AQA A-Level Sociology: Health
6 exam-style questions with full mark schemes and model answers. Write your own answer and the AI examiner marks it against the mark scheme.
Read Item A below and answer the question that follows.
Item A — written for this exercise
What counts as health or illness is not always as straightforward as it first appears. Conditions that one society treats as a sickness requiring medical attention may, in another time or place, be seen as a normal part of life, a moral failing or even a sign of special status. Writing for this exercise, one sociologist observes that "the same set of bodily signs can be read as a disease in a modern clinic, as the work of spirits in another culture, and as ordinary ageing in a third; what changes is not the body but the meaning placed upon it." On this view, doctors and other powerful groups play a central part in deciding where the line between the healthy and the sick is drawn, and that line shifts over time as new conditions are recognised and old ones redefined.
Others insist that this can be taken too far. Tuberculosis, a broken femur or a cancerous tumour, they argue, are real, measurable states of the body that would kill a person regardless of what any society chose to call them, and the steady fall in death rates achieved by modern medicine shows that disease is more than a label.
Question: Applying material from Item A and your knowledge, evaluate the view that health and illness are socially constructed rather than purely biological. [20 marks]
Read Item B below and answer the question that follows.
Item B — written for this exercise
Health does not fall evenly across the population. Study after study finds a "social gradient": as you move down the class structure, health tends to get worse and life expectancy shorter. One survey carried out for this exercise reports the following invented figures comparing the most and least advantaged groups:
| Measure | Professional / managerial | Routine / manual |
|---|---|---|
| Male life expectancy at birth (years) | 83 | 74 |
| Reporting a long-standing limiting illness (%) | 14 | 31 |
| Adults who smoke (%) | 9 | 26 |
| Homes reporting damp or cold (%) | 5 | 22 |
The survey's authors note that part of the gap appears to follow from differences in the material conditions in which people live and work, while part appears to follow from differences in everyday behaviour and lifestyle, though they add that the two are often hard to separate.
Question: Applying material from Item B, analyse two ways in which a person's social class may affect their health. [10 marks]
Outline and explain two reasons for gender differences in health and illness. [10 marks]
Outline three explanations for class inequalities in health. [6 marks]
Outline two features of the sick role, as described by Parsons. [4 marks]
Outline two ways in which disability may be seen as socially constructed. [4 marks]