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HMHV 1110 Exam 1

Terms in this set (43)

What do sociologists do? (Identify different methodologies)
Count and compare things - Statistical Analyses, Talk to people - Interviews, Hangout with people - Ethnography, examine artifacts - Content analysis, check records, Archival/ Historical Research.
What is the Sociological Imagination?
the ability to see the relationship between individual experiences and the larger society
How does Mills' define the sociological imagination?
Sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical science in terms of its meaning for the inner life and external career of a variety of individuals.
Describe Mills' distinction between personal troubles and public issues. Give an example.
Personal troubles affect the character within the individual and the range of immediate relations to others; self and limited areas of social life of which he is directly and personally aware. EX- Unemployment due to no job availability or marriage within couples ending in divorce.

Public issues have to do with matter that transcend local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life. EX- Unemployment due to companies shutting down due to economy or increasing divorce rates during a time span of structural issues in a society.

According to Mills, troubles are more private and pertain to the individual more; while issues are public and relate more to the wider society as a whole.
What is medical sociology? What are FOUR of its major points of emphasis?
Medical Sociology is a broad field examine the social production of health, wellness, illness, and mortality. It explores on topics of health and fitness, not by looking at biological phenomenal and medical knowledge alone but considerers social, political, economic and cultural forces in which health and illness are produced and understood.
Describe Link and Phelan's critique of epidemiology and public health research.
Epidemiological finding have focused on risk factors that are relatively proximate "causes" of disease. Social factors which tend to be more distal causes of disease have received far less attention.
What is a "social condition"? Provide Link and Phelan's definition and give an example.
Social conditions are factors that involve a person's relationship with people. Examples include relationships with intimates to positions occupied within the social and economic structures of society.
What do Link and Phelan mean when they say we must "contextualize risk"?
Investigators must use an interpretive framework to understand why people come to be expose to risk or protective factors and determine the social conditions under which individual risk factors are related to disease.
Explain the distinction between proximate and distal causes of disease. Use an example to explain this distinction.
Distal factors - SES, promixal = controllable at the individual level occupational stress/diet.
Explain Link and Phelan's argument, that "social conditions are fundamental causes of disease".
Social conditions are fundamental causes of disease as a lack of access to resources cause negative consequences through variety of mechanisms that promote diseases that cannot be eliminated by addressing the mechanisms.
Discuss an example that demonstrates their argument.
The emergence of AIDS has caused an SES linked risk factor that worsens as a disparity and effects individuals with worse social conditions.
What are the policy implications of this argument?
Policy implications need to be consistent with the idea of contextualizing risk factors concept of fundamental causes, and health policy makers must be concerned with broad social conditions.
What is the Gini Coefficient?
Measure of income inequality across a whole society. Ranges from 0 (complete equility) to 1 (complete inequality)
According to Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level, what is the relationship between health and inequality, specifically physical health and life expectancy?
Health and inequality are lowest when theres a huge differences of income differences within a nation. More inequality increases status anxiety, erodes trust and social supports, and chronic stress and health problems.
According to them, how does inequality get under the skin?
Stress more specifically chronic exposure to stress.
Define the social determinants of the health perspective. Describe the underlying logic of its research designs.
Examines the economic and social conditions and their distribution among the population that influence individual and group differences in health status

Contextualizing risk - upstream = distal relates to history and public issues, downstream proximate relates biography and personal issues.
Identify and describe the four steps in involved in social determinants research.
A sample is a subset population selected to participate in a research study. If a sample that representative is the degree in which the sample accurately represents the population.
If a study has a non-random sample, how should one interpret the findings? Why?
If a study has a non-random sample it may be subjected to sampling bias, so ignore it.
What is operationalization?
The process of defining variables into measurable factors
Define and note the relationship between an independent variable, dependent variables and control variables
Dependent variable- outcome that's going to be explained (Life Expectancy)
Independent Variable- factors that you believe to have a causal impact on the dependent variable. (SES)
Control variables- possible influences on the dependent variable that's held constant.
Define socio-economic status (SES)
Total measure of a person's work experience and of an individual's or family's economic and social position in relation to others, based on income, education, and occupation (measures for social class)
Define social capital
Information, knowledge, and connections that help individuals enter preexisting networks network or gain power in them.
Define infant mortality rate
Number of death in a population of persons under age one in a given year, expressed in units of death per number of live births.
Define mortality rate. What is the difference between mortality rates and morbidity rates
Number of deaths in a population over time, expressed in units of death per 1000 per year. The difference is the frequency in which disease exist in a population over time (prevalence or amount of disease in a population).
Discuss the difference between correlation and causation.
Correlation is the relationship between variable (wherein variation in one is related to variation in the other) meanwhile causation in a relationship two variables such that one variable (the "cause") determines the presence/absence or value of the other (the effect)
What is a spurious relationship?
an apparent relationship between two factors that has the appearance of linkage but, in reality, does not
EX- Summer, increases Ice Cream Sales & Murder.
Identify the six parts of a typical journal article and state the purpose of each.
The Abstract- A brief summary of what the article is about.
Introduction- Introduces the problem in which is being studied for.
Background/Literature Review- Explanation of terminology and how to solve the problem.
Methodology- What is being done to gather the data.
Results- Translating quantitative data into words and reporting it back to the audience.
Discussion/Conclusion- Restates findings, speculation and offers ideas for future research
Describe the physiological reactions to stress (aka the stress reaction). In what ways do these reactions represent an evolutionary "mismatch" with modern society (relate your argument to chronic stress).
Stressors cannot be turned of by humans causing human to have chronic stress. Originally it was for fight or flight, after that it should cause exhaustion but is able to be turned off and returned to homeostasis.
Identify three types of stressors.
Chemical or biological agents, environmental condition, external stimulus or an event that causes stress to an organism.
Identify three physiological effects of chronic stress
Heart Disease, Weight Gain, and Depression & Anxiety.
Define allostatic load.
wear and tear on the body caused by prolonged or excessive stress responses
What are glucocorticoids?
A class of steroid hormones that produce an array of effects in response to stress.
How does the stress process explain the relationship between SES and health outcomes?
The stress process explains the relationship between the SES and health outcomes with the amount of money which could result in the lack or not lack the power, resources, and control, which could result in increased or decreased chronic stress levels which could result in risky behaviors, leading to death or lower chronic stress levels which increases life expectancy
What is the biomedical model?
The biomedical model of health focuses on biological factors and tends to exclude psychological, environmental, and social influences.
Four elements of biomedical model
Disease Specificity, Focuses on the Internal Body, Body as a Machine, The Centrality of Diagnosis.
How is the germ theory problematic when addressing global health issues?
It's a problem because we focus on the microbe but we don't focus on the social economic issues/social inequities + differential access to resources (upstream factors). Factors such as lack of water, natural disasters, war torn civilizations, etc.
Identify and discuss THREE limitations of the biomedical model.
Reductionistic or limited understanding of causality, whiter (ignores) the environment , de-emphasizes prevention, dehumanizing.
Explain the social gradient of health.
The social gradient of heath means that life expectancy increases increases as income increases.
Higher income = longer life.
According to McKinlay and McKinlay, what accounts for the historical decline in mortality rates?
Nutrition and sanitation much more significant in contribution to the decline of mortality. Observes that the real decline happens in infectious disease, observes the major increases in medical expenditures came after decline, major medical breakthroughs came after decline. (Social policies)
What implications does this study have for health policy?
Health policy that addresses and changes the environment with sanitation, reduces the spread of diseases.
According to House et al., what is the relationship between health and social ties (or relationships)?
Social relationships affect one's health by maintaining in a good way. The lonely are sick.
What is the "main effects" (aka the "direct effects") account of this relationship? What is the" social support hypothesis" (aka the "stress-buffering" account)?
The main effect is explained as humans are social creatures, we accrue benefits like mental health well being from having close connections with people and as a result the relationships have a direct effect in our health. Strong connections to family and friends lead to good wellbeing.

The social support hypothesis is when a person uses their social networks to have direct access to social support services, the bigger the network the more likely to have access to desired resource.
What are deaths of despair? How are they affecting life expectancy in the U.S.?
Drug overdoes, suicide, and alcoholic liver disease. Could be increase in groups of people who experience despair due to a sense that their long-term social and economic outlook is bleak. As a result its decreasing life expectancy and mortality.
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