All Free Sociology MCQs with Answers

• A. Vertical mobility
• B. None of these
• C. social mobility
• D. Horizontal mobility

Explanation: Horizontal mobility changes a person's occupation or social role without changing their position in the hierarchy, such as moving between…

• A. Individual factor
• B. Structural
• C. both a and b
• D. None of these

Explanation: Education, work habits and mobility-oriented behaviour are individual factors because they reflect personal qualities or choices that…

• A. Class factor
• B. Social factors
• C. Individual factors
• D. None of these

Explanation: Mobility rates depend both on structural opportunities, such as expansion of professional jobs, and on individual factors such as…

• A. Social class
• B. social groups
• C. None of these
• D. social mobility

Explanation: Social mobility means movement from one social class or status position to another, either upward, downward or horizontally.

• A. achieved status
• B. ascribed status
• C. status set
• D. master status

Explanation: Master status is the position that becomes the most important basis for a person’s social identity and overall standing.

• A. a role
• B. a position
• C. a performance
• D. an impression

Explanation: A role is the set of socially defined expectations and behaviours attached to a particular status.

• A. education and occupation
• B. class and income
• C. gender and race
• D. family and peer groups

Explanation: Master statuses often centre on highly visible and socially significant characteristics, especially gender and race.

• A. industrial capitalism separated the middle-class home from the workplace
• B. those who enter paid employments have been sidelined into particular fields
• C. it is difficult to succeed in malestream politics without compromising their femininity
• D. all of the above

Explanation: Industrial capitalism separated the home from paid work, while women who entered employment were concentrated in limited occupations and…

• A. Marriage
• B. Their father's status
• C. Their children's status
• D. None of these

Explanation: Employment gives women an independent route to status and upward mobility rather than making their position depend mainly on marriage.

• A. Status of women in society
• B. Status of their husbands
• C. Both a and b
• D. None of these

Explanation: In strongly patriarchal systems, a woman’s social position and mobility were often defined through her husband’s occupation, class, or…

• A. Open
• B. Broad
• C. None of these
• D. closed

Explanation: In a closed mobility system, status positions are largely fixed by birth or ascription, so equal opportunity has little effect on movement…

• A. the allocation of men and women to different types of job
• B. women's increasing labor market participation
• C. the belief that women control the private sphere
• D. relations between men and women in the workplace

Explanation: Occupational gender segregation means that men and women are concentrated in different occupations or types of jobs, such as men being…

• A. comprehensive
• B. meritocratic
• C. selective
• D. elitist

Explanation: A meritocratic education system allocates achievement or status according to ability, effort, and performance rather than family…

• A. conceptual abstraction
• B. passive consumption
• C. cultural reproduction
• D. formal communication

Explanation: Cultural reproduction is the process by which schools pass on dominant cultural advantages and help preserve class inequalities across…

• A. lobbying campaign financing and corruption
• B. socialization outside the capitalist class to enforce discriminatory norms
• C. class warfare economic cycles and intercorporate conflict
• D. corporate corruption through interlocking directorates

Explanation: Conflict theorists identify lobbying, campaign finance and corruption as channels through which capitalist interests influence state…

• A. relatively open class systems
• B. extensive social mobility
• C. a much more rigid division of labor by gender
• D. all of the above

Explanation: Preindustrial cities generally had more rigid social hierarchies and less mobility, but they especially differed in their strongly…

• A. Segregation in always an involuntary process
• B. Segregation is the encroachment by one group on an area occupied by another group
• C. Segregation is the process by which natural areas are formed by the clustering of individuals or groups on the basis of common traits or activities
• D. Segregation can be prevented by the practice of redlining

Explanation: Segregation is the spatial clustering or separation of people according to shared traits, activities or group membership.

• A. assimilation
• B. ethnic cleansing
• C. multiculturalism
• D. apartheid

Explanation: Apartheid was South Africa’s legally enforced system of racial separation and unequal rights.

• A. the critical deconstruction of poverty by feminist theorists
• B. women's increased chances of being in poverty due to low pay and greater welfare dependency
• C. the way in which managing a budget and avoiding poverty tends to be a women's responsibility within the home
• D. the disproportionate number of female sociologists who do research on poverty

Explanation: Feminization of poverty refers to women's disproportionate exposure to poverty, often linked to lower pay, insecure work, unpaid care…

• A. the most extreme level of poverty that is found in a society
• B. households that are poor relative to the norms and values of their culture
• C. the estimated minimum level of income needed for subsistence
• D. the areas of a city in which poverty is concentrated

Explanation: An absolute poverty line estimates the minimum income or resources required to meet basic subsistence needs such as food, shelter and…