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Higher Education

Sociology, 4e: Chapter 08

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.

Question 1:


a) Meritocracy
b) Ascribed status
c) Achieved status
d) Social stratification
e) Class system

Question 2:


a) Aboriginal people and visible minorities experience disproportionate poverty.
b) Any person who goes to university and successfully completes her PhD, will earn the title of ‘doctor’.
c) Men and women are paid equally for jobs that require the same skills and credentials.
d) People can get promoted within their company based on their successful performance.
e) Everyone has equal access to universities, even poor people, who can get a scholarship or apply for a student loan.

Question 3:


a) alienation
b) class consciousness
c) class conflict
d) self-interest
e) false consciousness

Question 4:


a) The bourgeoisie own the means of production and exploit the proletariat.
b) The unemployed serve as a reserve army of labour that can be called upon if current workers complained about their exploitation.
c) By paying workers low wages, capitalists are able to expropriate surplus wealth from the labour process
d) Some people have power over the means of production even though they did not own them.
e) As the proletariat class develops class consciousness, there would be a socialist revolution.

Question 5:


a) Class conflict between wage labourers and the owners of the means of production would be historically inevitable as the inequality between these classes became even more pronounced.
b) Social stratification is based on economic positions, hierarchies of prestige, and the ability to control others.
c) The ownership of property is important in determining a person’s position in society.
d) Status, or prestige, is based on more than just the ownership of property.
e) Despite some presidents’ relative lack of economic assets, they exercise significant power.

Question 6:


a) Early societies were held together by mechanical solidarity.
b) Once the division of labour became more extensive, no one could survive without the cooperation of others.
c) Under organic solidarity, there was a moral stability as people recognized each other’s obligations to and dependence upon one another.
d) An anomic division of labour leads to class polarization.
e) When people do not recognize their mutual obligation and dependence on one another, anomie may occur.

Question 7:


a) Inequalities exist in all societies and thus must be necessary.
b) Minorities and women deserve to occupy the lowest pay tiers.
c) Positions that are rewarded with the highest economic gains and highest rank are those that have the greatest importance for society.
d) Positions that are rewarded with the highest economic gains and highest rank are those that require the greatest training or talent.
e) In order to induce people into undertaking a lengthy, expensive education, such as is required for becoming a medical doctor, the rewards must be high.

Question 8:


a) People who have the highest educational qualifications always get into the highest paying jobs.
b) Minorities and women tend to get the lowest paying jobs.
c) Women with the same educational credentials and skills get paid less than men in the same jobs.
d) Movie stars, bankers, and professional athletes bring home millions of dollars a year, while nurses, teachers, and daycare workers are paid significantly less.
e) It is often people who can afford to attend school who do so, rather than those who are the most talented or gifted.

Question 9:


a) business existed only to earn profits for a leisure class
b) the leisure class continues to work hard to make its money
c) the upper class engages in conspicuous consumption
d) people cannot live beyond their means
e) status symbols are independent of a particular social and economic status or position

Question 10:


a) Women remain disadvantaged both in the world of paid work and in the home.
b) Many women continue to do the majority of domestic labour in the home even when they hold paid employment.
c) Within the labour force, women continue to be ghettoized into specific ‘feminine’ employment areas.
d) When both the husband and the wife work, they share equally in the household and child rearing responsibilities.
e) Because of the continued gender segregation of the labour force and women’s traditional role in providing unpaid labour in the household, women are at greater risk of poverty.

Question 11:


a) tend to be bound together by important shared experiences
b) tend to live in exclusive neighbourhoods
c) tend to send their children to exclusive private schools
d) are so powerful and coordinated that they jeopardize democratic processes
e) all of the above

Question 12:


a) Absolute poverty
b) Relative poverty
c) Low-income cut-off
d) Disadvantaged
e) Low-income measure

Question 13:


a) those people who only have enough income for food, shelter, and clothing
b) those situations in which people lack many of the opportunities available to the average citizen
c) a lack of basic necessities
d) the lack of the capability to live a minimally decent life that, in turn, limits the ability to take part in the life of the community
e) all of the above

Question 14:


a) British Columbia
b) Ontario
c) Quebec
d) Alberta
e) PEI

Question 15:


a) Women
b) Men
c) Immigrants
d) Aboriginal people
e) Disabled people

Question 16:


a) continued occupational segregation
b) undervaluing of women’s paid work
c) restructuring of women’s employment through increased privatization and outsourcing
d) lack of child care limiting women’s choices for employment
e) all of the above

Question 17:


a) lack basic education
b) rampant alcoholism and drug abuse
c) long-standing history of colonial domination and cultural oppression
d) living and health conditions, especially on remote northern reserves, remain well below those of the majority
e) unemployment

Question 18:


a) many foreign-trained doctors encounter frustrating roadblocks on the road to accreditation, ranging from costly retraining programs to a restricted number of residences
b) there are no foreign-trained doctors who are allowed to bypass the internship requirement and practise medicine immediately after an evaluating exam
c) Canada does a very good job of ensuring that skilled immigrants who come to Canada will find a job in their profession
d) presently, fewer immigrants who are skilled and highly educated are coming to Canada
e) all of the above

Question 19:


a) They are more vulnerable to living in poverty than other Canadians.
b) They have significantly higher education and more potential earners per household than other Canadians.
c) There has been a dramatic rise in their educational attainment due to changes to Canada’s immigrant selection criteria in 1993.
d) They reap the same rewards from their educational qualifications and work experience as those who are Canadian-born.
e) Racism, language difficulties, cultural differences, and poor access to job networks often lead them to take dead-end survival jobs in an effort to gain some type of Canadian experience.

Question 20:


a) Men report higher rates of disability as well as lower incomes and employment rates than their female counterparts with disabilities.
b) People with disabilities are often excluded via institutional discrimination.
c) People with disabilities are often excluded via environmental discrimination.
d) People with disabilities are often excluded via attitudinal discrimination.
e) Almost one in five of disabled Canadians are living below the low income cut-offs.

Question 21:


a) Collin and Jensen
b) Oscar Lewis
c) Michael Katz
d) Jean Swanson
e) William Ryan

Question 22:


a) Individuals who work hard should be able to prosper, so those who do not succeed are at fault for lacking motivation.
b) Poverty and inequality is about wealth distribution; some people receive a great deal more than others.
c) Policies, laws, and the economic system that forces millions of people to compete against each other drives down wages and creates more poverty.
d) People are poor for many reasons beyond their control.
e) The system should be blamed for poverty.

Question 23:


a) deindustrialization
b) rising costs of living
c) barriers to opportunities
d) increase in single-parent households
e) limited access to affordable housing and inability to obtain credit

Question 24:


a) Women are the poorest of the poor, especially those raising children.
b) Canadian women continue to earn less than 70 per cent of what their male counterparts earn.
c) Aboriginal people living and health conditions remain well below those of the majority.
d) Disabled Canadians who are working age have an average income about 50 per cent lower than those without disabilities.
e) The working poor tend to hold jobs offering fewer benefits, including limited or no access to health insurance, dental care plans, life and disability insurance, and pension plans.

Question 25:


a) high quality, universal, subsidized daycare system
b) the retirement income system, which now includes three parts: Old Age Security (OAS), the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), and private pensions and savings
c) Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB) and Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB)
d) Employment Insurance (EI)
e) subsidies for housing and child care for low-income families

Question 26:


a) There are long waiting lists for housing.
b) The housing is often not well maintained and in neighbourhoods with high crime rates.
c) There are far too few regulated child-care spaces across Canada.
d) The requirements for obtaining and maintaining the child-care subsidy are often burdensome.
e) all of the above