Social Research Methods

Emily plans a study of Internet trolling. She takes an interpretivist approach, so she asks:

How do people explain why they engage in trolling?

Which of the following is a leading question?

How do you feel about the phenomenology of well-being?

Which broad topic would be covered under macro sociology?

The American Education System

Independent Variable

The experimental factor that is manipulated; the variable whose effect is being studied.

Dependent Variable

The outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable.

What was the ethical breach in the Milgram obedience experiment?

The people administering shocks may have experienced psychological harm

How are focus groups typically conducted

The researcher serves as a moderator, guiding the group members as they discuss the topic.

How do researchers know if a project has reached saturation?

New materials reinforce what the researcher already knows

Dr. Mahoney's study focuses on why certain high-risk individuals do not continue in a life of crime. Because it seeks to understand individual choices, this study highlights

agency

If Dr. Lintz tried to make inferences about the outcomes of individuals based on her data of state legislatures, what mistake would she be making?

an ecological fallacy

W.E.B. Dubois's The Philadelphia Negro is best classified as a(n)

community study, because it is about a neighborhood within a big city.

Qualities of Good Theory

ethical principles- an academic discipline. moral systems of those professions.

Simple random sample

each individual has the same probability of being selected into the sample and each pair of individuals has the same probability of being selected. Like drawing a name out of a hat at random.

Brian collects data about how people care for their pets during work hours. He decides to build generalizations from the data itself, which is a(n) ________ approach.

inductive

Which approach to theory observes patterns and builds to an explanation?

inductive

Sue interviews medical billing specialists about how changes to health-care law will affect their work. Because they are specialists, these interviewees are considered

informants

A team of researchers wants to study whether the type of neighborhood a person lives in affects their health. Because many different observers will be involved in the study, there is a need to make sure these different observers agree with each other when they make evaluations about neighborhood type and about what "health" looks like. If the various observers agree when they look at the data, they would have achieved which of the following?

interceder reliability

Jack works for a women's shelter and conducts a study of men and violence. When respondents answer the question, "Have you ever been violent toward a loved one?" he wonders whether interviewer effects are at play. Respondents

say "no," possibly because this is what they think Jack wants to hear.

The most common role adopted by researchers doing ethnography today is

participant observer

social desirability bias

participants answer questions in socially desirable ways rather than giving truthful responses

response rate

percent of people selected for your sample who actually participate in the research.

null hypothesis

there are no relationships between the variables you're interested in

Establishing causality required knowledge about the _________ of events, thus longitudinal studies are necessary to understanding cause and effect.

time order

Why would interviewers present themselves as ignorant or naïve?

to encourage interviewees to speak as experts on their own experience

Why would an ethnographer seek out a gatekeeper?

to gain accèss to a field site

Which of the following is an example of a macrosociological topic?

trends in global capitalism

repeated cross sectional

two or more distinctive samples drawn at two or more distinctive time points. repeated cross sectional design typically captures different individuals at multiple points in time.

If a researcher asks a participant in a study to envision themselves as an unemployed autoworker living in Detroit, Michigan with a partner and two children and struggling to afford food and housing, the researcher is using a

vignette

FrameWorks Institute conducts in-depth interview research about social and scientific issues. Which question is best suited for an in-depth interview approach?

what motivates people to participate in rallies?

saturation

when new materials (interviews, observations, survey responses) fail to yield new insights and simply reinforce what the researcher already knows

Before interviewing ten individuals about their approaches to pet care, Devon prepares an interview schedule by

writing a list of questions he use in the interviews

systematic sample

you pick every nth member on the list after having a list.

Deductive

you start with specific hypothesis and then you ask research questions that are designed to hopefully confirm that the hypotheses are true.

Mediation

seeks to identify and explain the mechanism or process that underlies an observed relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable via the inclusion of a third hypothetical variable, known as a mediator variable. trying to figure out a negative correlation (drinking water and vomiting)

Rob plans a study about high-school students and their grades. He samples for range, so he includes

students with high, average, and low grades

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

the actions are right or wrong, good or bad.

External Validity

the degree to which the results of a study can generalize beyond the study. How representative is the group being study? How "real" is the study?

sampling error

the difference between the estimates from the sample and the true parameter that arise due to random chance

A strong literature review identifies gaps in

the existing knowledge base related to a topic.

stratified sample

the population is divided into groups (strata) and the researcher selects some members of every group.

As a general rule, a truth table sorts cases by

the presence or absence of particular variables.

Reflexivity

the process a researcher goes through to interrogate their role in the creation of the data and the creation of the analysis. looking at the nature of the knowledge being produced and what your own role is in the production of that knowledge

Unit of analysis

the social level that is being analyzed. your unit of analysis could be at the individual level. it could be analyzing how individual people make a certain decision. or it might be a level above that and you're measuring at the University level.

Generalizability

the way a sample relates to the wider population. what extent our knowledge of the smaller group of people apply to the whole population.

Reductionism

A mistake that researchers make by drawing conclusions about the macro-level unit based on analyses of micro-level data.

Ecological fallacy

A mistake that researchers make by drawing conclusions about the micro level based on some macro-level analysis.

Reliability

A quality of a measure concerning how dependable it is.

Which statement demonstrates generalizability?

A study of stress among 500 Hispanics offers insight about what is typical among all Hispanics in the United States.

The mess level of social life is associated with which example?

Auburn Elementary School

Liam wants to investigate the human experience of love. He asks his sociology adviser whether it is possible to use social science to study something as subjective as love. What advice does Liam's adviser offer that reflects a standard sociological view?

Develop a concept that names, defines, and measures love and then sociological research can proceed.

Which step of the scientific method demonstrates empiricism?

Gather data

Lorena wants to conduct a study of how race is discussed among jurors on race-related police brutality cases. Her study aims to avoid the ethical problems of the Wichita jury study, so she

Interviews jurors after the case has ended, because she is legally forbidden from recording jury deliberations.

The word vulnerable has many meanings. In research, what is the most important quality that distinguishes a population as "vulnerable"?

Potential inability to give informed consent

Which type of research is usually useful for gaining breadth but not detail on a particular topic?

Quantitative

Classroom quality can be measured in many different ways. If a researcher is careful to map out each dimension of classroom quality, and observers have a clear plan for how to determine classroom quality when they see it, what have the researchers accomplished?

They have increased the reliability of their research method.

Anonymity

a lot narrower, a lot stricter. only achieved if the researcher cannot connect that data to the parts of the study.

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

a paradigm

A researcher is getting ready to gather data from a nationally representative sample of 5,000 Americans on their attitudes toward voting in local elections. In order to make sure the measures are reliable, the researcher might gather a random sample of 100 Americans and test the study. What would we call this preliminary study?

a pilot study

cross sectional

a single sample drawn at a single point in time.

panel

a single sample drawn at two or more distinctive time points. panel design tracks the same individuals at multiples points in time

typology

a way of organizing your data so that you're not necessarily only looking at commonalities across your whole sample.

There are different types of confusion that can emerge around a study's unit of analysis. If a researcher draws conclusions about individuals using group-level data, the mismatch is called ________. If they draw conclusions about a group based on individual-level data, the mismatch is called ________.

an ecological fallacy; reductionism

Confidentiality

an umbrella term.

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

Dimension

aspects of a concept

Abductive

attempts to build theory from "surprises" in empirical data.

Dr. Lee is interested in studying the success of students at elite public universities. She decided to study the employment placement of students at UCLA, the University of California-Berkeley, and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor because these three schools were ranked as the top three public universities by U.S. News and World Report in 2020. Why did Dr. Lee select these schools?

because of their importance and elite status in higher education

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

The process of tagging or labeling segments of data as an example of, or related to, a theoretical idea or theme is called

coding

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

If a researcher wanted to see how graduating seniors in 2020 felt about attending virtual graduation ceremonies, they would probably use a ________ design.

cross-sectional

longitudinal

data are collected at multiple points in time.

Luka has decided to collect quantitative survey data on health behaviors to test a general theory about social learning. He defines health behaviors as dietary habits and then writes standardized survey questions that measure that dimension of health behaviors. He then collects and analyzes those data. Luka's conceptualization and operationalization decisions follow a(n) ________ approach.

deductive

Max Weber's idea of verstehen continues to be an important ideal for ethnographers today because it is important to

develop a deep, empathetic understanding

Although losing respondents over time can be a problem with longitudinal studies, they are often preferable to cross-sectional designs because they can help researchers detect causal effects. The reason longitudinal studies are better able to detect causal effects is that they can

document within-person changes

You are conducting a study of how chemistry majors do homework. You sit with a group of chemistry majors and try to observe their homework processes. You quickly realize you will need to alter your research methods, because you have inadvertently triggered reactivity. You are confident of this assessment because the chemistry majors are

explaining chemistry to you, rather than doing their homework

There are approximately equal numbers of men and women in the U.S. population. If a researcher wants to study the impact of gender on whether teenagers decide to apply to college, but only includes women in the study, which of the following would be in jeopardy?

external validity

cluster sample

first the target population is divided into groups called clusters and then some of the clusters are selected at random. then some individuals are selected at random from within each selected cluster.

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

Spurious

goes along with confounding. they are an extra variable that are not being measured but are affecting your result. something we didnt originally account for, it is not something we originally controlled for.

Vulnerable populations

groups of people who are at the margins of society are made vulnerable by social structures.

Select the most precise answer. Danika exercises her sociological imagination when she thinks about

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

A sociologist studying American neighborhoods identifies a causal effect of income on the availability of healthy and nutritious foods. Specifically, people with lower incomes tend to live in neighborhoods where there are more fast food restaurants and less access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Given this finding, the researcher can be confident in concluding that the study has

internal validity

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

interpretive understanding

It is difficult for in-depth interviewing to have high reliability because

interviews cannot be exactly replicated in future studies.

Miguel interviewed twenty bartenders about what it is like to close a bar in the early morning hours. He knew he had reached saturation when

interviews did not yield new insights but rather confirmed what he already knew

Junmey conducts a study on water quality in a village where people are suffering from poor water. Junmey does not use her findings to help the people, even when she could, stating that the purpose of this study is for her to earn a dissertation. She says she will apply her findings in later work, but not this time. Junmey has violated which Belmont principle?

justice

Dr. Stephens has interviewed Betty five times over the course of his fieldwork studying opioid users in Appalachia. Betty has had strong insights that have helped him further develop his project. What role has Betty served for Dr. Stephens?

key informant

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

Reliability refers to the consistency or "repeatability" of measures in research. Participant observation has

low reliability because it relies heavily on researchers' perceptions and interpretations.

Karina develops a mixed-method study, so she

mixes the principles of probability sampling and purposive sampling.

Moderation

moderation occurs when the relationship between two variables depends on a third variable. "under what conditions are these two variables are linked to each other". "the condition under which two variables relate to each other"

Indicator

more concrete aspects of how you're actually going to measure the overall content. the value assigned to a variable.

An iterative approach to qualitative data analysis means that the researcher

moves back and forth between the steps of the analysis process.

Alfonso plans to study the effect of degree type on the income of college graduates. He chooses to represent degree type with college major and to represent income with individual annual income (in dollars). In this study, college major is a(n) ________ variable, and individual annual income is a(n) ________ variable.

nominal; ratio

Inductive

observation and the data collection, those happens first. then as you familiarize yourself with the data, then you start to make the connection.

Annette Lareau's inductive approach to studying social class and child-rearing meant that she

observed how parents interacted with their children, and then developed theories regarding child-rearing

nonrepresentative sample

often useful for initial tests of hypotheses than probability samples. non representative samples do not allow researcher to make arguments about the generalizability of their findings.

In the quantitative social science research process, moving from a concrete definition of a concept to an actual measure of the defined concept involves

operationalization

Lila is interested in studying romantic relationship satisfaction, and she asks respondents to rate how satisfied they are with their romantic relationships on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being very dissatisfied and 5 being very satisfied. Lila has created a/an ________ variable to measure satisfaction.

ordinal

Operationalization

overall process of how a concept will actually be measured.

________ is one of the reasons a researcher would choose to use a stratified sample.

preventing pure chance from causing samples to be nonrepresentative

Most theories are testable and falsifiable as well as generalizable. But theories should also be ___________.

probabilistic

Maya has created a sample in which she uses random chance to select participants, and she can calculate the likelihood that a participant will be selected. What type of sample has Maya created?

probability

coding qualitative data

process of becoming really familiar with the data through transcribing, thoroughly reading and rereading your transcripts and making connections between your interview.

Critical race theory is part of the conflict paradigm because it

questions why some races are advantaged over others

Confounding

refer to variables or issues that are not measured but are affecting both the independent variable and the dependent variable.

Internal Validity

refers to the degree to which a study establishes a causal effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable.

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

respect

Jamal wants to study racial representations on children's TV shows. He has made a list of every TV show that aired on Nick Jr. from 2000 to 2015. This list of TV shows is the ________ he will use to draw a probability sample.

sampling frame

Studies that focus on such countable aspects of social life as texts, news stories, or paintings dealing with a particular subject matter are relying on ___________ as their unit of analysis

social artifacts

Which most accurately states the focus of sociology?

social life

Eli has created a measure to better understand students' school spirit. His measure includes 20 items, and he wants to further test the robustness of his measure. He decides to split his set of 20 items into two separate measures of 10 items and then administer both measures to the same sample of respondents. What method has Eli used?

split-half

Hypothesis

statement that specifies the specific relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable.

Divya is interested in learning whether students will support an increase in student fees to supplement child care costs for student parents. There are 10,000 undergraduate and 3,000 graduate students at her university. If she wants to ensure that she has an equal number of undergraduate and graduate students in her sample, what type of sampling method should she use?

stratified

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