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Wales · WJECQ&A
Society and CultureQ&A by dot point
A short Q&A bank for every Wales Society and Culture 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.
Crime and deviance
- The definitions of crime and deviance and how they vary by time and place, and how crime is measured through official statistics and victim surveys, including the problem of the dark figure of unrecorded crime.2Q&A pairs
- The main sociological explanations of crime and deviance, including the influence of inadequate socialisation, poverty and social conditions, subcultures, and labelling, set against biological and psychological explanations.2Q&A pairs
- The patterns of crime and victimisation by social group, the link between social characteristics and crime statistics, and why these patterns must be treated as patterns in the statistics rather than facts about individuals.2Q&A pairs
Education
- The factors affecting educational attainment: how social class, gender and ethnicity are linked to differences in achievement, and the home and school explanations for these patterns.2Q&A pairs
- The processes within school: labelling and the self-fulfilling prophecy, setting and streaming, and pro-school and anti-school subcultures, and how they shape pupils' experiences and achievement.2Q&A pairs
- The role and functions of education for individuals and society, and the contrasting functionalist, Marxist, feminist and interactionist perspectives on education.2Q&A pairs
- The main types of school in the UK including state and independent schools, comprehensive and grammar schools, faith schools, and the debate over selection by ability.2Q&A pairs
Families
- The changing patterns of family life in the UK: falling marriage and rising cohabitation, rising divorce and the reasons for it, and the growth of lone parent and reconstituted families.2Q&A pairs
- The definitions of family and household, the main family types in the UK including nuclear, extended, reconstituted, lone parent, same sex, cohabiting and beanpole families, and family diversity within a global context.3Q&A pairs
- The functions the family performs for individuals and society, and the contrasting functionalist, Marxist and feminist perspectives on the role of the family.2Q&A pairs
- The changing roles and relationships within the family: conjugal roles and the domestic division of labour, whether roles are becoming more equal, and the changing position of children and family leisure time.2Q&A pairs
Key concepts and the process of socialisation
- The key sociological concepts of culture, norms, values, roles, status and the difference between ascribed and achieved status, and why these shared ideas hold a society together.2Q&A pairs
- How identity is formed through socialisation: the sources of identity in gender, ethnicity, social class, age, nationality and religion, and how identity can change over time.2Q&A pairs
- The nature versus nurture debate: the view that behaviour is biologically determined against the sociological view that it is learned through socialisation, with evidence from feral children and cross-cultural differences.2Q&A pairs
- The process of socialisation: primary socialisation in the family and secondary socialisation through the agencies of education, peer group, media, religion and the workplace, and how each transmits norms and values.2Q&A pairs
- Social control through formal agencies such as the police, courts and law, and informal agencies such as the family, peer group and media, working through positive and negative sanctions to maintain social order.2Q&A pairs
Sociological research methods
- The main primary research methods: questionnaires, interviews, observations and experiments, and the strengths and weaknesses of each for sociological research.2Q&A pairs
- The practical, ethical and theoretical considerations that affect the choice of research method, the role of pilot studies, and the meaning of reliability and validity.2Q&A pairs
- The idea of a sample and a sampling frame, the main sampling methods including random and quota sampling, and the secondary sources sociologists use such as official statistics and the mass media.2Q&A pairs
- The stages of the research process, the aim and hypothesis, the difference between primary and secondary data, and the difference between quantitative and qualitative data.2Q&A pairs
Social differentiation, stratification and power
- Forms of social differentiation and inequality beyond class: gender, ethnicity, age and disability, the meaning of prejudice and discrimination, and how the law seeks to promote equality.2Q&A pairs
- The concepts of power and authority, the difference between power and authority, and the three types of authority: traditional, charismatic and legal rational.2Q&A pairs
- The link between social class and life chances, the difference between wealth and income, and the meaning, measurement and causes of poverty in modern Britain.2Q&A pairs
- The concept of social mobility, the difference between open and closed systems and between upward and downward mobility, and the factors that help or hinder movement between classes.2Q&A pairs
- The concept of social stratification, the main systems of stratification including the class system, and how social class is defined and measured in modern Britain.2Q&A pairs