SOC311 Exam 1

A perfect Cronbach's alpha score is

1.

Differing tenant perceptions of what evictions means is an example of the ______________ paradigm.

Symbolic interactionism

Why was Laud Humphreys' deception considered so ethically serious?

The potential consequences for his research subjects were so significant.

Which best explains why the Literary Digest poll failed to predict the winner of the 1936 presidential election?

The sample didn't represent the American population.

How do ties relate to nodes?

Ties are links that connect the nodes in a social network.

Which of the following is a first-person account?

a Facebook post by a person who observed a significant public event

Micaela conducts a critical content analysis of beginner's piano lesson books. She deconstructs these artifacts to find

a hidden theme of racial superiority embedded in the illustrations.

A broad set of taken-for-granted and often unacknowledged assumptions about how social reality is to be defined is

a paradigm.

Dr. Bourgeault decides to write up her ethnography of emergency room nurses as a realist tale. Accordingly, Dr. Bourgeault focuses the ethnography on

a third-person account of the lives of emergency room nurses.

A sociology study about employment seeking and criminal backgrounds collects data from publicly available databases, and then de-identifies the data. No one, not even the researcher, can trace a piece of data back to the person it describes. This researcher has achieved

anonymity.

Michael conducts a fieldwork study of the kitchen workers at a restaurant. He informed the workers that he was doing the study and that he would be fitting in as much as possible by working as a dishwasher. Michael follows informed consent standards for ethical fieldwork, so he

assumes ongoing consent by their acceptance of his presence.

When sampling, it is important to

be strategic and methodical about what you observe.

A researcher might wish to adopt the role of participant observer, but finds that observer is the better option. Among which social group would this MOST likely be the case?

brain surgeons

Historical research methods consider ________; comparative research methods consider ________.

change over time; variation across locations

What would happen if a sociologist used purposive sampling to select a case for a historical-comparative research study? He or she would

choose a case because it represents an anomaly (something different than what is typical).

Mikal wants to study the effects of sleep deprivation. He chooses a homeless shelter as a field site, playing a radio loudly during the night so people can't sleep. He chose the homeless shelter because, without other options, people will stay all night for the duration of the study. Mikal has violated the justice principle of the Belmont Report because he

chose a vulnerable population simply for his own ease in accessing a research population.

Dr. Luther has accessed a list of all public elementary schools in the state of California. He randomly selects 20 schools from the list and then randomly selects 100 students at each school to survey. What type of sampling method has Dr. Luther used?

cluster

When McCabe and colleagues studied gender in children's literature, they developed a list of five possible categories for gender in book titles. This list is the

coding scheme.

Network density is one way of studying

cohesion.

Suppose a researcher wants to measure difficulties for college students whose parents did not attend college. The researcher writes survey questions about grades, quality of support on campus, and financial resources, but does not ask about whether the student has family support or a good adviser. If the researcher has not tapped into all the dimensions of difficulties for first-generation college students, which of the following would be at risk?

content validity

Eli is a family life educator and wants to intervene at the micro level to influence the issue of domestic violence. What should Eli do?

counsel a family affected by domestic violence

A survey on aging conducted by telephone systematically omitted those without phones. What is this kind of error called?

coverage

A cross-sectional study cannot establish causality because

cross-sectional studies measure people at just one point in time.

What did researchers do to the subjects in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment?

denied them newly available antibiotics, so researchers could study the natural course of the disease

Sociologists categorize birth certificates as records because records

document events or characteristics at a particular moment in time.

A question that asks about two or more ideas or concepts in a single question is known as a(n) ________ question.

double-barreled

Tanika is enrolled in a longitudinal study about body image. She contributes data to the study every six months for four years. She experiences subject fatigue, so she

drops out of the study because of boredom or loss of interest.

Increasingly, businesses and governments use big data derived from ________ to interpret people's lives and behaviors.

electronic traces, such as websites visited or cell phone usage,

Twila designs a sociology research study about gender-based violence. After she proposes the study, she decides that she really wants it to be applied research. Accordingly, she refines the study to

evaluate a local nonprofit organization devoted to reducing domestic violence.

Matthew Desmond's Evicted is based in Milwaukee, WI, but makes claims about poverty and housing throughout the United States. Ethnographic research often draws conclusions that reach beyond the field setting, which assumes

external validity.

What mode of administration is MOST susceptible to interviewer effects?

face-to-face interviews

The first question on a survey should be

focused on a pleasant or interesting topic.

In the 2006 sociology study of Harvard University Facebook users, an ethical dilemma emerged. Which question represents the most important ethical issue at stake? Should sociologists

gather data without informing the person who posted the data?

When Elijah Anderson began his fieldwork with street corner men on Chicago's South Side, he had no research question. This choice was valid because he was using the grounded theory approach, which involves researchers

generating theory based in the data itself.

For which of the following would it make sense to measure using a composite variable?

happiness

Danika exercises her sociological imagination when she thinks about

how her life connects with gender, race, and class dynamics in society.

Kenyatta conducts a study of residential patterns of Muslim Americans. She uses aggregate data, which offers information related to ________ but not ________.

how many Muslim Americans live in a zip code; individuals who live in particular residences

Devon conducts a study that tests the following hypothesis: "If hours of sleep increase, student grades will increase." This statement is a

hypothesis of association

Professor Begay uses purposive sampling to select three Native American charter schools in the Southwest where he can study language instruction. Professor Begay

identifies important features for selection, and chooses schools based on those features.

A research role of complete participant involves ________, whereas going native involves ________.

immersing oneself in a research role and keeping it secret; losing one's original identity

Structural functionalism and conflict paradigms are more often criticized for neglecting ________; symbolic interaction is criticized for ignoring ________.

individuals; social structures

A researcher writes a survey question that asks, "Who are you close to?" Emily, a respondent, lists the neighbors who live on her street. The researcher meant to ask about relational closeness, but Emily interpreted the word close geographically. This is an example of ________ bias.

instrument

Which of the following is a term that describes the consistency of items on a scale and assesses how well responses to the first item on a scale predict responses to the second item?

internal reliability

Fieldwork is a scientific method with a particular purpose: to develop

interpretive understanding.

In mediation, a new variable may be introduced that links the independent variable to the dependent variable. This new "connecting variable" is called a(n) ________ variable.

intervening

The full set of questions that the interviewer asks the respondent is called the

interview schedule.

Dr. Harper seeks primary information for her study about the lives of Sudanese refugees in the Midwest, so she turns to ________ for ________.

interviews; stories of Sudanese refugees' lives

The most important difference between macrosociology and microsociology is that macrosociology focuses on ________ and microsociology focuses on ________.

large-scale social systems; personal concerns and interpersonal interactions

A researcher is interested in investigating the impact parental leave policies have on parental health and well-being. He decides to focus on one industry and interviews public elementary school teachers who live in Sweden and the United States. What is the key difference in the researcher's study?

location of the participants

Social network data are usually recorded and arranged in a rectangular array called a

matrix.

It is important to establish rapport in the course of fieldwork so that the researcher

may develop empathy and strong communication with research subjects.

Quantitative content analysis always involves

numerical data.

Leo uses a panel design to study marital satisfaction. Accordingly, he interviews

one sample, drawn at three different times.

Dr. Ling conducts a study of gender-based violence in all nations of the world. Her codebook includes

organized information about the data set, such as countries and rates of violence.

An archive is a

physical or virtual space where materials are brought together, organized, preserved, and made available for inspection.

Which term refers to how detailed and specific a measure is?

precision

Dr. Holloway conducts a study of the parents of school shooting victims. She carefully conducts a risk versus benefit analysis, weighing the risk of ________ against the benefit of ________.

psychological harm to parents; greater understanding of school shootings

When a researcher systematically reviews materials that have been converted into a quantitative data set, seeking to test a hypothesis, this approach is called

quantitative content analysis.

A directed network tie is one in which

reciprocity may or may not occur.

The Belmont Report states the importance of treating people as autonomous agents with the right to decide whether to participate in a study. This principle is referred to as

respect.

Michelle collects five new reports and adds them to her data set. She finds that these new reports add nothing new; rather, they reinforce what she has already found. Michelle has reached the point of

saturation.

A researcher creates a scale to measure students' satisfaction with their sociology courses. After identifying six key questions and organizing them into a composite measure, the researcher averages the six items into a variable called "sociology satisfaction." The Cronbach's alpha score was 0.8, which means the

scale items are all measuring some aspect of satisfaction with sociology courses.

In a ________ sample, each individual and each pair of individuals has the same likelihood of being selected into the sample; in a ________ sample, each individual has the same likelihood of being selected into the sample, but not all pairs are equally likely.

simple random; systematic

Which social network would we expect to have the MOST heterogeneous composition?

smartphone users

Which most accurately states the focus of sociology? Sociology is the study of

social life.

Which statement is most often true? Ethnographers begin their research

sometimes with a topic or sometimes with a site.

A survey in which a randomly selected subset of respondents, typically 50% of those persons selected to participate in the survey, receives one topical module while the other 50% receives a different topical ballot is called a(n) ________ design.

split-ballot

Dr. Nguyen is interested in better understanding which students at the University of Houston study abroad. Her target population is all

students at the University of Houston.

Which of the following is an example of a quantitative method?

surveys

The most important element to consider regarding new trends in quantitative content analysis is

technology, which facilitates faster and larger-scale analysis, but still needs humans to spot check for accuracy.

A hypothesis is a ________ statement of a(n) ________ between two concepts.

testable; relationship

Emily is conducting a materials-based study of a social issue in Mexico. Which of the following would be classified by sociologists as a report?

the U.S. State Department's official document that synthesizes information about human rights in Mexico

When sociologists consider whether research is ethical, they are referring to if

the actions are right or wrong, good or bad.

Network size refers to

the number of social actors in the network.

Which of the following describes operationalization?

the process of linking conceptualized variables to a set of procedures for measuring them

Which of the following is a name interpreter?

the question, "Does [NAME] live in your neighborhood?"

The test-retest method is an approach in which

the same measure is administered to a sample and then re-administered to the same sample later.

Why would a researcher conduct critical content analysis on materials such as speeches or journalistic reports?

to identify societal blind spots

If you are interested in studying a city that has similar features to the average city in the United States, what type of case should you select?

typical

A sociology student wants to develop a mixed-method study, so he plans to

use interviews and a survey.

Which of the following terms refers to whether results are true or accurate?

validity

Linda hypothesizes that increasing wealth does not increase happiness. In this hypothesis, what is the independent variable?

wealth

What mode of administration is cheapest to administer?

web-based surveys

Stephanie plans a study that will interview elderly people about traumas in the first third of their lives. Which of the following considerations is most centrally derived from the Nuremberg Code?

whether participants might be harmed by recalling traumatic events

Qualitative methods typically collect data that enable rich description in

words and images.

In the video "The Hidden Influence of Social Networks", Christakis studies __________ as it relates to social network influence.

All the above

________ questions allow researchers to easily compare responses across different populations and time periods.

Closed-ended

Which of the following questions is a common position generator?

Do you know someone who is a surgeon?

Which basic question about social phenomena is asked by the structural functionalism paradigm?

Does it promote stability of society?

Desmond used the following research method in "Evicted":

Ethnography Surveys Secondary data analysis

For which research question would mapping be an ideal research method?

How does social inequality influence access to grocery stores?

________ refers to the possibility that the mere presence of an interviewer, or that interviewer's personal characteristics, may lead a respondent to answer questions in a particular way, potentially biasing the survey responses.

Interviewer effects

Experiments might potentially be critiqued for problems with external validity. Why?

It is hard to know if what happens in a lab setting will happen in the real world.

What is the purpose of a pilot test?

It is used to see how well the measure works and whether it presents any problems that need to be fixed before the study is carried out.

If you were conducting a sociology study and had particular concern about you, as the researcher, deceiving people by misrepresenting your identity, which study and subsequent scholarly dialogue would be MOST helpful to consult?

Laud Humphreys' Tearoom Trade

The "Scared Straight" article drew data from which source:

Netflix

What should be a characteristic of a survey that attempts to track trends over time?

Questions and responses should use the exact same wording every time.

________ error refers to the difference between the estimates from a sample and the true parameters that arise due to random chance.

Sampling

________ sampling allows researchers to make decisions about what additional data to collect based on findings from data they've already collected.

Sequential

________ sampling allows researchers to oversample groups so that researchers have more data on those groups than they would with simple random sampling.

Stratified