Look inside the AQA GCSE Sociology guide (8192)

Guide overview All 6 topics Sample questions Papers and weighting Look inside Questions and answers

Look inside the AQA GCSE Sociology guide

Questions for a subtopic print together. The answers for that section print after them. Nothing else is in the file.

AQA · GCSE · 8192
Sociology
Active Recall Guide
578 questions
SociologyContents
Contents
6 topics, 32 subtopics
  1. The Sociological Approach62
  2. Families98
  3. Education83
  4. Crime and Deviance96
  5. Social Stratification133
  6. Research Methods106
ii
FamiliesQuestions
Families
Functions of families
  1. How do sociologists define a family?
  2. Which four functions of the family did George Murdock identify?
  3. What is the sexual function of families?
  4. What is the reproductive function of families?
  5. What is the economic function of families?
  6. What is the educational function of families?
  7. Who was Talcott Parsons?
  8. Which two functions did Parsons believe every family keeps in every society?
  9. What did Parsons mean by the stabilisation of adult personalities?
12
FamiliesAnswers
Answers
Functions of families
  1. A family is a group of people related by blood, marriage, civil partnership or adoption. Many sociologists also count cohabiting couples and their children as families.
  2. Murdock identified the sexual, reproductive, economic and educational functions. Murdock claimed these functions were universal after comparing 250 societies in 1949.
  3. The sexual function is providing a stable, socially approved setting for sexual relationships between adult partners. Functionalists argue that this limits the conflict caused by sexual rivalry.
  4. The reproductive function is producing children who become the next generation of society's members. A society without reproduction would die out.
  5. The economic function is providing for members' material needs, such as food, shelter and money. Pre-industrial families were also units of production that worked the land together.
  6. The educational function is teaching children basic skills and knowledge before and alongside school. Parents teach language, manners and a sense of right and wrong.
  7. Talcott Parsons was an American functionalist sociologist writing in the mid-twentieth century. Parsons based his ideas on the middle-class American nuclear family of the 1950s.
  8. Parsons named two: the primary socialisation of young children, and keeping adult personalities stable. Parsons argued that specialised institutions had taken over most other family functions.
  9. Parsons meant that family life gives adults comfort and relief from the pressures of work. Partners reassure and look after each other at home, which keeps them stable.
13
EducationQuestions
Education
Education, capitalism and the correspondence principle
  1. Who were Bowles and Gintis, and what did they argue about education?
  2. What evidence did Bowles and Gintis use?
  3. What is the correspondence principle?
  4. How does the hierarchy of school correspond to the hierarchy of work?
  5. How does the organisation of learning correspond to the organisation of work?
  6. What is the hidden curriculum?
  7. What is the difference between the curriculum and the formal curriculum?
  8. Why did Bowles and Gintis call meritocracy a myth?
  9. What did Louis Althusser argue about education?
34
EducationAnswers
Answers
Education, capitalism and the correspondence principle
  1. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis were American Marxist economists who published Schooling in Capitalist America in 1976. Bowles and Gintis argued that education mainly exists to supply capitalism with a suitable workforce.
  2. Bowles and Gintis studied 237 students at a New York high school, comparing grades with personality traits. High grades went to obedient, punctual and conforming students rather than creative ones.
  3. The correspondence principle is the idea that relationships in school mirror relationships at work. School shapes pupils into the kind of workers capitalism needs.
  4. Pupils obey teachers and head teachers just as workers obey supervisors and managers. Grades motivate pupils in the same way that wages motivate workers.
  5. School knowledge is split into separate subjects, just as work is broken into small, narrow tasks. Pupils have little say over what they learn, as workers have little control over their jobs.
  6. The hidden curriculum is what pupils learn from the way school is organised, not from the subjects taught. Punctuality, obedience and acceptance of authority are all part of the hidden curriculum.
  7. The curriculum is everything a school sets out to teach. The formal curriculum is the official subjects and content, such as the National Curriculum in England.
  8. Bowles and Gintis argued that class background, not ability, mainly explains who succeeds at school. The myth of meritocracy persuades working-class pupils to blame themselves for failure and accept inequality.
  9. Louis Althusser, a French Marxist, called education an ideological state apparatus. Schools pass on ruling-class ideas so that people accept capitalism as normal and fair.
35
Social StratificationQuestions
Social Stratification
Functionalist theory of stratification
  1. What is social stratification?
  2. Name four systems of stratification.
  3. What is a caste system?
  4. How was stratification organised under feudalism?
  5. What is the difference between ascribed and achieved status?
  6. How does social mobility show whether a stratification system is open or closed?
  7. What is a meritocracy, and why do functionalists link it to stratification?
  8. Who were Davis and Moore?
  9. Why did Davis and Moore argue that every society needs stratification?
56
Social StratificationAnswers
Answers
Functionalist theory of stratification
  1. Social stratification is the division of society into layers, or strata, that are unequal in wealth, power and status. Social class is the main form of stratification in the UK.
  2. Slavery, caste, feudalism and social class are four systems of stratification. Slavery is the most extreme, as enslaved people are owned as property by others.
  3. A caste system is a closed system of stratification based on birth, traditionally linked to Hinduism in India. A person cannot move between castes, and marriage is expected within the caste.
  4. Feudalism was the medieval system in which power came from owning land. The monarch and the aristocracy held the land, and peasants worked it in return for protection. The aristocracy is a noble class whose titles and estates are inherited.
  5. Ascribed status is fixed at birth, such as being born into a royal family. Achieved status is earned through effort or talent, such as qualifying as a doctor.
  6. Social mobility is movement up or down between strata. An open system such as class allows mobility, while a closed system such as caste does not. Intergenerational mobility compares a person's position with that of their parents.
  7. A meritocracy is a society in which positions are allocated by talent and effort rather than background. Functionalists argue that modern Britain rewards merit, so inequality is fair.
  8. Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore were American functionalist sociologists. Davis and Moore set out their theory of stratification in an article published in 1945.
  9. Davis and Moore argued that every society must fill its most important roles with its most able people. Unequal rewards are the means by which this sorting happens.
57
Keep going
578
questions
32 subtopics

Scroll sideways to turn through the pages.

578 questions
Across 32 subtopics, every one of them from specification 8192.
One PDF
Print it, or work from a screen with a notebook beside you.
Answers after, not beside
Covering the answers is a matter of not turning the page, which is what makes the closed-book pass possible.

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

  1. Step 1 · Closed book

    Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.

  2. Step 2 · Open book

    Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.

  3. Step 3 · Closed book again

    Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.

Sent to your email on purchase as a PDF.Get the guide, £7

AQA GCSE Sociology Active Recall Guide

Every question paired with its answer, ready to work in three passes.

£7 GBP
Get the guide

Digital PDF, sent to the email address on your order.

Other AQA GCSE guides

Business
AQA GCSE active recall guide
Computer Science
AQA GCSE active recall guide
Geography
AQA GCSE active recall guide
History
AQA GCSE active recall guide
Physical Education
AQA GCSE active recall guide
Psychology
AQA GCSE active recall guide
Religious Studies A
AQA GCSE active recall guide
Biology (Higher)
AQA GCSE active recall guide
Chemistry (Higher)
AQA GCSE active recall guide

All AQA GCSE guides All GCSE guides