Exam II Review Sheet

Format of the Exam

The format of Midterm II will be as follows:

Part I:           One essay question, drawing from the entirety of the material covered since the previous exam. (35 Points)

Part II:            A selection of one among two possible essay questions, related to a specific topic covered in the readings or in lecture. (35 Points)

In both Part I and Part II, for which you will be required to write a single essay in each section, the strategy for acquiring the most points is roughly similar:

Be sure to identify what concepts are being raised in the question. Also define those concepts.

Be sure to marshal evidence in support of your claims.

Construct an argument. Remember that arguments do not make themselves; you must apply the concepts and evidence to construct an argument.

Construction of an argument is where you’ll pick up the most points. However, you’ll notice that you can’t construct a great argument until you’ve first defined the relevant concepts and marshalled evidence in support of your claims. A “C” grade will be awarded to responses that provide flawed arguments; a “B” grade will be awarded to arguments that are compelling but unsophisticated; an “A” grade will be awarded to responses that are compelling and above all creative.

Part III:          A selection of four among five possible definition questions. (20 Points)

In Part III, for which you will be required to define four terms, you will be invited to provide an illustrative example. You are not required to construct an argument for this section; you are simply required to demonstrate that you know what the concept means, and provide me an example of how that concept has been used. Each answer should require one or two, and at most three, sentences.

Part IV:          Five fill-in-the-blanks questions. (10 Points)

Part IV should be self-explanatory.

Material Covered in the Exam

In addition to the readings assigned before the previous exam, and material covered in lecture and section, you should be familiar with the following readings for Exam II:

1.     Hall, G. Stanley. 1904. Pp. v-ix and 325-360 in Adolescence: Its Psychology and Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education. NY: D. Appleton and Co.

2.     Bushman, Brad J. 2013. “Media Violence and Youth Violence.” Pp. 12-13 in Youth Violence: What We Need to Know – Report of the Subcommittee on Youth Violence of the Advisory Committee to the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, National Science Foundation.  Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation.

3.     Calvert, Sandra L. 2013. “Youth Violence: Influences of Exposure to Violent Media Content.” Pp. 14-15 in Youth Violence: What We Need to Know – Report of the Subcommittee on Youth Violence of the Advisory Committee to the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, National Science Foundation.  Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation.

4.     Downey, Geraldine. 2013. “Rejection and Lethal Violence”. Pp. 16-17 in Youth Violence: What We Need to Know – Report of the Subcommittee on Youth Violence of the Advisory Committee to the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, National Science Foundation.  Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation.

5.     Thrasher, Fredric. 1927. Pp. 9-19 in The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

6.     Beckman, Albert. 1932. “Juvenile Crime.” The Journal of Juvenile Research 16: 66-76.

7.     Gottfredson, Michael. 2013. “Some Key Facts about Criminal Violence Pertinent to the Relation of Self-Control to Violence.”  Pp. 23 in Youth Violence: What We Need to Know – Report of the Subcommittee on Youth Violence of the Advisory Committee to the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, National Science Foundation.  Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation.

8.     Dredze, Mark. 2013. “Understanding Factors of Youth Violence through the Study of Cyberbullying.” Pp. 27-28 in Youth Violence: What We Need to Know – Report of the Subcommittee on Youth Violence of the Advisory Committee to the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, National Science Foundation.  Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation.

9.     Neill, Daniel B. 2013. “Data Mining for Prediction of Youth Violence: Methods, Challenges, Open Questions.” Pp. 29-30 in Youth Violence: What We Need to Know – Report of the Subcommittee on Youth Violence of the Advisory Committee to the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, National Science Foundation.  Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation.

10.  Coleman, James S. 1961. “The Emergence of an Adolescent Subculture in Industrial Society.” Pp. 1-10 in The Adolescent Society. NY: Free Press.

11.  Morrill, Calvin. 2013. “A Brief Look at Sociological Perspectives on Peer Hierarchies, Organizational Conditions in Schools, and Youth Violence and Conflict.” Pp. 20-22 in Youth Violence: What We Need to Know – Report of the Subcommittee on Youth Violence of the Advisory Committee to the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, National Science Foundation.  Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation.

12.  David J. Harding, Living the Drama: Community, Conflict, and Culture among Inner-City Boys. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

We will set time aside to review materials both in this Tuesday’s (March 18^th) lecture, and in the sections meeting this week. I am also making myself available throughout this week for individual or group appointments, if requested. Please sympathize with the fact that I have work of my own to complete, so I will do my best to meet with you when possible, although this will be subject to other constraints.

Review Concepts

I’ve assembled a list of some of the ideas that we’ve gone over in lecture and in section. Note that this is not intended to be comprehensive – these are the key ideas, not all of the ideas we’ve covered. You should be familiar with them, and you should be able to apply them.

I’ve organized the concepts and scholars based on the theme under which they fell as we went through the material, but the taxonomy is not rigid (for example, Mead was an anthropologist rather than a psychologist). This is intended more to help you remember and to frame your thoughts than to determine what belongs with what.

 

	Psychology	Criminology	Sociology
Concepts	Storm and Stress	Human ecology	Subculture
	Moral development	Situation complex	Cultural heterogeneity
	Schema	Interstitial areas	Concentration of poverty
	Behavioral reinforcement	Technocracy	Code of the street/ Code of the state
	Rejection sensitivity	Administrative criminology	Sociospatial organization of inner-city violence
	Care Perspective	Critical/radical criminology	Macroeconomic/sociospatial transformation of inner-cities
	Justice Perspective	Action patterns	Neighborhood effects
	Recapitulation	Chicago School/ Berkeley School	Process turn in neighborhood effects research
	Gender difference	Gang	Institutional distrust
	Media effects	Social organization	Cross-cohort socialization
			Neighborhood identity
			Corporate and street gangs
			American apartheid
			Youth agency
Scholars	Stanley Hall	Fredric Thrasher	James Coleman
	Jean Piaget	August Vollmer	David Harding
	Lawrence Kohlberg		William Julius Wilson
	Carol Gilligan		Victor Rios
	Margaret Mead		Prudence Carter
			Signithia Fordham
			Karolyn Tyson
			John Ogbu

Methodology

Social network analysis (clique, density, opinion leader, bridging tie)

Correlation, temporal order, causation

Observational methods

Experimental methods

Risk factor approach

Outside-in

Inside-out