All Free Sociology MCQs with Answers

Every Sociology question in the bank, across all chapters, each with the correct answer and a written explanation. Free and unlimited, with no account needed.

1,258 questions · page 12 of 63

  • A. community service
  • B. imprisonment
  • C. electronic tagging
  • D. curfews

Explanation: Community service can be restorative when it requires the offender to make a constructive contribution to the community affected by the…

Correct answer: community service
  • A. white-collar crime
  • B. victimless crime
  • C. corporate crime
  • D. organized crime

Explanation: Corporate crime is illegal conduct committed by a company or by people acting on its behalf in the course of business, including breaches…

Correct answer: corporate crime
  • A. restorative justice
  • B. deterrent sentencingAccess Government Careers
  • C. target hardening
  • D. zero tolerance

Explanation: Broken-windows theory argues that visible disorder encourages more serious offending, so it is associated with strict enforcement of minor…

Correct answer: zero tolerance
  • A. labelling theory
  • B. control theory
  • C. functionalist theory
  • D. conflict theory

Explanation: Labelling theory treats deviance as a result of social interaction: authorities or groups apply a deviant label to particular people or…

Correct answer: labelling theory
  • A. international drug dealing via email
  • B. the vandalizing of virtual environments
  • C. The global trade in online pornography
  • D. theft of goods sold via online action websitesRun Background Checks

Explanation: Vandalizing virtual environments is a genuinely new form of offending that depends on digital technology, making it a third-generation…

Correct answer: the vandalizing of virtual environments
  • A. the new criminology
  • B. broken windows theory
  • C. situational crime prevention
  • D. deviance reduction theory

Explanation: Situational crime prevention reduces opportunities for offending through measures such as CCTV, neighbourhood surveillance, immobilizers…

Correct answer: situational crime prevention
  • A. deviant behavior is behavior that is labelled so by the law
  • B. deviant behavior is that which causes public offence
  • C. deviant behavior is that labelled by the perpetrators
  • D. deviant behavior is behavior that people so label

Explanation: Howard Becker defined deviance as behaviour that people successfully label as deviant, making social reaction central to the concept.

Correct answer: deviant behavior is behavior that people so label
  • A. deviance is normally sanctioned by lawTake Sociology Courses
  • B. deviance and crime very often overlap
  • C. the concept of deviance can be applied to individuals and groups
  • D. the concept of 'deviance' is much broader than 'crime'

Explanation: Deviance is broader than crime because it includes violations of social norms that are not necessarily illegal, such as unusual dress or…

Correct answer: deviance is normally sanctioned by lawTake Sociology Courses
  • A. restitution
  • B. radical non-intervention
  • C. legalization
  • D. decriminalization
  • E. retribution

Explanation: Radical non-intervention advises authorities to avoid unnecessary intervention, because official reactions can create stigma and reinforce…

Correct answer: radical non-intervention
  • A. 1950s
  • B. 1980s
  • C. 1940s
  • D. 1960s
  • E. 1970s

Explanation: Labelling theory became prominent in the 1960s through writers such as Howard Becker, Edwin Lemert, and Erving Goffman.

Correct answer: 1960s
  • A. conformity
  • B. corporate crime
  • C. Psychologically-based crime
  • D. lower-class crime
  • E. white-collar crime

Explanation: Social control theory asks why most people conform rather than offend, arguing that strong bonds to family, school, work, and society…

Correct answer: conformity
  • A. Social Control theory
  • B. Lower Class Focal Value theory
  • C. Anomie theory
  • D. Social Process theory
  • E. Strain theory

Explanation: Lower Class Focal Value theory explains crime through distinctive subcultural values or focal concerns that may support deviant conduct.

Correct answer: Lower Class Focal Value theory
  • A. ritualists
  • B. ret realists
  • C. rebels
  • D. innovators
  • E. conformists

Explanation: Merton calls people who accept conventional success goals but use illegitimate means to achieve them innovators.

Correct answer: innovators
  • A. pre-natal nutrition
  • B. hormones
  • C. genetic abnormalities
  • D. adolescence
  • E. early childhood

Explanation: Psychological positivism links later conformist or criminal belief systems to experiences in early childhood, when personality and basic…

Correct answer: early childhood
  • A. Substantial reduction of economic inequality
  • B. Subordination of the agents of social control
  • C. redefinition of acts that are currently defined as criminal
  • D. amelioration of social welfare activities
  • E. repression of lower-class gang activities

Explanation: Conflict theory connects crime to unequal power and economic conditions, so it proposes reducing substantial economic inequality as a…

Correct answer: Substantial reduction of economic inequality
  • A. Differential Association
  • B. Conflict
  • C. Positivism
  • D. Social Control
  • E. Functionalism

Explanation: Conflict theory asks who has the power to make rules and define some behaviours as deviant while protecting others from criminalisation.

Correct answer: Conflict
  • A. age-specific support
  • B. formal social control
  • C. internalization of norms
  • D. informal social control
  • E. positivism

Explanation: Peer approval operates through informal social control because friends and peers reward or disapprove of behaviour without using official…

Correct answer: informal social control
  • A. Without a deal of grate variation
  • B. Completely irrelevant
  • C. totally in keeping with tradition
  • D. Without a corresponding judgment
  • E. inherently deviant

Explanation: Sociologists generally hold that no behaviour is inherently deviant; deviance depends on social rules and the reactions of others.

Correct answer: inherently deviant
  • A. it is a committed on a larger, often global, scale, and is well organized
  • B. all of the above
  • C. it can have far-reaching effects upon international relations
  • D. it is associated with political conflict between states and their citizens

Explanation: Terrorism is typically organised across a broad, sometimes global scale and is tied to political conflict, with possible effects on…

Correct answer: all of the above
  • A. White collar crime
  • B. none-criminal deviance
  • C. organized crime
  • D. global terrorism

Explanation: The Mafia is a structured criminal organisation involved in continuing illegal activities through coordination, hierarchy, and sometimes…

Correct answer: organized crime