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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who was the first American Nobel Laureate for literature?

2. What city launched a path-breaking education reform in the late 1980s that had parent participation as a cornerstone?

3. In what state was tax evasion the highest?

4. When was Charles Tilly born?

5. Who wrote a book profiling the heroic World War II generation that got mixed reviews from critics, but was a runaway best-seller?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does social capital affect child abuse rates?

2. Why did John Stuart Mill laud the effects of participatory democracy on character?

3. When people said that television was their main form of entertainment, what activities did these people participate in less often?

4. How did commentators like Michael Schudson and Alan Wolfe view the change in social capital from the 1950s to the 1960s?

5. What were some inventions that transformed American life after 1870?

6. Why did Putnam believe that there was an increase in nostalgia in the late twentieth century?

7. Why had civic life been graying in the last forty years of the twentieth century?

8. Why did circumstantial evidence suggest that big government caused civic disengagement?

9. How did the school integration busing issue illustrate the trade-offs between bridging and bonding social capital?

10. What is generally accepted as the most reliable index of the incidence of crime?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Seniors volunteered in greater numbers in the 1990s than in the 1970s. Discuss why more seniors were volunteering in the 1990s than at any other time.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the value and problems of social networks. What areas of life benefit from these networks? Do the benefits outweigh the problems?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss what sprawl is and how it contributes to social disengagement.

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This section contains 705 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample