Lesson 4.3.2.3

4.3.2.3 Positivism, interpretivism and social facts Quiz: AQA Sociology, Unit 3

20 questions

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Lesson 4.3.2.3, Positivism, interpretivism and social facts: 20 multiple choice questions for the AQA Sociology (7192), Unit 3: Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. What is Durkheim's definition of a 'social fact'?

    • An individual's personal opinion about society, formed through private reflection and reported in a survey questionnaire
    • A way of acting, thinking or feeling that is external to the individual, general across a society, and exerts constraint on people
    • A statistic about individual behaviour that is collected by researchers, compiled in a table and published in a journal
    • A piece of historical evidence that records the exact dates on which social movements and institutions were established

  2. Which of Durkheim's characteristics of social facts refers to their existence independently of any one individual?

    • Externality: social facts exist outside individuals and are not created by any single person's will
    • Generality: social facts are found only in a single individual, who holds them in private for personal reasons only
    • Constraint: social facts are chosen freely by individuals, who can ignore them without any consequence in their lives
    • Measurability: social facts can be measured only through direct observation of individual behaviour in laboratory settings

  3. Which statement best describes positivism in sociology?

    • An approach that treats society as a fixed text whose meaning can be read without any reference to data or observation
    • An approach that rejects all empirical evidence, relying solely on personal intuition and unrecorded reflections of researchers
    • An approach that studies only the meanings of individual actors through their private subjective experience of the social world
    • An approach that seeks to apply scientific methods to study social reality, using observable data to identify laws and patterns

  4. Which approach emphasises understanding the meanings that actors give to their actions, often associated with Max Weber's concept of verstehen?

    • Interpretivism, which seeks to understand social action from the perspective of the actors involved
    • Marxist economic determinism, which seeks to explain all social action in terms of material forces of production alone
    • Structural functionalism, which seeks to explain institutions in terms of the functions they perform for social stability
    • Positivism, which seeks to measure social facts in the same way that natural scientists measure objects in the physical world

  5. Which of the following is an example of a social fact in Durkheim's sense?

    • A personal diary written by one student about their feelings during an examination period at university
    • The suicide rate of a country, which Durkheim showed varied with social integration and regulation across groups
    • The number of words in a single novel, which is a fixed feature of the text and not of society as a whole
    • One individual's decision to change jobs in a particular month, which reflects only that person's private reasons

  6. What did Durkheim's study of suicide aim to demonstrate?

    • That suicide is caused only by inherited biological traits, which are passed down through families in every society
    • That suicide rates vary with social integration and regulation, showing that social facts can explain individual behaviour
    • That suicide is entirely a result of individual psychological disorders, which social conditions have no effect on at all
    • That suicide rates are the same in every society, so no sociological explanation of the pattern is ever required

  7. Which approach would a positivist most likely use to study crime?

    • Analysis of personal letters from offenders to reveal their subjective feelings about their lives and their families
    • Open-ended interviews with offenders to understand how they interpret their own motives and identities in their own words
    • Participant observation with a group of offenders, recording their meanings and shared understandings over several years
    • Large-scale statistical analysis of official data to identify patterns and test hypotheses about causes

  8. Which approach would an interpretivist most likely use to study crime?

    • Large random surveys that measure the frequency of offences and compare offending rates across all regions of the country
    • Controlled experiments that manipulate the presence of police officers and measure the rate of crime in the study areas
    • Statistical regression models that estimate the effect of unemployment on offending rates in a national sample of areas
    • In-depth interviews and observation to understand how offenders make sense of their actions and identities

  9. What is a key criticism of positivism in sociology?

    • It has no methods of data collection, so it cannot produce any findings about social life in any form at all
    • It has always been rejected by natural scientists, who consider the scientific method to be unsuited to any form of study
    • It may treat people as passive objects of forces, overlooking the meanings they give to their actions
    • It has never been used in any social research, so its claims cannot be assessed against any evidence in any study

  10. What is a key criticism of interpretivism from positivist sociologists?

    • Its findings are hard to generalise and to test systematically, since they depend on interpretation
    • Its findings are identical to official statistics, since interpretive researchers rely entirely on government data in their work
    • Its findings are always statistically significant, since interpretive researchers use large samples in every study they conduct
    • Its findings are never open to dispute, since meanings are fixed and cannot be interpreted differently by different researchers

  11. Which concept links Durkheim's view of social facts to his approach to methods?

    • Social facts should be studied through observable indicators, such as statistics, rather than through subjective introspection
    • Social facts should be studied only through the analysis of individual biographies, which reveal social structure in every case
    • Social facts should be studied only through personal introspection, since only the individual can know what a social fact means
    • Social facts should not be studied at all, since they are too abstract and cannot be measured with any reliable method

  12. Which of these is the best description of an interpretivist view of social reality?

    • Social reality is constructed through shared meanings and interaction, so it must be understood from the actors' perspective
    • Social reality is determined entirely by biological inheritance, so the individual's social meanings have no role in shaping it
    • Social reality is an illusion that cannot be studied, since all knowledge of society is merely personal and never shared
    • Social reality is fixed and external to individuals, and it can be measured in the same way as the physical world is measured

  13. Which statement about the 'social facts' debate is most accurate?

    • Durkheim argued that social facts are purely subjective, existing only in the minds of individual actors and nowhere else
    • Critics argue that social facts can be treated as too objective, while Durkheim maintained that they exert real constraint on individuals
    • Durkheim argued that social facts are fixed by biology, so they cannot be changed by any social or historical process
    • Durkheim rejected the idea that social facts constrain individuals, arguing that people are always free to ignore social norms

  14. A researcher argues that the suicide rate of a region reflects its social integration rather than individual psychology alone. Which principle does this apply?

    • The principle that social facts are explained by other social facts, rather than by individual psychological states alone
    • The principle that individual psychological states always explain social patterns, so social facts need no separate explanation
    • The principle that regional differences are random, so no sociological explanation can ever be given for the pattern observed
    • The principle that suicide can be explained only by reference to the biology of each individual who commits the act

  15. What does 'verstehen' mean in Weber's methodology?

    • Statistical testing of hypotheses about the relationship between variables in large datasets collected by official agencies
    • Historical reconstruction of past events using archival documents that record the official decisions of governments
    • Scientific measurement of observable behaviour using standardised instruments that can be repeated in every research setting
    • Interpretive understanding of the subjective meanings that people attach to their social actions

  16. Which of the following would be a positivist claim about social research?

    • Social phenomena are best understood only through the stories told by participants, without any reference to data
    • Social phenomena are too complex for any systematic method, so research should rely on personal judgement alone
    • Social phenomena cannot be studied objectively, since every observer brings unique meanings that cannot be standardised
    • Social phenomena can be studied with methods similar to those of the natural sciences, using systematic observation and testing

  17. Which concept refers to the idea that social facts are general across a society, rather than limited to a single person?

    • Measurability: a social fact can be recorded in numbers, which allows researchers to compare groups and places precisely
    • Externality: a social fact exists outside the individual and is not produced by any single person's inner thoughts or will
    • Constraint: a social fact compels individuals to conform, regardless of their personal preferences or private inclinations
    • Generality: a social fact is shared by many members of a society and is not the property of a single individual

  18. Which claim is most consistent with interpretivist critiques of the statistical study of social facts?

    • Statistics have no connection to social life, since they measure only the physical characteristics of people in each society
    • Statistics are unnecessary for sociology, since all social facts are fully captured by the personal diaries of individuals
    • Statistics are always neutral and objective, because they report the same reality regardless of how categories are defined
    • Statistics such as suicide rates are themselves socially constructed, so their meaning depends on how categories are defined

  19. What does a positivist researcher mean when describing a social law?

    • A legal rule enacted by parliament that every citizen must obey, backed by criminal sanctions for those who break it
    • A personal belief about how society ought to be organised, which the researcher hopes will be adopted by policymakers
    • A moral principle that individuals should follow in their daily lives, based on the teachings of a particular religion
    • A regular, observable pattern or relationship between social phenomena that can be tested and generalised

  20. A researcher studies why people join a social movement by asking members to explain their motives in their own words. Which approach is being used?

    • A functionalist approach, which seeks to explain membership in terms of the contribution it makes to social stability
    • A biological approach, which seeks to explain membership in terms of inherited dispositions passed on through families
    • An interpretivist approach, which seeks to understand the meanings and motives that actors give to their own action
    • A positivist approach, which seeks to measure the frequency of membership and compare it with the rates of other social groups

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