social research exam 2

Every 1 hour of recorded interviews can take up to how many hours to transcribe?

8 Transcribing is often considered an unskilled job, and many researchers outsource it to professional transcribers (if they have the money). Any researcher who has transcribed interviews or field notes will tell you that the process can be pure drudgery. Transcription can take up to 8 hours for every 1 hour of recorded interview.

can best describe people's behaviors and whether those behaviors match what those people say

ethnography

Did you visit the college you decided to attend before making your decision? (Yes, No)

structured interview

can best describe the prevalence of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in a population

survey research

College decision-making visits?

unstructured interview

Ethnography is the principal tool of which discipline?

anthropology Ethnography is the principal tool of anthropology. Like sociologists, anthropologists study human beings, often through fieldwork in far-off locales with people who have not been extensively studied.

Which of the following statements about materials-based research with secondary quantitative data sets is true?(2)

You should come up with several research questions. It is a good idea to come up with several possible questions within your research topic, because preexisting data are not necessarily available or able to answer every potential question. Many preexisting data sets will include items that are relevant to your research question, but they may be missing other key items of interest.

What is the most laborious and time-consuming part of qualitative research?

coding Coding is the most laborious and time-consuming part of qualitative research, and it varies greatly across studies. There is no given set of codes to choose from; each researcher must choose and define the best codes for his or her project. For these reasons, it is not surprising that coding is the most mysterious part of the qualitative research cycle for many beginning researchers.

Which type of interview did the U.S. Census Bureau use to revise questions about race and ethnicity?

cognitive interview (The Census Bureau used cognitive interviewing to test a combined race and ethnicity question that allowed respondents to select multiple categories if they identify as "multiracial or multiethnic." The researchers wanted to learn whether people who identify as multiethnic or multiracial would in fact select multiple category boxes. Notably, the term Hispanic was actually invented by the Census Bureau for the census of 1970, and it has taken a while for people to fully identify with it. Many people prefer Latino because it is a Spanish term. The census was subsequently revised in order to give people the choice of "Hispanic or Latino.")

Dr. Parker and her graduate students are preparing to conduct an in-depth interview study on mental health among college students. They would like to examine how the presentation of information about resources on college campuses influences whether students decide to seek treatment. The researchers plan to interview campus administrators, mental health professionals, college counselors, and students. Who are the respondents in this study?

college students (College students are the respondents because they are the people about whom the research question directly pertains. All of the other mentioned subjects are informants, or people who have special knowledge about a research question because of their social or professional position.)

Which of the following is an example of primary information?

date of birth from a birth certificate In materials-based research, sociologists distinguish between primary information, which is firsthand evidence in its original, unaltered form, and secondary information, which is gathered, reported, and sometimes altered by another. Primary information includes researchers' direct observations, such as a count of the number of books in a section of the local public library, and original first-person accounts, such as a doctor's report of a person's cause of death on a death certificate.

The American Sociological Association Code of Ethics allows deception as long as there is also ____________

debriefing The ASA allows deception in research under certain circumstances but requires that researchers tell subjects the truth at the end of the study.

Which of the following is an important step in testing models?

examine unique cases that do not fit the conclusions Once you have developed your model, you need to test it to see whether it is valid. You must check that your interpretation of the data is correct by examining the reliability of your coding and by searching for alternative explanations of the patterns you found. Examining unique cases that do not fit the conclusions is another important step in testing models. These should still reinforce your conclusions about parts of the model.

Place the four steps of conducting historical-comparative research in order from first to last.

first- selecting cases second- developing concepts and hypotheses third- finding and organizing information fourth- analyzing the data

Place the five steps of conducting materials-based research with secondary quantitative data sets in order from first to last.

first- using preexisting data sets to help construct a research question second- familiarizing yourself with the data and data-collection process third- merging materials into a single data set fourth- checking your analysis against previously published reports fifth- citing and describing the data sets

Dr. Jackson conducts a complete participant ethnography of factory workers in which she gets a job on the factory line. Her coworkers see that she is intelligent and organized and asks her to serve as their union representative. She declines and instead tells her coworkers to vote for a different candidate, Marsha, who was unlikely to win the election without Dr. Jackson's support. Marsha wins the election and becomes the union representative. If Dr. Jackson had accepted the nomination, won the election for union representative, and then focused her efforts on improving the benefits and work conditions of her coworkers, which concept would then best apply to her actions?

going native Going native is the threat that fieldworkers who completely immerse themselves in the world of their subjects will lose their original identity and forget they are researchers.

Which type of method did Ari Adut use to study Oscar Wilde?

historical research method Historical research methods contribute to sociological knowledge and theory by examining change over time to answer questions about how and why social processes unfold in particular ways. Sociologist Ari Adut's (2005) case study of Oscar Wilde, a popular British writer in the late 1800s, provides an example of historical methods. Adut used newspaper stories, legal records, and the historical accounts of individuals to reconstruct the public humiliation that Wilde suffered when his sexual relationships with other men became the center of a legal firestorm.

Howard Becker suggests you should frame your questions as what kind of questions?

how (Howard Becker (1998) has a cardinal rule for designing questions: Ask how, not why (p. 58). For example, you may want to know why high school students are strongly influenced by their tour guide when they visit college campuses, even though they know that the tour guide is only one of thousands of students. But as Becker and many other qualitative researchers have pointed out, "why" questions often invoke a defensive reaction from respondents.)

Which qualitative approach is least like quantitative approaches?

inductive The inductive approach begins with the data and then generalizes or produces theoretical generalization from the data. Quantitative methods almost always begin with theory before moving to the data.

Which ethical guideline separates ethnographers who take on the role of complete participant and those who take on the role of participant observer?

informed consent When acting as a participant observer, the researcher tells at least some of the people being studied about his or her real identity as a researcher.

The key to an effective interview is a good ____________ .

interview schedule (The key to an effective interview is a good interview schedule. Unlike a survey, which cannot be changed once it is in the field, an interview guide is designed to be flexible. Often, researchers change the interview guide as they learn more about the research topic through early interviews.)

Two researchers both conduct interviews with teenagers about their sexual activity. These researchers both publish books whose findings are at odds with each other. What concept best explains these different findings?

low reliability (Qualitative in-depth interviews are very much influenced by the interviewer. No two interviewers will have exactly the same interview. The hope, however, is that the interviews will achieve high validity. To maximize validity, in-depth interviewers probe respondents with follow-up questions to fully understand their answers. The premise of the method is that the human connection and sustained communication between interviewer and interviewee will produce high-quality, valid data.)

Which of the following would count as a material in materials-based methods?

new textbooks (Materials, as used in materials-based methods, include expert analyses, reports, records, news media, other media, written accounts of events, physical materials, maps, and preexisting data sets. Surveys, interviews, and experiments may be considered materials only when they are used as secondary data sources--in other words, someone else collected the data and made them available to others.)

Which type of interview tends to be more informal and more open-ended than in-depth qualitative interviews?

oral history ( An oral history is an unstructured or semi-structured interview in which people are asked to recall their experiences in a specific historical era or during a particular historical event. Oral histories provide eyewitness testimonies and are generally presented as edited stories with very little additional analysis. Oral histories tend to be more informal and more open-ended than in-depth qualitative interviews.)

Which type of interview does not require review by institutional review boards?

oral history (Since 2003, oral histories do not require review by campus institutional review boards (IRBs). The ruling by the Office for Human Research Protections established that oral histories are not designed to contribute to "generalizable knowledge" in the way that other in-depth interviews are. Instead, they focus on preserving an individual account of history and are thus exempt from review by an IRB.)

Dr. Marshall conducts an ethnography that includes interactions between judges and defendants in criminal court. She believes that it is possible to present these interactions in a neutral and unbiased way and writes her book in that fashion. What type of approach is Dr. Marshall taking?

positivist The positivist approach assumes a reality external to the observer that can be objectively described and analyzed with scientific standards. In contrast, the interpretivist approach does not seek objective truth but rather a faithful rendering of the research subjects' interpretations of events, social movements, or any other phenomenon that the researcher is studying.

Analytic codes include ideas that come from ____________ as well as ideas that arise from ____________ themselves.

previous research and theory; respondents The analytic codes begin to sort or characterize the data you have gathered. They reflect what the text signifies or means. Analytic codes include ideas that come from previous research and theorizing on the topic as well as ideas that arise from respondents themselves.

Dr. Maron is conducting an interview study of parents' opinions of local schools and their interactions with the administrators and teachers. He finds that respondents often refer to other parents in the school with off-handed or short remarks. When this happens, Dr. Maron often asks the parents to discuss how they know these other parents and how often they see each other. Which approach is Dr. Maron taking?

probing (Probes, or follow-up questions, are very important. Probes should always pursue concrete incidents rather than general states or opinions. For example, if someone responds to a general question about the neighborhood by mentioning crime, follow-up questions might ask what kinds of crime are prevalent in the neighborhood and whether the interviewee or someone she knows has been the victim of a crime; that is, enough follow-up questions to elicit as many details as possible about crime and the many reactions to it by the victim, the neighbors, the police, and the city.)

Which type of qualitative approach is similar to quantitative approaches in that it attempts to establish causality?

qualitative comparative analysis Researchers who conduct qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) specifically set out to build causal models and use explicitly causal language. A QCA approach tries to isolate the combination of independent variables across cases that causes a given outcome, whereas a mechanism approach takes as a starting point the assertion that one group of variables causes a particular outcome and then tries to show the process by which those variables come together to cause that outcome.

Dr. Jackson conducts a complete participant ethnography of factory workers in which she gets a job as on the factory line. Her coworkers see that she is intelligent and organized and asks her to serve as their union representative. She declines and instead tells her coworkers to vote for a different candidate, Marsha, who was unlikely to win the election without Dr. Jackson's support. Marsha wins the election and becomes the union representative. What concept best applies to Dr. Jackson's actions?

reactivity Reactivity is when the presence and actions of the researcher change the behaviors and beliefs of the research subjects. In this case, Dr. Jackson influenced who her coworkers selected as their union representative.

Which of the following is an example of secondary information?

reported events from a New York Times article In materials-based research, sociologists distinguish between primary information, which is firsthand evidence in its original, unaltered form, and secondary information, which is gathered, reported, and sometimes altered by another. Secondary information is indirect evidence of something; it comes through at least one other person.

Visiting government agency websites is the best way to find ____________.

reports The best ways to find original reports is to visit government agency websites, an approach that is described in detail in this chapter. International governmental organizations such as the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the International Labor Organization (ILO) also routinely prepare high-quality reports, which are available on their websites. Private organizations--both for-profit and not-for-profit--also sometimes produce reports.

All social science research--whether quantitative or qualitative--must meet three key criteria. It should be (1) transparent, (2) logical, and (3) ____________.

rigorous All social science research--whether quantitative or qualitative--must meet three key criteria. It should be (1) transparent, (2) logical, and (3) rigorous. Transparency means providing enough information about the decisions made during the research and analysis so that readers can evaluate the researcher's conclusions. The logic and the rigor of the analysis are grounds for either supporting or challenging the conclusions of the research.

Dr. Parker and her graduate students are preparing to conduct an in-depth interview study on mental health among college students. They would like to examine how the presentation of information about resources on college campuses influences whether students decide to seek treatment. The researchers plan to interview campus administrators, mental health professionals, college counselors, and students. If Dr. Parker and her graduate students choose to interview students from as many campuses as possible, what technique are they using?

sampling for range (Sampling for range is a purposive sampling strategy in which researchers try to maximize respondents' range of experiences with the phenomena under study.)

The two main types of in-depth interviews are ____________ .

semi-structured and unstructured (These two main types of in-depth interviews differ in how flexible or structured they are. In a semi-structured interview, the interviewer has a prepared list of questions and follow-up prompts, or probes. In an unstructured interview, the interviewer has a list of general topics he or she would like to cover, but the questions and the unfolding of the interview are very flexible and may differ from interviewee to interviewee.)

Tell me about your first college visit. What was it like?

semi-structured interview

Dr. Parker and her graduate students are preparing to conduct an in-depth interview study on mental health among college students. They would like to examine how the presentation of information about resources on college campuses influences whether students decide to seek treatment. The researchers plan to interview campus administrators, mental health professionals, college counselors, and students. If Dr. Parker and her graduate students choose to find interview subjects by asking their initial interviewees to identify friends who might want to talk about their mental health, what technique are they using?

snowball sampling (Snowball sampling is a sampling strategy in which the researcher starts with one respondent who meets the requirement for inclusion and then asks him or her to recommend another person to contact (who also meets the requirement for inclusion).)

Why are the early interactions of ethnographers who are outsiders so challenging?

the ethnographer must be re-socialized Most ethnographers who enter a new site report that the first few days, weeks, and months are very challenging. In effect, the researcher is being re-socialized into a new culture and way of life. All of this socialization is happening to an adult, not to a child. (Usually, we socialize children into our culture and ways of life; adults who are unsocialized are often viewed suspiciously.)

Dr. Rogers wants to conduct a content analysis to examine how the coverage of crime varies by the audience that the media is targeting. If Dr. Rogers instead chose to examine newspaper reports of crime, what is one way she might operationalize the audience?

the racial demographics of the subscribers of the newspaper The target audience of the newspaper is best operationalized by the racial demographics of the subscribers. The other three answers might give you some indirect measure of the audience, particularly answer choice "the political affiliations of the reports of the newspaper".

Ultimately, who or what is responsible for the generation, application, and modification of analytic codes?

the researcher QDA software facilitates this conceptual work, but in the end, it is the researcher's judgment and analysis that determines how these codes are generated, applied, and modified.

When an ethnographer leaves the field, she may tell her subjects that they have the right to approve their portrayal in published material. However, this practice may undermine ____________.

the validity of the study If a researcher allows the people in the ethnography to approve their portrayal, it also opens the ethnography to questions of bias. People will want to be portrayed in the best way possible and will naturally try to cut out any details they think present them in an unflattering light. These revisions can undermine the validity of the study.

The best approach is a ____________-stage process for coding and analysis.

three The best approach is a three-stage process for coding and analysis. In stage 1, you assess the "big picture," exploring and preparing the data. During this step, you assemble the set of key respondent attributes and index the transcripts. You also produce respondent-level and cross-case memos, beginning the analytic process by developing hypothesized relationships between the codes. In stage 2, you apply analytic codes to focused sections of the transcripts. Analytic codes represent the concepts you will explore in a paper, and they integrate your emergent findings with what is known from the literature. In stage 3, you use various software tools for querying the data, validating your concepts, model building, and testing and refining your data-based theory.

Which of the following terms previously described materials-based methods?

unobtrusive methods Materials-based methods do not directly engage with human research subjects. For this reason, these types of methods are sometimes called unobtrusive methods. Many sociologists find this term problematic, however, because it incorrectly implies that other types of sociological methods are intrusive and unwelcome. Furthermore, it defines materials-based methods by what they are not rather than what they are.

Many ethnographers focus on examinations of social class. Shamus Khan, Karen Ho, and Lauren Rivera are three ethnographers who studied which particular level of social class?

upper class There are a more limited number of ethnographies that study "up" rather than studying "down." The novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald (1928/1989) once wrote: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me." Some sociologists are interested in learning just how the super-rich are different.

When are surveys and interviews considered materials in in materials-based methods?

when used in secondary data analysis Surveys and interviews may be considered materials only when they are used as secondary data sources--in other words, someone else collected the data and made them available to others. For example, most researchers do not have the skills or resources to conduct multiple nationally representative surveys, but the National Health Interview Surveys, General Social Surveys, and other such resources make these types of data accessible to everyone.

The optimum size of a focus group is how many people?

6 to 10 (The optimum size of a focus group is about 6 to 10 people--large enough to keep the conversation lively but small enough to ensure everyone can take part in the discussion. Researchers usually have 8-12 questions for the moderator to cover and aim for 1-2 hours of discussion.)

What strategy helps you think about what your data are telling you as you prepare the data with attribute and index codes?

Asking yourself "so what?" as you find particular passages interesting. How will you recognize whether what you are seeing in your data is significant? One technique is to ask the "So what?" question. Sometimes as you are reading through your interviews or field notes, you will find particular passages very interesting or exciting and will highlight them. Asking the "So what?" question will help you pin down why you are so drawn to these passages and will push you to think about what your data are telling you (Dey, 1993, pp. 87-88).

Which of the following statements about Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests is true?

FOIA requests can be used to access government data that is not otherwise publicly available. Policies like the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the United States expand the amount of government information available to researchers. The FOIA allows almost any individual to request information from the government. While the government charges a nominal amount ($25 or less) for a FOIA request, what it calls the "printing fee" can be exorbitant--typically $0.10 per page, although you can apply for a fee waiver. The government is required to respond to most FOIA requests within 20-30 business days.

The textbook suggests that you should use caution when using which source to find expert analyses?

Google Scholar Be cautious about using Google or Google Scholar to find expert analyses; not all of the articles in Google Scholar have been peer-reviewed for quality. Be even more wary of websites or documents created by those with no clear qualifications. These authors may accidentally or purposely alter history.

A team of researchers gained approval to conduct an ethnography of a local fast food restaurant as participant observers. While conducting their ethnography, the manager of the restaurant suggested that it seemed like the employees were working more efficiently than normal and "goofing off" less. Which concept might explain this scenario?

Hawthorne effect The Hawthorne effect, named after a famous study of workers at Hawthorne Works, a factory in the Midwest, refers to the fact that merely being observed often changes subjects' behavior. Most ethnographers report that the Hawthorne effect fades quickly. If the researcher is present for a sustained period of time and is fully engaged in social life, subjects begin to forget about the research and to act naturally around the researcher.

Which of the following questions would be appropriate to address using in-depth interviews?

How do parents decide to divide household and child care duties in working-class family households? (As with all methods, it is important to match the method with the research question. In-depth interviews cannot answer questions about how prevalent or widespread an attitude, belief, or behavior is. However, in-depth interviewing is a good method to answer how or why questions.)

Which of the following statements about in-depth interviews is true?

In-depth interviews are much more flexible than survey interviews. (While it is often said that survey research and survey questionnaires involve "interviews" and "interviewers," they are quite different from qualitative interviews. Surveys are highly structured with prepared multiple-choice answers or short-answer questions. For this reason, surveys are sometimes called structured interviews. Survey interviewers ask questions in exactly the same way with all respondents, and the respondent is asked to answer succinctly even with open-ended questions. In-depth interviews, by contrast, are much more flexible.)

How does modeling in qualitative data analysis software differ from modeling in quantitative data analysis software?

Qualitative software cannot tell you whether a finding is even a finding. All the major QDA software packages have modules that help you draw these models. Sometimes you can link attribute and analytic codes, showing, for example, that men are more likely to report having happy childhoods than women. QDA software can compare across the attribute codes for gender and for whether the respondent had a happy childhood as analytic codes. But unlike quantitative software that gives you an answer once you have chosen a statistical model to run, qualitative software cannot tell you whether a finding is significant or whether it even is a finding. The model-building capability of these programs is only as good as the thinking of the scholar using them.

Data sets with information on millions of individuals and their preferences, behaviors, or networks, often drawn from electronic traces are known as big data. Benjamin Schmidt's searchable project using data from what website is an example of big data?

Rate My Professor In recent years, social scientists have begun to create their own big data sets, such as Benjamin Schmidt's (2015) searchable online data set of more than 14 million Rate My Professor reviews. These data might be used to explore whether student evaluations of professors vary on the basis of the professor's gender, the course topic, or even whether the course was taught in the spring or fall semester.

Which of the following is a technique to get interviewees to talk?

Refer to fictional interviewees to get respondents to agree or disagree with a statement. (Sometimes interviewers dig for more information by asking respondents to respond to another person's opinion. One technique is to refer to fictional interviewees. For example, if a respondent is asked whether the neighborhood has any problems and the respondent does not mention any, the interviewer can say something like, "Other people I have interviewed in this neighborhood say that there is a crime problem in the neighborhood. Have you ever heard that?" Then the respondent is free to agree or disagree with the opinion.)

Which of the following statements about validity and reliability is true?

Reliability is not a strong suit of ethnography. Because participant observation relies heavily on researchers' perceptions and interpretations, reliability is not its strong suit. Different researchers may see and interpret very different things at the same research site. However, ethnography promises greater validity; ethnography can get closer to the truth of a specific situation or event. Because the researcher becomes so close to the people being studied and is so deeply immersed in their world, the ethnographer gains a deeper understanding of the situation.

Which of the following statements about early ethnography is true?

Sociologists used ethnography to study their own society while anthropologists studied abroad. In the early twentieth century, when both sociology and anthropology were establishing themselves as social sciences, the division of labor was fairly clear-cut. Sociologists studied aspects of their own society, and anthropologists went abroad--studying the "other," the non-Westerner, the native. Anthropologists studied people from different cultures, while sociologists studied subcultures within their own culture.

Which of the following statements about managing and preparing qualitative data is true?

Some qualitative data analysis (QDA) software allows a research to collect and centralize multiple types of materials and data together for each respondent. QDA software allows you to bundle together many different types of data and associate them all with a "case" or unit of analysis. This facilitates an integrated analysis. While you are reading a transcript, you can decide to listen to a snippet of the audio of that interview to hear the tone of voice or you can decide to read the field notes to find out what the interviewer saw during the interview. You could click on a photo of the person or his or her house.

Many new tools for quantitative content analysis have been created in recent years, including the technique of data scraping. Which tool can be used to create word clouds from content?

Tagxedo Another useful tool for content analysis is Tagxedo, which will create word clouds from any content you put into it. For example, you could compare how the words appearing in your college's course catalog in 1990 (if you can get a digital copy) compare to those in the current course catalog. You could compare the words in the speeches given in 2016 by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at their respective national conventions. Word clouds are quantitative because they are based on counts, but the images produced lend themselves to more inductive assessment of the material.

Which of the following statements about coding is true?

The complexity of coding depends on the ambiguity of the concept of interest. Two factors drive the complexity of coding. The first is the ambiguity of the concept of interest. The second factor driving the complexity of coding schemes is the length and complexity of the material being coded. Overall, creating a coding scheme can be tricky. The best plan is to review some of the material you plan to code before creating your coding scheme.

Which of the following statements about theory and research in ethnography is true?

The correct approach to the use of theory in ethnography depends on the researcher's primary goals. One of the most contentious issues in social research is the role of theory. Should theory guide field research or should theory emerge from fieldwork? Which is the correct approach depends on the researcher's primary goals.

Which of the following statements about in-depth interviewing is true?

The framing of an issue can influence individual responses to questions about that issue. (FrameWorks Institute is an independent nonprofit organization that does in-depth interview research to identify the most effective ways to frame social and scientific issues.)

Which of the following statements about leading and argumentative questions is true?

These types of questions should be rephrased as neutral. (In general, you will want to identify leading or argumentative questions and rephrase them to be more neutral. However, sometimes interviewers will use questions that are deliberately provocative in order to get respondents to talk about difficult or highly controversial subjects.)

Which of the following statements about validity and reliability is true?

To maximize validity, in-depth interviewers probe respondents with follow-up questions to fully understand their answers. (Qualitative in-depth interviews are very much influenced by the interviewer. No two interviewers will have exactly the same interview. The hope, however, is that the interviews will achieve high validity. To maximize validity, in-depth interviewers probe respondents with follow-up questions to fully understand their answers. The premise of the method is that the human connection and sustained communication between interviewer and interviewee will produce high-quality, valid data.)

Researchers can produce an overwhelming volume of field notes. According to your textbook, one week in a field site can yield as many as how many pages of field notes?

200 to 300 It is easy for beginning researchers, and even seasoned researchers, to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of their notes.

How many potential roles can a researcher adopt when doing fieldwork?

4 A researcher can adopt one of four roles when doing fieldwork. These range from the complete participant to the participant observer, the observer, and the covert observer. The appropriate role depends on the research question and the circumstances of the research.

Which of the following is a reason why sociologists turn to collections of records or materials rather than directly to individual research subjects?

Individuals are not the best sources of information about macro-social phenomena. One reason why sociologists turn to materials is because individuals are not the best sources of information about macro-social phenomena; that is, social patterns or trends that are bigger than any individual. As we learned in Chapter 2, macro-level studies look at societal composition, structures, and processes.

Which of the following statements about QCA is true?

QCA does not specify the mechanisms of causation. Qualitative comparative analysis uses the language of causality: The goal of the method is not just to show an association between variables across cases but to use logic to identify necessary and sufficient causes of the outcome. QCA does not specify the mechanisms of causation--how the combination of variables leads to the outcome. The method also does not deal well with time and the effects of reverse causality.

Content analysis seeks to uncover evidence of ____________ .

bias Content analysis of materials, which focuses on the text or images found in the materials, is another common sociological method. Content analysis seeks to uncover evidence of bias, with the idea that successful writers, journalists, artists, and producers create a world that represents what they think is true or appealing, reflecting in turn societal blind spots or the hidden biases of the public.

Dr. Powers wants to conduct an ethnography of Uber and Lyft drivers. She does not have a specific problem or question she wants to address from the beginning, but rather thinks the data should lead her to the most important and interesting area of inquiry. Which approach is Dr. Powers taking?

grounded theory Grounded theory is a systematic, inductive approach to qualitative research that suggests that researchers should extrapolate conceptual relationships from data rather than formulate testable hypotheses from existing theory.

Researchers must limit how much of themselves they reveal in ethnographic research, but in order to ensure proper understanding it is important for them to establish ____________ .

rapport with research subjects Regardless of whether you develop lasting friendships in the field, you do need to develop rapport with the people you are studying. Rapport is a close and harmonious relationship that allows people to understand one another and communicate well. Developing rapport in the field is very similar to making friends in your personal life, but in fieldwork it often involves limiting the "real you" from coming out in your interactions.

Dr. Rogers wants to conduct a content analysis to examine how the coverage of crime varies by the audience that the media is targeting. Which of the following is a possible sampling strategy for Dr. Rogers?

select six half-hour news programs to examine Dr. Rogers needs to begin by selecting a type of media. Both coverage of crime and audience are variables in her study that fit under the unit of analysis of media (programs, publications, etc.).

What did Bronislaw Malinowski say is the goal of ethnography?

"to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his version of the world" Bronislaw Malinowski, who studied the people of Papua New Guinea in the early 1900s, noted that the goal of ethnography is to "grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his version of the world" (Altheide & Johnson, p. 287).

Which of the following statements about writing the final report is true?

One major choice is whether to include case studies or not. A written qualitative report will follow many of the same conventions as a written quantitative or mixed-methods report. However, several issues are unique to qualitative researchers. A question that qualitative researchers often face in the writing process is how much of their raw material to include. You must also decide whether to include case studies, to focus on a holistic account of a few representative cases, or to organize the report thematically.

Barry Schwartz's 2003 book on Abraham Lincoln highlights the difference between history and historical sociology. Schwartz uses Lincoln to develop the case of ____________ .

collective memory Schwartz decided to focus on Lincoln as a case of memory. No one living today has ever met Abraham Lincoln, and yet most of us "remember" things about him. The historical data told him that Lincoln's reputation had changed over time, from the man "who saved the Union" to the man "who freed the slaves." Schwartz hypothesized that while the facts of Lincoln's life mattered in how the president was remembered, interest groups and politics long after Lincoln's death were equally important in shaping and reshaping the country's "collective memory" of him.

Which role runs the greatest risk of misunderstanding the situation being studied?

covert observer While covert observers pose the least danger of altering the dynamics of the world they are studying, they also run the greatest risk of misunderstanding the situation. As outsiders watching events unfold, the researchers have limited or no insights into how the participants understand the situation and why they act as they do. Covert observers can eavesdrop, but they often miss the richness of the subjective understandings that true participants have.

Which of the following strategies should be used to enhance reliability?

query the intersection of analytic attributes and textual codes Qualitative data analysis software makes it relatively simple to examine the cross-case reliability of the researcher's analytical coding. While some researchers have suggested using multiple coders to enhance reliability (see Campbell et al., 2013), another option is to query the intersection of analytic attributes and textual codes.

The raw data generated during qualitative research most often take the form of ____________ .

text files The first step in qualitative data analysis is managing and preparing the data. The raw data generated during qualitative research most often take the form of text files. In-depth interviews result in extensive notes, recordings, and transcriptions. Field notes must be digitized if the investigator plans to use a computer to analyze the notes.

Which of the following statements about field notes is true?

Conversations should be recorded as best they can. Conversations are a major part of ethnographies, and getting them right is a big job. Unless you have recorded people (which you cannot do without their permission), you must re-create the conversations from memory in your field notes. Such conversations typically are presented in the final ethnography as verbatim, but they are almost never direct transcripts.

Which of the following statements about secondary information is true?

Secondary information rarely contains all the information the researcher wants in precisely the way the researcher wants it. The researcher cannot control the quality or content of secondary information because it has already been collected. It is therefore especially important for the researcher to carefully evaluate quality by considering whether the information came from a reputable, expert source and whether the collection techniques were appropriate and well executed. In addition, because someone else assembled the secondary information, it rarely contains all the information the researcher wants in precisely the way the researcher wants it. This can lead to problems in the validity of some measures.

Which of the following statements about gatekeepers and key informants is true?

The same person can be both a gatekeeper and a key informant. Gatekeepers can influence an ethnographer's research by limiting what he or she can see and when and where ethnographers can gain access. Although ethnographies do not have to have a key informant, they can be very useful. Key informants are often found when ethnographers are outsiders.

One of the best central locations to access data sets, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), is housed at which university?

University of Michigan Researchers often share the data sets they have constructed to answer particular questions or operationalize particular concepts. Many of these data sets are accessible through the University of Michigan's Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), one of the largest academic data repositories in the United States.

Which statement best describes the approach advocated by Timmermans and Tavory?

Use both a deductive and an inductive approach in qualitative research. Timmermans and Tavory (2012) suggest that the best qualitative researchers are sensitized by the previous research on a topic. At the same time, they urge researchers to remain open to surprising or unexpected findings rather than confining themselves to testing a specific hypothesis. In effect, Timmermans and Tavory suggest qualitative researchers use both a deductive approach (comparing their data with the results predicted by existing theories) and an inductive approach (focusing on unexpected or anomalous findings that need new explanations).

Which ethnographer was one of the first sociologists to apply the anthropological methods of fieldwork to the modern urban community?

William Foote Whyte In the late 1930s, William Foote Whyte (1943/1955) studied an Italian neighborhood, Boston's North End, for his book Street Corner Society. For a long time, his methods appendix has served as a "bible" of sorts for novice fieldworkers. Whyte was one of the first sociologists to apply the anthropological methods of fieldwork to the modern urban community.

Quantitative scholars seek to discover and understand the ____________, while qualitative researchers adopt a ____________ approach.

effects-of-causes; causes-of-effects Quantitative scholars seek to discover and understand the effects of causes. They might ask, "What is the average effect of an independent variable X on a dependent variable Y?" In the case of school shootings, quantitative scholars might ask, "What is the effect of gender, psychological illness, social isolation, or gun ownership on the probability of being a school shooter?" In contrast, qualitative researchers adopt a causes-of-effects approach. They start with an outcome and ask, "What are the various X's that explain Y for a population of cases?" (Goertz & Mahoney, 2012, p. 43).

Place each step in qualitative data analysis with the order in which it typically occurs.

first- manage and prepare the data second- become familiar with and reduce the data third- code data for purposes of sorting and retrieval fourth- write memos fifth- build and test models sixth- write the final report, article, or book

Dr. Collins is conducting an interview study of how individuals decide what neighborhood to live in. She finds that respondents are reluctant to explicitly mention race so she tells a story of a few couples who move into different types of neighborhoods and how they make their decisions. She then asks her interviewees to tell her which couple is most similar to them. Which approach is Dr. Collins taking?

use of vignettes (In-depth interviews can also make use of vignettes, which are short descriptions of characters or situations that are presented to respondents in order to elicit a response. This technique should be used when it is very difficult to make a concept concrete enough to ask questions about it. In such cases, a small story or description can help greatly.)

As a general rule, every 1 hour of interview time takes how many hours to transcribe?

5 to 6 (Transcribing, or typing up the interview conversation word for word, can be very time consuming if you do it yourself or expensive if you pay someone to do it. As a general rule, every 1 hour of interview time takes 5 to 6 hours to transcribe. A transcribing machine (designed for digital or analog recordings) is very useful if you are doing more than a few interviews.)

Which of the following statements about materials-based research with secondary quantitative data sets is true?

Combining two or more data sets in which individuals are the unit of analysis is difficult or impossible. Combining two or more data sets in which individuals are the unit of analysis is difficult or impossible. These data sets typically do not include individuals' names or other identifying information, nor do they include information on the same individuals, so there is no way to match them. Even if existing data sets do identify individuals, there is relatively little systematic public information on individuals that could be attached to them.

Saturation may occur before it's expected, but some researchers suggest that a maximum of how many interviews should be set, since more than that leads to too much information?

150 (Many researchers use a general rule of having at least 30 to 35 interviews, with 10 to 15 in each subcategory (Warren, 2002). This is not a scientific principle but one that experienced qualitative interviewers have learned over timeSome researchers also argue in favor of setting a maximum number of interviews. Gerson and Horowitz (2002) recommend no fewer than 60 interviews and no more than 150, arguing that 150 interviews lead to too much information.)

Which scholar developed the QCA method in the 1980s?

Charles Ragin Developed by Charles Ragin in the 1980s, the QCA method or qualitative comparative analysis technique uses the rules of logic to establish causality in qualitative analysis (Ragin, 1987, 2008; Ragin & Amoroso, 2010).

Materials for analyses can be found through governments, organizations, and even individuals, often on websites. Individual researchers such as Dr. Pamela Paxton, have placed their materials in repositories like the ____________.

Data Sharing for Demographic Research Pamela Paxton and colleagues did extensive cross-national research to find out how many women have served as legislators or members of parliament in nearly every country in the world since 1945. Assembling these data was a monumental task that required scouring historical records in dozens of different languages. Fortunately, future researchers won't have to repeat this effort because Paxton and her collaborators have made the data available on the Data Sharing for Demographic Research website. You too can access this data, housed under the University of Michigan's ICPSR.

One of the most famous and important books based on life history interviews is ____________ .

Glen Elder's Children of the Great Depression (Elder wanted to study the lifelong effects of growing up during the Great Depression and how early economic adversity affects people during their youth, middle age, and old age. He began his longitudinal study of 167 youths in Oakland, California, in 1931 and conducted more than 12 hours of in-depth interviews at different points in each participant's life cycle to understand how growing up during the Great Depression affected people in both the short and long term.)

A search engine that is an excellent source for news coverage of events over the past few decades is ____________ .

Lexis/Nexis Search engines on news websites provide one way to find the news on a particular topic. Lexis/Nexis, which you may have access to through your library, is an excellent source for news coverage of events over the past few decades. Lexis/Nexis allows you to run complex Boolean searches (searches with "and" and "or"). It also allows you to search multiple newspapers simultaneously; this search function is particularly important if you are conducting a cross-national project.

Which of the following research projects is an example of critical content analysis?

Lisa Wade's examination of Monster energy drinks In a Sociological Images post analyzing Monster energy drinks, Lisa Wade noted how the drinks include simulated slashes on the packaging that look like vicious scratches; these are inside the crosshairs of a rifle. The drink comes in flavors called "Sniper," "Assault," and "Khaos." The blog notes the irony that these products are marketed as "health" drinks even as they promote an aggressive form of masculinity that is associated with taking health risks.

Place each step in qualitative comparative analysis with the order in which it occurs.

first- conduct case studies second- create a truth table third- assess the consistency of cases fourth- compare the associations

Which of the following statements about recording interviews is true?

You should always check the recordings of interviews immediately after they occur. (After the interview, before you do anything else--before you eat dinner or take a shower or talk to your friends or family--check the beginning, middle, and end of the recording to make sure the entire interview was recorded. If it was, then all you need to do is record your impressions of the interview and other information that might be important for the analysis.)

Dr. Britt conducts an ethnography of policing in a mixed neighborhood in Chicago. In his book, he describes the interactions between neighborhood residents and police in their terms. He draws heavily upon their descriptions and understanding of the situation. Which type of focus is Dr. Britt taking?

emic Researchers with an emic focus take on the respondent's viewpoint and use his or her language. Researchers with an etic focus maintain a distance from their respondents with the goal of achieving more scientific objectivity.

Janice McCabe and colleagues used content analysis seeks to review 5,000 ____________ and analyze ____________.

children's books; gender In all, McCabe and her colleagues reviewed more than 5,000 books. They first classified book titles as containing a male name or pronoun (such as "George" or "he"), a female name or pronoun (such as "Harriet" or "her"), both, neither, or nonidentifiable. They also identified central characters in the books as male, female, both, neither, or nonidentifiable. They found that boys appeared in titles twice as often as girls, and that primary characters were 1.6 times more likely to be male than female. In terms of their research question, they found that the 1930s to the 1960s--the period between the women's suffrage movement of the 1920s and the women's movement of the late 1960s--had the greatest overrepresentation of boys. This finding supported their hypothesis: When feminist mobilization waned, so, too, did the presence of girls in children's literature.

Which method was developed in the 1930s and 1940s by two Columbia University sociologists, Paul Lazersfeld and Robert K. Merton?

focus groups (Focus groups are group interviews on a specific topic. They allow the researcher to observe and record the interactions among people and how their opinions or beliefs are constructed through interactions. The method was developed in the 1930s and 1940s by two Columbia University sociologists, Paul Lazersfeld and Robert K. Merton. Lazersfeld pioneered the method during World War II, when he studied American soldiers (Merton & Kendall, 1946).

Which of the following is a potential barrier to using materials-based methods?

high cost While a lot of information is freely available, you must pay for some types of information. As a general rule, if advertisers would be interested in a question similar to your research question, then there is probably a fee for the information you want.

can help us understand how people see and understand the world and the ways in which they think about and process the social world

in-depth interviews

Materials may miss some important ____________ of the social world, which can often be corrected with ____________ .

nuances; triangulation Because researchers using materials are removed from actual events, people, and places, they may miss some important nuances of the social world they are studying. Researchers using secondary data are also removed from the data-gathering process, which makes it difficult for them to detect errors in the data and makes misuse of the data more likely. The best way to address these shortcomings is to combine materials based methods with other types of research methods whenever possible, a practice called triangulation.

If a researcher would like to conduct an ethnography of U.S. senators, which role is most logical?

observer Sometimes, being solely an observer is the price of admittance to a field site or the observer simply cannot do what his or her subjects are doing. A researcher is unlikely to get elected as a U.S. senator to conduct an ethnography.