Cjus 2370 Exam 3

Maturation

- maturing - endogenous change - a risk in a long experiment - Take place in subjects

split-ballot design

- some respondents can be given a survey with a particular question order while the other respondents can be given another - design allows researchers to determine the effect of question order on responses.

survey research

- the collection of information from a sample of individuals through their responses to questions - an efficient method for systematically collecting data from a broad spectrum of individuals and social settings

Fixed-sample panel design (panel study)

A type of longitudinal study in which data are collected from the same individuals—the panel—at two or more points in time - expensive/ high attrition- people drop out or move away

fields notes

Notes that describe what has been observed, heard, or otherwise experienced in a participant observation study; these notes usually are written after the observational session

Intensive Interviewing

Open-ended, relatively unstructured questioning in which the interviewer seeks in-depth information on the interviewee's feelings, experiences, and/or perceptions

Interpretative questions

Questions included in a questionnaire or interview schedule to help explain answers to other important questions

contingency questions

Questions that are asked of only a subset of survey respondents

contextual effect

Relationships between variables that vary between geographic units or other contextsC

field research

Research in which natural social processes are studied as they happen and left relatively undisturbed - usually meant to refer to the process by which a single investigator immerses himself or herself in a group for a long time (often one or more years), gradually establishing trust and experiencing the social world as do the participants - it seeks to describe and understand the natural social world as it is, in all its richness and detail

Exhaustive responses

Response choices on a survey that allow an option for respondents who require another choice

mixed-mode survey

Surveys that are conducted by more than one method, allowing the strengths of one survey design to compensate for the weaknesses of another and maximizing the likelihood of securing data from different types of respondents

before-and-after design

a quasi-experimental design consisting of several before-and-after treatment comparisons involving the same variables but no comparison group - no control group - show association/correlation - cant be sure if spurious

double-barreled questions

a question is really asking more than one thing Ex:Have you ever used cocaine or know anyone who has ever used cocaine?

interview schedule

a survey instrument containing the questions asked by the interviewer in an in-person or phone survey

omnibus survey

a survey that covers a range of topics of interest to different social scientists - has multiple sponsors or is designed to generate data useful to a broad segment of the social science community rather than answer one particular research question

repeated cross-sectional design

a type of longitudinal study in which data are collected at two or more points in time from different samples of the same population - not the same people

Internal validity

accuracy of findings - whether we can trust the findings of an experiment - high= treatment affects outcome low= treatment may influence due to another factor

ex post facto

after the fact - lacking pretest - examines after treatment - not a quasi experiment because control groups are specified after treatment occurred

Regression/Regression toward the mean

an endogenous change that occurs when subjects with an extreme high/low score progress towards the mean over time

testing

an endogenous change where the pretest influences the posttest

Likert-type responses

ask respondents to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with statements Ex: Strongly agree/disagree

nomothetic causal explanation

belief that variation in an independent variable will be followed by variation in the dependent variable, when all other things are equal Ex: Individuals arrested for domestic assault tend to commit fewer subsequent assaults than do similar individuals who are accused in the same circumstances but not arrested

Jottings

brief notes about the highlights of the observation period - serve as memory joggers when writing the actual field notes at a later time

participant observation

called fieldwork in anthropology, is a method of studying natural social processes as they happen (in the field rather than in the laboratory), leaving them relatively undisturbed and minimizing your presence as a researcher

Cross-population generalizability

can results apply to different settings

Questionnaire

central feature of the survey process - containing the questions for a self-administered survey

Reactive effect

changes in individual or group behavior that are due to being observed or otherwise studied

Group-administered survey

completed by individual respondents assembled in a group - difficulty with this method is that assembling a group is seldom feasible because it requires a captive audience - the possibility that respondents will feel coerced to participate and as a result will be less likely to answer questions honestly

mailed (self-administered) survey

conducted by mailing a questionnaire to respondents, who then administer the survey themselves - difficulty maximizing the response rate - hazard of incomplete response - relatively inexpensive and respondents are free to answer questions at their leisure, without the scrutiny of a survey administrator

cross-sectional design

data collected at a single point in time

longitunidal

data collected at multiple points in time

qualitative methods

emphasize observations about natural behavior and artifacts that capture social life as it is experienced by the participants rather than in categories predetermined by the researcher

selective distribution of benefits

ethical issue about how much researchers can influence the benefits subjects receive as part of the treatment being studied in a field experiment

If you are concerned with how people construct reality more than describing that reality, which form of qualitative analysis would be most appropriate?

ethnomethodology

Solomon four-group design

experimental design in which the experimental and control groups are studied with and without a pretest - at least 2 experimental/control groups

idiographic causal explanation

explanation that identifies the concrete, individual sequence of events, thoughts, or actions that resulted in a particular outcome for a particular individual or that led to a particular event; may be termed an individualist or historicist explanation - also typically very concerned with context

Focus groups

groups of individuals that are formed by a researcher and then led in group discussion of a topic

filter question

important to ensure that questions are asked only of relevant respondents - create skip patterns

Endogenous change

individuals may change over the course of the experiment

Phone survey

interviewers question respondents over the phone and then record their answers - not reaching the proper sampling units and not getting enough complete responses to make the results generalizable

Covert Participation

keep their research secret and do their best to act like other participants in a social setting or group - To lessen the potential for reactive effects and to gain entry to otherwise inaccessible settings

time series design (quasi)

looking at an outcome over time - repeated measures in intervals before and after experiments

Survey designs

mailed (self-administered) survey group-administered survey phone survey in-person survey electronic or web survey

Examining relationships between concepts is important in qualitative analysis because it allows the researcher to ______

move from description to explanation

idiosyncratic variation

occurs when individuals' responses vary because of their reactions to particular words or ideas in the question

External events (history effect)

occurs when something other than the treatment influences outcome scores

counterfactual

outcome that would have occurred if the subjects who were exposed to the treatment actually were not exposed but otherwise had had identical experiences to those they underwent during the experiment

fence sitters

people who see themselves as neutral in their attitudes toward a particular issue

closed-ended questions/fixed-ended questions

provided with explicit responses from which to select

non-equivalent control group design

quasi experimental design - no random assignment - control group is not the similar to the experimental

double negative questions

question or statement that contains two negatives, which can muddy the meaning Ex:"Do you disagree that juveniles should not be tried as adults if they commit murder?

Open-ended question

questions w/o explicit answer choices - used only for explorative purposes when there is little known about a particular topic and you want to uncover as much about it as possible without restricting responses

statistical control

reduce the risk of spuriousness

complete observation

researchers try to see things as they happen, without disrupting the participants - the researcher does not participate in group activities and is publicly defined as a researcher

floaters

respondents who choose a substantive answer even when they do not know anything about a particular question

mutually exclusive responses

response choices on a survey that do not overlap Ex: 1 hour or less 2-3 hours 4-6 hours 7-10 hours 11 hours or more

Which of the following explains why qualitative analysis is different from quantitative analysis?

sensitivity to context

Event/cohort based design

subjects that have similar experiences are studied over time Ex: same birthday

theoretical sampling

systematic approach to sampling in participant observational research

in-person interview

the face-to-face social interaction between interviewer and respondent

saturation point

the point when new interviews seem to yield little additional information

The focus of narrative analysis is:

the story itself

Ethnography

the study of a culture or cultures that a group of people share

Netnography

the use of ethnographic methods to study online communities

reference period

time frame around which a question is being asked - should be no longer than "in the past month"

skip pattern

unique combination of questions created in a survey by filter questions and contingent questions

context effects

when one or more questions influence how subsequent questions are interpreted