Exercise 1 solution

Using the comparison table from the Types of social groups article, as the chapter reports it:

(a) A family at the dinner table: primary. The article lists family among its primary examples; the relationship is valued for its own sake, is deeply personal, and members give emotional support.
(b) A company's accounts department: secondary. Coworkers are one of the article's secondary examples. The relationships are goal-oriented (getting the accounts done), and roles are interchangeable, so people can join and leave with relative ease.
(c) A village football team that has played together for twenty years: this is the hard one (see below). The article lists sports teams as secondary, but the long, personal, enduring relationships fit its definition of a primary group.
(d) A patient and her doctor: secondary. The article names doctor-patient relationships as an example; the relationship serves an external goal (treatment) and is impersonal in the article's sense.

Hardest to place: (c). By the article's examples a sports team is secondary; by its definition ("close, personal, enduring relationships") twenty years together looks primary. The article gives examples, not a test for sorting such cases, so either answer is defensible if you point to the rows you used. Saying that such a team is "both" or "has become primary over time" is my own reading (check), but it is a reasonable one because the chapter treats the two types as a contrast rather than a rule.