was recognized, driving medicalization.
a) True
b) False

Question 15:

Mental illness labels are less stigmatizing than criminal labels.
a) True
b) False

Question 16:

Sufferers of contested illnesses often experience anxiety in their attempt to have their symptoms recognized.
a) True
b) False

Question 17:

Diagnosis and recognition of disease allow a patient to take on the sick role and be excused from social expectations and responsibilities.
a) True
b) False

Question 18:

The neurodiversity movement proposes that autism spectrum disorders are pathologies and treated as medical conditions.
a) True
b) False

Question 19:

The removal of homosexuality from the DSM is an example of demedicalization.
a) True
b) False

Question 20:

Many self-injurers often carefully plan their behaviour as a coping mechanism.
a) True
b) False