Sociological Core
C. Wright Mills' framework linking individual 'personal troubles' to broad 'public issues.
What is the sociological imagination?
Open, stated, conscious, and intended consequences of an institution.
What are manifest functions?
Macro-theorist who framed human history around class struggle over material resources.
Who is Karl Marx?
A speculative, testable statement outlining a predicted relationship between multiple variables.
What is a hypothesis?
A quantitative study utilizing questionnaires or interviews to evaluate how a broad population thinks or acts.
What is a survey?
The French thinker credited with coining the term 'sociology' in 1838.
Who is Auguste Comte?
Unconscious, hidden, or completely unintended consequences of a social structure.
What are latent functions?
W.E.B. Du Bois' paradigm for an individual identity fractured into two or more social realities.
What is double consciousness?
The causal agent or stimulus actively manipulated by a researcher to stimulate change in an outcome.
What is an independent variable?
The phenomenon where research subjects alter their natural behavior simply because they know they are being observed.
What is the Hawthorne effect?
The core social force Émile Durkheim found to be most protective against suicide.
What is social integration?
Elements or processes that actively disrupt the stability or equilibrium of a social system.
What are dysfunctions?
Max Weber’s methodological term demanding an empathetic, deep subjective understanding of social action.
What is Verstehen?
Translating an abstract sociological concept into a strictly measurable, testable indicator.
What is an operational definition?
Extended, firsthand qualitative immersion within a complete social setting to gather detailed behavioral data.
What is ethnography?
Applying empirical scientific observation and measurement to uncover social laws.
What is positivism?
Durkheim's term for the loss of direction or normlessness felt when social control weakens.
What is anomie?
Erving Goffman's micro-sociology approach analyzing people as theatrical actors executing scripted roles.
What is the dramaturgical approach?
A false causal appearance between two variables driven entirely by a hidden, unobserved third factor.
What is a spurious correlation?
An artificially isolated environment designed to test precise causal logic using experimental and control groups.
What is an experiment?
Pioneering sociologist who translated Comte’s initial works into English and analyzed early American culture.
Who is Harriet Martineau?
Social cohesion in modern, complex societies based on mutual interdependence and specialized divisions of labor.
What is organic solidarity?
The macro-level theoretical lens focusing on institutional patriarchy and systemic gender inequality.
What is the feminist perspective?
The precise consistency with which a measurement tool yields identical results over repeated baseline trials.
What is reliability?
The formal university oversight committee tasked with reviewing research designs to protect human subjects from harm.
Who is the Institutional Review Board (IRB)?