OCR A-Level Sociology sample questions and answers (H580)
Guide overview All 10 topics Sample questions Papers and weighting Look inside Questions and answers
50 sample questions and answers
Taken from every topic of OCR A-Level Sociology, specification H580. The full guide has 859.
Component 01
Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity
102 questions in the guide, across 11 subtopics. More from this topic
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Culture, norms, values and cultural relativism
Why do sociologists insist that culture is learned rather than inherited?
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Because a child born into any society acquires that society's culture through socialisation, and children raised in different societies grow up with entirely different norms, values and languages. -
Subculture, high culture and popular culture
How can a subculture share mainstream culture and reject part of it at the same time?
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Paul Willis found that the counter-school subculture of the lads embraced wider working-class values of masculinity and manual work while rejecting the school's values of obedience and academic success. -
Global and consumer culture, cultural diversity and hybridity
What is consumer culture?
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Consumer culture is a culture in which buying, displaying and using goods is central to social life and to the way people express who they are. -
Primary and secondary socialisation, the family and peer group
How does Cooley's looking-glass self explain the emergence of a sense of self?
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Cooley argued that we build a self-image by imagining how we appear to other people and how they judge us, then internalising that reflected view of ourselves. -
Media, religion, education and the workplace as agencies of socialisation
How does religion socialise its members, according to Durkheim?
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Durkheim argued that shared worship, ritual and rites of passage teach a moral code and bind believers together, reinforcing the collective conscience and social solidarity.
Component 01
Families and Relationships
103 questions in the guide, across 8 subtopics. More from this topic
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Family types and trends in marriage, divorce and cohabitation
What is a reconstituted family?
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A reconstituted or step family is formed when partners bring children from a previous relationship into a new household, so at least one adult is a step parent. -
Demographic change, family diversity and newer family types
What is meant by an ageing population?
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It is a population in which the average age is rising and older people make up a growing share of the total, caused by increased life expectancy combined with a falling birth rate. -
Nuclear family ideology, functionalism and the New Right
State the two 'irreducible functions' Talcott Parsons attributed to the family.
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Parsons argued the family exists to carry out the primary socialisation of children and the stabilisation of adult personalities. -
Marxist, feminist and postmodern views and the diversity debate
What is the radical feminist analysis of the family?
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Radical feminists such as Delphy and Leonard see the family as the key institution of patriarchy, in which men benefit from women's unpaid labour and emotional servicing; Germaine Greer argues women would be better served by female-centred households. -
Conjugal roles and the domestic division of labour
What did Young and Willmott mean by the symmetrical family?
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They argued the modern family had reached a stage in which the roles of husband and wife, while not identical, had become more similar: both did paid work, both shared housework and childcare, and leisure was spent together in the home.
Component 01
Youth Subcultures
78 questions in the guide, across 7 subtopics. More from this topic
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Functionalist and neo-Marxist views of youth culture
Eisenstadt and other functionalists call youth culture a safety valve. What do they mean?
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They mean this period of structured irresponsibility, in which young people are freed from full adult obligations, gives a contained outlet for the frustration of being neither child nor adult, so tension is released harmlessly and social order is preserved. -
Functionalist and neo-Marxist views of youth culture
Which research centre produced the neo-Marxist account of youth subcultures?
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The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham, usually referred to as the Birmingham School. -
Hebdige, feminist and postmodern views of youth subcultures
What is bedroom culture?
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McRobbie and Garber's term for girls' leisure organised in the private space of the home, built around close friendships, music, magazines and talk rather than public street-based subcultures. -
Hebdige, feminist and postmodern views of youth subcultures
Define a neo-tribe.
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Maffesoli's term, applied to youth music scenes by Bennett, for a loose, fluid and temporary grouping formed around shared musical or consumer taste, which young people drift in and out of without lasting commitment. -
Class, ethnic and hybrid subcultures and consensus versus conflict
Define hybridity in relation to youth subcultures.
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Hybridity is the blending of elements drawn from two or more cultures into a new cultural form or identity, such as young British Asians fusing bhangra with Western dance and club music.
Component 01
Media
52 questions in the guide, across 5 subtopics. More from this topic
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Representations of ethnicity and nationality, symbolic annihilation and the male gaze
How far are representations of minority ethnic groups said to be changing?
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Minority ethnic actors and presenters now appear far more often in mainstream drama, soaps and news, but critics argue casting is frequently tokenistic and that crime and terrorism still dominate factual coverage. -
Representations of ethnicity and nationality, symbolic annihilation and the male gaze
How does press coverage of newer immigrant groups differ from coverage of long-established minority ethnic communities?
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Newer arrivals such as recent European migrants and asylum seekers are covered mainly as a question of numbers, borders and welfare cost, while established communities appear more often in ordinary domestic, comic and entertainment roles. -
Representations of gender, social class and young people
Describe the way the media typically represent the upper class.
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Sympathetically, as dignified, glamorous and naturally suited to leadership, through costume drama, society reporting and admiring coverage of royalty and inherited wealth. -
Representations of gender, social class and young people
How is the underclass presented in media coverage of welfare?
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It is shown as a workshy, criminally inclined group living on benefits with values different from mainstream society, echoing Murray's New Right claim that welfare itself has created such a group. -
Representations of older people and theories of media representation
How does the neo-Marxist explanation of representations differ from the traditional Marxist one?
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Neo-Marxists reject the idea that owners dictate content and argue instead that journalists' shared middle-class background and routine news practices reproduce dominant ideology unintentionally, winning consent through what Gramsci called hegemony.
Component 02
Research Methods and Researching Social Inequalities
103 questions in the guide, across 10 subtopics. More from this topic
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Positivism, quantitative data and interpretivism
How does a trend differ from a pattern?
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A trend is the direction in which a pattern moves over time, such as a steady narrowing of a gap, whereas a pattern is the relationship itself. -
Verstehen, qualitative data and validity
Why do interpretivists treat subjectivity as acceptable rather than as a flaw?
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Because the social world is made up of people's subjective meanings, so research that excludes them cannot capture what is really going on. -
Reliability, representativeness, generalisability and theory
Why are representativeness and generalisability not the same thing?
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Representativeness is a property of the sample itself, while generalisability is the claim the researcher can then make about the wider population; a sample must be representative before findings can be generalised. -
Research topics, aims, hypotheses and primary and secondary data
Define a hypothesis.
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A hypothesis is a precise, testable statement predicting a relationship between variables, which the research then supports or rejects. -
Operationalisation, pilot studies and respondent validation
Why do interpretivists distrust operationalisation?
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Because reducing a concept to fixed indicators strips out the varied meanings people attach to it and imposes the researcher's definition on them.
Component 02
Understanding Social Inequalities
56 questions in the guide, across 4 subtopics. More from this topic
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Stratification, class, poverty, mobility and gender inequality
What did Townsend add to the way poverty is measured?
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Townsend argued poverty should be measured as relative deprivation, using an index of the everyday activities and possessions most people take for granted, so that anyone unable to afford them counts as poor even though they are not physically destitute. -
Stratification, class, poverty, mobility and gender inequality
Distinguish horizontal from vertical segregation in the labour market.
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Horizontal segregation means men and women are concentrated in different kinds of work, with women clustered in caring, clerical and retail jobs; vertical segregation means that within the same occupation men hold a disproportionate share of the senior, better-paid grades. -
Ethnicity, age, work and health inequalities
Name three areas of social life beyond employment where ethnic inequality can be evidenced, and give the pattern in each.
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Housing, where minority ethnic households are more likely to live in overcrowded or poor-quality accommodation; health, where several groups have worse outcomes and poorer experiences of services; and the criminal justice system, where Black people are stopped, searched and imprisoned at disproportionate rates. -
Ethnicity, age, work and health inequalities
Why is it wrong to treat older people as a uniformly poor group?
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Old age magnifies earlier inequalities rather than levelling them: people with occupational pensions, savings and a mortgage-free home can be comfortably off, while those who relied on low-paid or interrupted work face pensioner poverty, so the spread of income and wealth within the older population is very wide. -
Functionalist and Marxist explanations of inequality
What were Tumin's main criticisms of the functionalist theory of stratification?
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Tumin argued there is no objective way to measure the functional importance of a job, that inequality blocks talent by denying opportunity to the poor rather than releasing it, that power rather than merit determines pay, and that stratification divides a society instead of integrating it.
Component 03
Globalisation and the Digital Social World
52 questions in the guide, across 4 subtopics. More from this topic
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Globalisation, the digital revolution and media convergence
How do sceptics such as Hirst and Thompson challenge the idea of globalisation?
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They argue the world economy is internationalised rather than truly globalised, because trade and investment remain concentrated within a few rich regional blocs and national governments still regulate their economies. -
Globalisation, the digital revolution and media convergence
Give two criticisms of McLuhan's global village.
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Access to digital communication remains deeply unequal within and between societies, so many people are excluded from the village; and sharing information is not the same as sharing identity, since global audiences interpret the same content in very different ways. -
Social media, social capital and theoretical views of digital communication
Define social capital.
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Social capital is the resources a person can draw on through their social networks and relationships, including support, trust, information, contacts and influence; Bourdieu treats it as a form of capital that reproduces advantage, while Putnam treats it as a resource for whole communities. -
Social media, social capital and theoretical views of digital communication
On what do feminists disagree when they assess digital communication?
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Feminists disagree: some emphasise the new capacity for women to organise, publicise sexism and share experience beyond the mainstream media, while others argue online spaces reproduce patriarchy through harassment, objectifying imagery and women's under-representation in the technology industry. -
Digital identities, the digital divide and social class
How can digital communication produce hybrid and global identities?
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Constant contact with distant cultures allows people to combine elements of more than one culture into the hybrid identities Hall describes, and can support the cosmopolitan outlook Beck identifies, in which people see themselves as members of a global as well as a national community.
Component 03
Crime and Deviance
108 questions in the guide, across 11 subtopics. More from this topic
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Defining crime and deviance, social control and relativity
What do sociologists mean by social order?
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Social order is the stable, predictable patterning of everyday social life that results from people largely sharing and following the same norms and expectations. -
Social construction of crime and police recorded crime
What is the dark figure of crime?
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The dark figure is the volume of offences that actually take place but never appear in police records, because they are not noticed, not reported or not recorded. -
The Crime Survey, victim surveys and self-report studies
What are the main limitations of the Crime Survey for England and Wales?
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It relies on respondents' memory and honesty, it cannot record homicide or victimless offences, and it has historically excluded crimes against businesses and people living outside private households. -
Crime patterns by social class, gender and age
Distinguish between occupational crime and corporate crime.
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Occupational crime is committed by an employee for personal gain at the expense of the organisation, whereas corporate crime is committed by or on behalf of the organisation itself in pursuit of its goals, such as breaching safety law or misleading consumers. -
Crime patterns by ethnicity, crime trends and global organised crime
How does ethnicity relate to victimisation?
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Crime Survey figures show adults from the Mixed ethnic group are more likely to be victims than White adults, while differences for most other groups are small once age and area are allowed for; minority ethnic people are also exposed to racially and religiously aggravated offences that white victims rarely experience.
Component 03
Education
101 questions in the guide, across 9 subtopics. More from this topic
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Functionalist, Marxist and liberal views of the role of education
What did Althusser mean by calling education an ideological state apparatus?
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He meant education maintains ruling-class power by shaping ideas rather than by force, unlike the repressive apparatus of police and army, and it does so by reproducing both labour power and an ideology that makes inequality seem natural. -
Social democratic, New Right and feminist views and vocational education
How do liberal feminists explain girls' position in education, and what do they propose?
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They argue girls were held back by sexist attitudes and unequal provision, and that continued reform — equal access, positive role models and monitoring of results — will steadily strip the remaining barriers away. -
Class and ethnic patterns in educational attainment
Overall results have risen for every social class over recent decades. Why is that not evidence that class inequality in education is disappearing?
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Because the improvement has lifted all groups roughly together, so although absolute attainment is higher, the relative distance between the classes has proved stubbornly persistent. -
Gender patterns, global educational inequality and intersectionality
What is meant by gender apartheid in education?
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It describes the systematic exclusion of girls and women from schooling in some societies, where they are barred or effectively prevented from entering education that boys and men enter freely. -
Inside-school factors: labelling, setting, triage and institutional racism
Explain the self-fulfilling prophecy in education, using Rosenthal and Jacobson's findings.
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A false definition of a pupil can become true because the teacher acts on it and the pupil internalises it; Rosenthal and Jacobson told teachers certain randomly chosen children would 'spurt', and those children went on to make greater gains than their classmates.
Component 03
Religion, Belief and Faith
104 questions in the guide, across 12 subtopics. More from this topic
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Defining religion, faith and belief, churches and denominations
What is meant by a functional definition of religion?
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It defines religion by what it does — the functions it performs for the individual or for society, such as integrating people or supplying meaning. -
Sects, cults, new religious and new age movements and fundamentalism
Why are new age movements often described as privatised spirituality?
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Authority rests with the individual seeker rather than an institution or creed, so the practice is personal and largely detached from any congregation. -
Functionalist and Marxist views of the role of religion
According to Durkheim, what are worshippers really venerating when they honour the sacred?
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Society itself, because the sacred symbol represents the power of the group over the individual and renews the collective conscience. -
Neo-Marxist, Weberian, feminist, phenomenological and postmodern views of religion
Explain Berger's phenomenological concept of the sacred canopy.
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Religion throws an overarching canopy of meaning over social life, making the world seem ordered and purposeful and protecting people from the terror of meaninglessness. -
Class and gender patterns in religiosity
How would a Marxist explain higher religiosity among poorer groups?
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Religion compensates for material deprivation by offering hope of reward beyond this life, so its appeal is greatest where exploitation is felt most sharply.
OCR A-Level Sociology Active Recall Guide
The other 809 questions, with the answers printed after each section.