Sociology Chapter 2

Science can be defined as

A logical system that bases knowledge on direct, systematic observation

Drawing conclusions about all of humanity based on research using only males as subjects is the problem called

Androcentricity

Which of the following terms is defined in the text as "a mental construct that represents some part of the world in a somewhat simplified form"?

Concept

Which sociological research method saves the time and expense of data gathering, but the researcher has no control over possible data bias

Deductive Logical Thought

What term refers to any change in a subject's behavior caused by the awareness of being studied

Hawthorne Effect

Sociologists use the term "empirical evidence" to refer to

Information we can verify with our senses

Lois Benjamin's investigation of racism may be criticized because

Interviewed mostly middle-aged men and he grew up in a predominantly black community

If you were trying to measure the "social class" of various people, you would have to keep in mind tha

It is necessary to specify exactly what you are measuring

The sociologist who called on his colleagues to be value free was

Max Weber

One disadvantage of conducting interviews is that this research method

May easily allow the researcher to influence subjects' responses

What term refers to the arithmetic average of a series of numbers

Mean

What term refers to the value that occurs midway in a series of numbers (that is, the middle case)

Median

What is the term for the value that occurs most often in a series of numbers

Mode

The sociological perspective reveals that

Much of what passes for "common sense" in the United States turns out to be at least partly wrong

Sociologists cannot precisely predict any person's behavior because

People are too complex

Imagine that you are repeating research done by someone else in order to assess its accuracy. You are doing which of the following

Replication

A smaller number of people used to represent an entire population is called a

Sample

Which research method asks subjects to respond to a series of items in a questionnaire or an interview

Survey

The ideal of objectivity means that a researcher

Use a stance of personal neutrality toward the outcome of the research

What concept below refers to measuring exactly what one intends to measure

Validity

Which German word meaning "understanding" was used by Max Weber in describing his approach to sociological research

Verstehen

In the process of measurement, reliability refers to

Whether repeating the measurement yields consistent results