Chapter 20 Quiz
Instructions: Select the best answer for multiple-choice questions. Answer short-answer questions in 2–4 sentences.
Multiple Choice
1. The term "Quantified Self" was coined by:
a) Michel Foucault and Jeremy Bentham b) Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly of Wired magazine c) Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford d) Shoshana Zuboff and Evan Stark
Answer: b) Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly of Wired magazine
2. The "10,000 steps per day" fitness goal originated from:
a) A clinical recommendation from the American Heart Association in 1996 b) A Japanese pedometer marketing campaign in the 1960s c) A Fitbit-sponsored research study d) The World Health Organization's physical activity guidelines
Answer: b) A Japanese pedometer marketing campaign in the 1960s
3. Which of the following best describes Foucault's "technologies of the self" as applied to self-tracking?
a) Surveillance devices that the self employs to monitor others b) Practices through which individuals act on themselves to conform to social norms, often internalizing disciplinary power c) Technologies that restore the self's autonomy against institutional surveillance d) Digital tools that allow individuals to manage their own data privacy
Answer: b) Practices through which individuals act on themselves to conform to social norms, often internalizing disciplinary power
4. Health data from consumer wearables like Fitbit is protected by HIPAA. True or false?
a) True — all health data is protected by HIPAA b) False — HIPAA protects data held by covered entities (healthcare providers and insurers), not consumer technology companies c) True — any data related to physical health falls under HIPAA d) False — HIPAA only protects data from medical devices approved by the FDA
Answer: b) False — HIPAA protects data held by covered entities (healthcare providers and insurers), not consumer technology companies
5. The "data labor" analysis of self-tracking argues that:
a) Self-trackers are paid fair market value for the data they generate b) Self-tracking is not labor because it does not produce commercial value c) Individuals generate commercial value for corporations through self-tracking without compensation proportionate to that value d) Self-tracking companies should be regulated as employers who must pay minimum wage to users
Answer: c) Individuals generate commercial value for corporations through self-tracking without compensation proportionate to that value
6. Under EEOC rules (prior to recent revisions), employer wellness program financial incentives could reach what percentage of the cost of employee-only health insurance?
a) 5% b) 15% c) 30% d) 50%
Answer: c) 30%
7. Google acquired Fitbit in what year?
a) 2018 b) 2019 c) 2021 d) 2023
Answer: c) 2021
8. "Social self-surveillance" refers to:
a) Government programs that use social media to monitor individual behavior b) The practice of sharing self-tracking data on social platforms, transforming personal monitoring into social performance c) Surveillance of individuals' social networks and associations d) The use of social pressure to coerce individuals into compliance with monitoring programs
Answer: b) The practice of sharing self-tracking data on social platforms, transforming personal monitoring into social performance
9. The chapter's "normalization trajectory" for self-monitoring technology describes a pattern that moves from:
a) Individual resistance to collective compliance b) Enthusiast adoption to mass consumer adoption to institutional integration to structural coercion c) Government mandate to corporate adoption to individual resistance d) Free-market innovation to regulatory prohibition
Answer: b) Enthusiast adoption to mass consumer adoption to institutional integration to structural coercion
10. Which of the following is identified as a key demographic feature of the early Quantified Self community?
a) Predominantly low-income workers seeking ways to improve their health on limited budgets b) Predominantly elderly adults seeking to manage chronic health conditions c) Predominantly white, male, technically educated, and economically secure d) Predominantly people with chronic illnesses who needed medical monitoring
Answer: c) Predominantly white, male, technically educated, and economically secure
11. The chapter argues that the "individual responsibility frame" of self-tracking is problematic because it:
a) Encourages people to take health decisions out of doctors' hands b) Erases structural determinants of health (food access, housing, economic security, environment) and attributes outcomes to individual measurement and behavior c) Creates unrealistic expectations for health improvement d) Makes it impossible for people to compare their health to population averages
Answer: b) Erases structural determinants of health (food access, housing, economic security, environment) and attributes outcomes to individual measurement and behavior
12. Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are described as particularly sensitive from a privacy perspective because:
a) They require prescription-level medical data that is automatically shared with healthcare providers b) They produce a comprehensive metabolic profile that reveals diet, activity, metabolic health, and chronic disease risk factors over time c) They connect directly to the internet without any user privacy settings d) They are exclusively used by people with diabetes, creating automatic medical disclosure
Answer: b) They produce a comprehensive metabolic profile that reveals diet, activity, metabolic health, and chronic disease risk factors over time
13. The Oura Ring, Apple Watch, and Fitbit are described in the chapter as:
a) Government-mandated health monitoring devices b) Devices that collect data but never share it with third parties due to strong privacy policies c) Consumer wearables that collect intimate physiological data whose commercial uses may not be fully disclosed to users d) Medical devices protected by HIPAA
Answer: c) Consumer wearables that collect intimate physiological data whose commercial uses may not be fully disclosed to users
True / False
14. The Pew Research Center survey cited in the chapter found that health self-tracking was most common among lower-income Americans who most needed health improvement resources.
Answer: False. The survey found tracking was most common among college-educated, higher-income Americans — the same demographic as the early QS movement. This matters for understanding who benefits from self-tracking tools.
15. Jordan signs up for the employer wellness program after calculating the financial cost of non-participation, even after reading the wellness vendor's privacy policy.
Answer: True. Jordan makes an informed decision under financial pressure — an example of how "voluntary" participation in wellness surveillance is constrained by economic circumstance.
Short Answer
16. Apply Foucault's concept of "technologies of the self" to employer wellness programs. In your answer, explain how wellness programs function as technologies of the self, what norms they encode, and how they differ from self-initiated self-tracking.
Model answer: Foucault's technologies of the self are practices through which individuals work on themselves to achieve states defined by social norms. Employer wellness programs function as technologies of the self by incentivizing employees to adopt monitoring and modification practices — step tracking, sleep monitoring, dietary logging — aimed at conforming to norms of "healthy" and "productive" bodily states. They encode specific norms (10,000 steps, target weight ranges, sleep duration goals) defined by wellness vendors and employers, rather than by the individual or their physician. The key difference from self-initiated self-tracking is the institutional source of the norms and the financial pressure to conform. In self-initiated tracking, the individual chooses what to measure based on their own goals. In wellness programs, the employer defines what counts as measurable success, creating a form of self-surveillance in service of institutional optimization rather than personal benefit.
17. Jordan observes that reading the wellness vendor's 4,200-word privacy policy leaves them feeling like they "understand less than before." Yara responds: "That's how they want you to feel." What structural features of consumer privacy policies produce this disorienting effect, and what regulatory interventions might address it?
Model answer: Consumer privacy policies are long, written in legal language, buried in sign-up flows, and subject to change without notice — all features that maximize formal disclosure while minimizing genuine understanding. The disorientation Jordan experiences reflects deliberate design: a policy's length and complexity creates the impression of thoroughness while ensuring that almost no one reads it fully. The "how they want you to feel" comment captures this: opacity is strategically valuable for companies with commercial data interests, because users who don't understand policies don't contest them. Regulatory interventions that could address this include: mandatory standardized "privacy nutrition labels" with specific required disclosures in plain language; prohibition on data uses not affirmatively selected by users (opt-in rather than opt-out); limits on policy complexity (page limits, readability standards); and class-based enforcement mechanisms that allow users to collectively challenge deceptive or inadequate disclosures.