England · AQAQ&A
SociologyQ&A by dot point
A short Q&A bank for every England Sociology syllabus dot point. Each question and answer is drawn directly from our worked dot-point page, so you can scan key concepts before opening the long-form answer.
The sociology of crime and deviance
- Data on crime, including official statistics, victim surveys and self-report studies, the dark figure of unreported crime, and patterns of crime by age, class, gender and ethnicity.0Q&A pairs
- Defining crime and deviance, the difference between the two, and the idea that deviance is socially constructed and varies by time, place and culture.0Q&A pairs
- Social control, including formal and informal agencies of social control, sanctions, and the role of agencies such as the family, education, the police and the courts.0Q&A pairs
- Theories of crime and deviance, including Durkheim's functionalist view, Merton's strain theory, Marxist explanations, and the interactionist labelling theory of Becker.0Q&A pairs
The sociology of education
- Factors affecting educational achievement, including social class, gender and ethnicity, and the role of material deprivation, cultural deprivation and cultural capital.0Q&A pairs
- The functions of education, including the functionalist views of Durkheim and Parsons on social solidarity, skills and meritocracy, and the role of education in the economy.0Q&A pairs
- Processes within schools, including labelling, the self-fulfilling prophecy, streaming and setting, and pupil subcultures, drawing on interactionist research such as Becker and Rosenthal and Jacobson.0Q&A pairs
- The hidden curriculum and the Marxist view of education, including Bowles and Gintis's correspondence principle and the role of education in reproducing class inequality.0Q&A pairs
The sociology of families
- Changing family patterns, including trends in marriage, cohabitation, divorce, childbearing and the ageing population, and the reasons behind them.0Q&A pairs
- Conjugal roles and the division of domestic labour, including segregated and joint roles, the symmetrical family, the dual burden, and decision-making and power within couples.0Q&A pairs
- Criticisms of the family, including the Marxist and feminist views, the dark side of family life, and the conflict perspective on family roles and inequality.0Q&A pairs
- The diversity of family forms, including nuclear, extended, reconstituted, lone-parent, same-sex and single-person households, and the reasons for increasing family diversity.0Q&A pairs
- The functions of families, including Murdock's four functions and Parsons' two basic and irreducible functions, and the functionalist view of the family as a positive institution.0Q&A pairs
Key sociological concepts
- The feminist and interactionist perspectives, including the types of feminism, patriarchy, the work of Oakley, the interactionist focus on meanings and labelling, and the work of Becker.0Q&A pairs
- The functionalist and Marxist perspectives, including the consensus and conflict views of society, the key ideas of Durkheim, Parsons, Marx and Althusser, and how each explains social institutions.0Q&A pairs
- Socialisation, culture and identity, including primary and secondary socialisation, the agencies of socialisation, norms, values, roles, the nature versus nurture debate and feral children.0Q&A pairs
- Applying the sociological perspectives across topics, showing how functionalism, Marxism, feminism and interactionism each explain the family, education, crime and stratification.0Q&A pairs
Social stratification
- Defining social stratification, the main systems of stratification, the concept of social class, and the difference between achieved and ascribed status.0Q&A pairs
- Life chances and poverty, including the definition of life chances, absolute and relative poverty, explanations of poverty, and Townsend's relative deprivation.0Q&A pairs
- Power and inequality, including power in everyday life and the state, social mobility, and inequalities of gender, ethnicity, age and disability.0Q&A pairs
- Theories of stratification, including the functionalist view of Davis and Moore, the Marxist view of class conflict, and Weber's view of class, status and power.0Q&A pairs
Sociological research methods
- Primary research methods, including questionnaires, structured and unstructured interviews, participant and non-participant observation, and experiments, with their strengths and weaknesses.0Q&A pairs
- Sampling and ethics, including sampling frames, random, stratified, quota and snowball sampling, and ethical issues such as consent, confidentiality, harm and deception.0Q&A pairs
- Secondary sources, including official statistics, documents, the mass media and previous sociological research, and the strengths and weaknesses of using existing data.0Q&A pairs
- The research process, including aims, hypotheses, the choice of method, the difference between primary and secondary data and quantitative and qualitative data, and the key concepts of reliability, validity and representativeness.0Q&A pairs