Week 2 Quiz: Chapter 2

___________ is the active, systematic process of discovery, leading scholars from observation to knowledge and, eventually, theory.

Scientific inquiry

_________ are unified, coherent, and organized sets of explanations, concepts, and principles describing some aspect of the world.

Theories

You are a communication researcher who has long believed that newspapers are the best way for people to get the news about their local governments, but you are now considering the possibility that the Internet may be even better. As a result you are developing new theories to explain the media-civic involvement relationship. This situation demonstrates what truth about theories?

Theories are dynamic.

You are a communication researcher who has long believed that newspapers are the best way for people to get the news about their local governments, given the fact that they are produced in specific localities, you still believe that. Your colleague, a 27 year-old who has never known a world without the Internet, thinks that the Web is better at delivering the news. As a result the two of you are developing different theories to explain the media-civic involvement relationship. This situation demonstrates what truth about theories?

Theories are human constructions.

Social scientists ask themselves philosophical questions about the proper role of values in research and theory building. These are questions of ___________.

axiology

The goal of critical theory is ___________.

challenge existing ways of organizing the social world

You watch movies from the 1960s and count how many women appear in major roles, what their job is, and whether they are in positions of leadership. You collect this data so you can understand how Hollywood portrayed working women in that decade. Your research method is _________.

content analysis

Critical theorists believe that people can free themselves from elite control of their social lives; therefore, their epistemology seeks _________.

emancipatory knowledge

You want to study how mothers, fathers, and adopted children interact in the first year of their time together. Your method-of-choice is to move in with an adoptive family and for 1 month observe and record their every interaction. You are engaging in __________ research.

ethnographic

You want to study how mothers, fathers, and adopted children interact in the first year of their time together. Your method-of-choice is to visit the families once a week and record their verbal interactions. Then you read the transcripts you've made of those conversations and use them as text that helps you better understand what is going on between them. You are engaging in __________ research.

interpretive

When social scientists ask questions to help them focus their attention on some particular feature of the social world, they are using theory as a _____.

lens

When social scientists ask questions to help them investigate new, or unfamiliar phenomena, they are using theory as a _____.

map

When social scientists ask ever-more specific questions to catch the smallest detail of human social interaction they are using theory as a _____.

net

Social scientists ask themselves philosophical questions about the nature of reality. These are questions of ___________.

ontology

You want to study how mothers, fathers, and adopted children interact in the first year of their time together. Your method-of-choice is the survey. You mail it to the parents at 1-month intervals, retrieve them, and then analyze their qualitative data. You are engaging in __________ research.

post-positive

The __________ is the idea that good science is dedicated to demonstrating that every answer produces new questions.

specification of ignorance

For critical researchers, what is real and knowable in the social world is the product of the interaction between __________, the social world's rules, norms, and beliefs and _________, how humans act and interact in that world.

structure; agency

In the social sciences, _________are typically "How," "Why," "What if" and "Does" inquiries.

testable questions

Social scientists hold different axiological positions because ___________.

theories are human constructions

In considering whether a theory is a good one or a bad one, social scientists consider its ___________.

usefulness