Midterm Exam HSOC2002

1. The topic and research question 2. The data you choose 3. The method you choose 4. The translation of findings into knowledge.

A well designed research plan should carefully consider all parts of the research process. Which four parts should be considered specifically?

She had 28 schools in total. She sampled classrooms within schools for observation, and selected students within classrooms for interviews.

How did Tyson go about sampling?

Used to better illustrate the dominant characteristics of archetypical vulnerable and secure adolescents

How did Tyson use a case study approach?

Research is inductive (looking for patterns) and deductive (explain the patterns)

How does the professor describe research as being both inductive and deductive?

In order to figure out the correct interpretation, figure out which (categorical or dichotomous) variable is being added up to 100 percent

How does the professor recommend we figure out cross tabulations?

Sociological imagination is taking the "taken for granted" and thinking about its causes and/or consequences Seek to explain the social world

How would you describe the sociological imagination? What does it seek to do?

1. Are driven by a question 2. Involve a good faith attempt to find a fair sample of the universe at question. 3. Are systematic. 4. Tend to emphasize comparison & variation

Martin describes sociological methods as a "means to an end." What are the four factors that go into making a sociological method?

Theory and observation

Methods allow us to marry which two things sociological features?

Most studies start out inductive and the best studies become deductive.

Most studies start out _______ and the best studies become _________. (Fill in the blank: inductive, deductive)

Jottings

These are things you write to yourself that are "to be remembered"• Later turn into more detailed notes

Voluntary response sample

This can be defined as a sample made up of participants who have chosen to participate as a part of the sample group.

Ethnography

This is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study.

Weighting

This is a common technique where respondents/sample members are given more or less "influence" depending on their under-/over-representation in our data.

Snowball sampling

This is a non-probability sampling method where new units are recruited by other units to form part of the sample.

Convenience sampling

This is a non-probability sampling method where units are selected for inclusion in the sample because they are the easiest for the researcher to access.

Purposive

This is a sampling design that is not intended to offer a representative sample but rather to hone in on particular phenomena and/or processes.

Cultural Tool Kit

This is a set of instruments like symbols, stories, rituals, and world-views that we use to make sense of it all. With it all being the social structure of where we live and the institutions we come in contact with.

Recall bias

This is a type of bias that occurs when participants in a research study or clinical trial do not accurately remember a past event or experience or leave it out.

Typical sampling

This is a type of purposive sampling that's useful when a researcher is looking to investigate a phenomenon or trend as it compares to what is considered average for members of a population.

Double Barreled question

This is an informal fallacy. It is committed when someone asks a question that touches upon more than one issue, yet allows only for one answer.

Theory

This is the term for a causal explanation that is generalizable beyond the case for it was developed/beyond the case to which it was applied.

Validity

This is the term for accuracy; capturing what the researcher intends. Ex. Is the measure capturing what you think it does (or what you want it to)?

Reliability

This is the term for consistency; repeatability Ex. asking: Would a different researcher code the data in the same way? How might the measurement vary over time, across contexts, etc.?

Triangulation

This is the term for looking at data in multiple ways in order to get a full view of all sides.

Discordance in survey responses

This is the term for survey respondents answering one way, and living or acting in another

Sampling frame

This is the term for the device or method used to identify the population of interest; the list of the items or people forming a population from which a sample is taken

Moderation or effect modification (The third factor is the modifier or the moderator)

This is the term for the effect of an exposure (or IV) on an outcome (or DV) varies depending on a third factor. The third factor is of the same name.

Oppositional peer culture.

This is the term for the general hypothesis that young people may have anti-school dispositions, and may make fun of or isolate students that are high achieving.

Operationalization

This is the term for turning an interest into an answerable, do-able, test-able question.

Confounding The third factor is the confounder

This is the term for when a third factor influences the exposure (IV) & outcome (DV) in ways that produce spurious or distorted results.

Bias

This is the term for when research is skewed so that a particular relationship that may not otherwise exist appears to exist, or vice versa.

Cross Tabulation

This is used to quantitatively analyze the relationship between multiple variables. They group variables together and enable researchers to understand the correlation between the different variables.

Longitudinal

This survey type follows the same group(s) of people over time

Cross-sectional

This survey type is where different samples are assessed at one point at time. It can be repeated cross-sections (for example, the GSS)

Racialized tracking

This term refers to a system that Focuses on within school, rather than between school, segregation.

Social desirability bias

This type of bias occurs when respondents give answers to questions that they believe will make them look good to others.

A unit of analysis

This type of unit is the entity that you wish to say something about at the end of your study, and it is considered the focus of your study.

Unit of measurement/observation

This type of unit is the item (or items) that you observe, measure, or collect while trying to learn something about your unit of analysis.

TRUE.

True or False: All representative samples are Randomly generated, but Not all random samples are representative.

True. Favor what or how questions. We ask how to get to the why.

True or False: Avoid Why questions in interviews.

TRUE

True or False: Qualitative data is NOT more subjective or biased than quantitative data.

True.

True or False: Quant researchers often have more preconceived ideas about what they're looking for before they start; not the case most often for qual researchers.

TRUE

True or False: Some say qualitative research is more inductive, but there's nothing more inherently inductive/deductive in either method.

- Students did not associate academic achievement with whiteness - Black students in "gifted" classes were not ridiculed, singled out, or isolated

Tyson found that for Black adolescents in mostly White or diverse schools, they saw racialized tracking→"pecking order" or social hierarchy→possible distaste, ridicule. What was the pattern at predominantely Black schools?

Triangulation

Tyson's book included observations, interviews (students, parents, school staff), case studies, analysis of secondary survey data. This is an example of what method?

What has become of the modern evangelical movement? Sixty years after its founding, where today does the evangelical project of engaged orthodoxy stand? And what does that tell us about the nature of religious movements in America and the prospects for traditional religious faith in the modern world?

What are Smith's stated questions on American evangelicalism?

How do students make sense of this pattern of racialized tracking? What does it mean for students' developing sense of self and their decisions and actions at school? How does it affect black students' relationship with same-race and other peers?"

What are Tyson's three main research questions? She states: "This book takes a look at how institutional practices such as tracking affect black and other students' schooling experiences."

Double barreled Non-mutually exclusive response options Non-exhaustive response options Ambiguous language Leading questions Loaded language

What are all the types of bias questions we covered?

1. Institutionalization, homelessness, language barriers. 2. Nonresponse 3. Attrition in longitudinal designs (deaths, moves, nonresponse, etc.)

What are some frequent factors for people excluded from or not represented in samples?

Gaining trust, gaining access, making sure personal biases don't affect the study, considering the observer effect.

What are some of the challenges of ethnography?

• Population counts are off • Potentially underestimating racial disparities in outcomes • Potentially underestimating social class disparities in outcomes • Death of data on outcomes & well-being of incarcerated people • Political consequences

What are some of the consequences of not including incarcerated individuals in surveys?

What...? How...? Did...? Why...?

What are the four ways research questions can start?

1. What does it say? The facts, the patterns reported 2. What does it mean? The interpretation (connecting facts to the theory) 3. Do we believe it? The interrogation. Being critical consumers of research.

What are the three factors to think about when looking at an argument from a cross tabulation?

Researcher participates in daily routines of subjects Researcher writes down what they observe in systematic and reflexive ways

What are the two distinct parts of ethnography?

Wanting to know more about how racialized tracking in schools worked. The acting white hypothesis

What are the two social phenomenons that Tyson sets out to interrogate?

1. Linking individuals' biographies and histories to a broader social framework 2. Understanding that an individuals' own particular life experiences and "life chances" are shaped by broader social forces. 3. Shifting focus from "personal troubles" to "public issues," and resisting "indifference" to issues related to suffering, inequality, and social justice

What are three ways/methods in which the sociological imagination seeks to explain the social world?

This created a cultural orientation towards schooling, which translated to different levels of achievement.

What did John Ogbu argue in regards to the black-white achievement gap? What was his theory, based on systematic exclusion from educational opportunities?

Individual resources, traits can modify the links between "external" peer, network influences or pressures and young people's educational beliefs, behaviors, outcomes

What did Tyson find as a modifier on the IV of nonfamilial pressures, influences, messages, including oppositional peer culture?

The strength of their sense of identity Their goals and aspirations Their beliefs

What did Tyson find to be the factors that enable high-achieving black adolescents to resist, reject, or ignore pressures to conform to local peer environment (and the factors that leave them most vulnerable)

Evangelicalism is the strongest of the major Christian traditions in the US

What is Smith's argument?

"Students equate achievement with whiteness because school structures do."

What is Tyson's argument?

Key finding: students make choices about classes based on past experiences & evaluations that shape their aspirations about what they want to do & expectations about how they will do in their courses Racialized tracking shapes those aspirations, expectations, & choices about courses

What is Tyson's main key finding?

A unit of analysis is the entity that you wish to say something about at the end of your study, and it is considered the focus of your study. A unit of observation is the item (or items) that you observe, measure, or collect while trying to learn something about your unit of analysis.

What is the difference between a unit of analysis and a unit of observation/measurement?

Modification acts on the process between IV and DV, varying the outcome in a specific way. Confounding acts on BOTH the IV and the DV in a way that distorts the results and confuses effects on IV and DV.

What is the difference between modification and confounding?

School racial composition & racialized tracking.

What is the key source of variation or comparison Tyson leverages in the study?

Social phenomenon -> research question -> research design

What is the process outlined for deloying your sociological imagination?

Independent variables

What is the term for the "explanations/exposures" variables of a research project?

Dependent variables

What is the term for the "outcome" variables of a research project?

She was motivated by the debate about the black-white achievement gap.

What motivated Tyson to undertake her study?

Your sources of variation, explanations/exposures as independent variables, and the outcomes as dependent variables.

What three factors should always be stated clearly in your research question?

Loaded language

What type of bias does this question present? Agree or disagree: Criminals deserve harsh sentences.

Non-exhaustive response options

What type of bias does this question present? Describe your relationship status.• Single• Married• Divorced• Widowed

Ambiguous language

What type of bias does this question present? Example: Agree or disagree: The U.S. has a good health care system relative to other countries.

Non-mutually exclusive response options

What type of bias does this question present? Example: Which option best describes your age group?• Under 18• 18-25• 25-35

Leading question

What type of bias does this question present? How harmful is social media for young people's mental health?

Double barreled

What type of bias does this question present? How would you rate the cost and quality of Penn's undergraduate education?

The General Social Survey is a repeated cross-sectional survey.

What type of survey is the GSS?

In-depth interviews. Surveys using a National, random-digit-dial, 160-question telephone survey of a sample of all Americans • Oversample of churchgoing Protestants

What was Smith's method for obtaining data on American evangelicalism?

Structural inequalities led to changes in school policies, practices, and evaluations, AS WELL AS a change in culture. The change in practices also modifies culture and modifies the achievement levels. Culture also modifies achievement levels.

What was Tyson's causal theory for differences in achievement as compared to Ogbu's? Ogbu: Structural inequalities -> cultural orientation towards schooling -> different levels of achievement.

"My analysis relies on school and classroom observations (conducted by me or research assistants) and students' recollections and interpretations of their experiences." Interviews: principal at each school, the teachers of the classrooms observed, students from each classroom, and the students' parents. Observations: 2 full days per week in each of the schools from the fall through the end of the school year

What were Tyson's methods?

Expressing ideas, boundaries related to race Argument: students learn to associate whiteness with achievement in predominantly White and more racially diverse schools with racialized tracking "Cultural toolkit" for making sense of being the only Black student in predominately White classes

What were some of the conclusions Tyson made about Black adolescents and their experience with racialized tracking?

Racialized tracking exists Children receive many public signals associating achievement with whiteness Younger students have not yet publicly grappled with this association Black children aspire (and often expect) to do well in school, to be identified as and placed in "gifted" classes

What were some of the conclusions Tyson made about younger Black children and their experience with racialized tracking?

Increasing numbers of Black students graduating HS & college in recent decades Increasing size of the Black professional class Culture as dynamic Interviews with Black students, parents revealed strong beliefs in the value and promise of education

What were some of the pieces of evidence Tyson used to rebut Ogbu's idea that the achievement gap is due to cultural attitudes about school?

Age

When Tyson did observations and interviews with high-achieving black adolescents, what was her variation focus?

They can be a pure observer or a participant.

When using observation as a qualitative component, what are the two positions the researcher can occupy?

Stratified Also called theoretical, quota and even over-samples.

When you choose your sample based on trying to represent the proportion of people with a certain characteristic in your population, it is called what?

Deductive

When you start asking "why?" the process becomes more ________ (Fill in the blank: deductive, inductive)

From others' evaluations of them Student experiences in schools shape their beliefs about the opportunity structure, meritocracy, achievement

Where did Tyson find that students derive their aspirations and expectations from? This in term shapes behavior.

Adolescents with a strong sense of self, a more firmly established racial identity, and clear goals & expectations more likely to be "secure"

Which adolescents were more likely to be secure, according to Tyson's findings?

Adolescents who had not yet confronted questions such as "Who am I?" "What do I believe?" "What do I want to do in my life?" or who were in the early stages of that process, were most "vulnerable"

Which adolescents were more likely to be vulnerable, according to Tyson's findings?

If we want to make causal inferences, we need to have some sort of comparison or variation!

Why should we avoid sampling on the dependent variable?