SOC 301 Final Exam

Megan wants to study bullying in high school. She randomly selected 1000 students at a high school, and 400 students completed the survey. What is her response rate?

40%.

The most commonly used value for confidence levels by social science researchers is __________.

95%.

Which of the guidelines below needs to be considered by the writer of this question: "Should loving soon-to-be mothers take prenatal vitamins?"

Avoid leading questions.

Dr. Luther has accessed a list of all public elementary schools in the state of California. He randomly selects 20 schools from the list and then randomly selects 100 students at each school to survey. What type of sampling method has Dr. Luther used?

Cluster.

A document that lists all variables in a survey and provides information about each variable, including question and response categories, is called a(n)...

Codebook

In a study of family processes, a sociologist finds that the relation between poverty and childhood problems is influenced by parental support. When parents provide strong support, poor children's problems are less numerous and less severe. The three concepts are poverty, childhood problems, and parental support. Which category of relations within a theory best describes these findings?

Concept 1 --------------------------> Concept 2 ^ | | Concept 3 (line in between Concept 1 and 2)

The __________ condition is a condition in an experiment where the independent variable is manipulated.

Experimental.

An author submits a journal article and receives an editorial decision of "revise and resubmit." The author is probably...

Happy, because this is the most common path towards publication, and she will be able to improve the article with the feedback of her peers.

Dr. Lang plans a study of why some high schoolers join Honor societies. Which of the following is the unit of analysis?

High school students

Will wants to lose 75 pounds. Which of the following represents the containing influence of social structure against his agency?

High-quality food and gym memberships are costly, and WIll's income is low.

Raj is interested in the impact of race and social class on interactions with the police. He has created a factorial design experiment. What is a characteristic of this experiment?

His study has two independent variables - race and social class.

Professor Flaeger hypothesizes that when college students participate in local service activities, their views toward human rights are strengthened. In this hypothesis, what is the dependent variable?

Human rights attitudes.

In the course of his study on nursing homes, Inger inadvertently learned about specificities instances of elder abuse. She had promised her subjects confidentiality, but...

In some states, she is required to report abuse, even if she learned it in the course of research.

Dr. Han plans a large-scale panel study, with prospective design, and secures funding. There are many challenges to the project, and in an effort to minimize attrition, he...

Incentivizes participants with moderate cash payments.

Compared to behavioral measures, what is a characteristic of an attitudinal measure?

Researchers prefer attitudinal measures when they are interested in understanding why an outcome occurs.

The split-half method is when...

Researchers randomly split the set of items for a measure into two sets to create two separate measures instead of one.

A survey in which a randomly selected subset of respondents, typically 50% of those persons selected to participate in the survey, receives one topical module while the other 50% receives a different topical ballot is called a(n) __________ design.

Split-ballot.

Choose the set of response options that is forced choice and exhaustive.

Strongly agree; slightly agree; slightly disagree; strongly disagree.

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.

A researcher distributes a survey to college students. One question asks, "How many hours per night do you sleep?" and another asks, "What is your GPA?" If the study has a cross-sectional design, which conclusion is possible?

Students who sleep more have higher GPAs.

Which of the following is an example of a quantitate method?

Surveys.

__________ is an example of an omnibus survey.

The General Social Survey (GSS).

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

The actions are right or wrong, good or bad.

Lisa is analyzing the results of her pretest. What would indicate to her that a question needs revision?

The cognitive interview showed that the question was confusing.

What is a necessary condition to establish causality?

The independent variable must precede the dependent variable.

Which of the following is a variable?

The number of illegal activities in which a person has engaged over the last year.

What was the ethical breach in the Milgram obedience experiment?

The people administering the shock may have experienced psychological harm.

In establishing causality, which of the following conditions, in practice, is the MOST challenging?

The relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable must not be caused by some other factor.

The test-retest method is an approach in which...

The same measure is administered to a sample and then re-administered to the same sample later.

Which best explains why the Literary Digest poll failed to predict the winner of the 1936 presidential election?

The sample didn't represent the American population.

Steve wants to study the organizational structure of churches. He wants to contact a single knowledgeable person at each church who will serve as the respondent. This respondent is known as the __________ informant.

Key.

The __________ experiment is the most common type of experiment.

Laboratory.

The most important difference between macro-sociology and micro-sociology is that macro-sociology focuses on __________ and micro-sociology focuses on __________.

Large-scale social systems; personal concerns and interpersonal interactions.

If you were conducting a sociology study and had a particular concern about you, as the researcher, deceiving people by misrepresenting your identity, which study and subsequent scholarly dialogue would be MOST helpful to consult?

Laud Humphreys' Tearoom Trade.

Which accurately describes how sociologists view macro-level issues and micro-level issues?

Macro-level issues and micro-level issues are linked because large-scale systems affect personal experiences.

Sociologists model social life with three levels that move from specificity to abstraction. Which words represent these levels, in order from the widest point of the triangle to the narrowest?

Macro; meso; micro

The NAS poverty line may offer a more accurate picture of poverty in the United States than the FPL, but it...

May not be as reliable a measure over time.

An experiment in which the independent variable is manipulated by "nature," not by the experimenter, is known as a __________ experiment.

Natural.

What did Nazi concentration camp experiments and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment have in common?

Researchers inflicted deliberate harm on research subjects.

Amy applies status characteristics theory to student government at her university. This theory predicts that student government officials gain power and prestige when...

Their race, gender, and social class characteristics are highly valued in the broader society.

Concepts such as socialization, deviance, and self-control can be linked to explain crime. When concepts are systematically linked in such a way that they generate an explanatory chain of reactions, they become a(n)...

Theory

In a research study, which of the following steps typically occur first?

Write literature review.

George is researching the relationship between racial animosity and political preference. However, he tells his subjects that his study is about undergraduate political party preferences, which is false. This false reason for participation in an experiment is known as...

A cover story.

Among professional social scientists, what is the MOST common form of research report?

A peer-reviewed article in a refereed journal.

A researcher is getting ready to gather data from a nationally representative sample of 5000 Americans on their attitudes towards voting in local elections. In order to make sure our measures are reliable, we might gather a random sample of 100 Americans and test the study. What would we call this preliminary study?

A pilot study.

Sampling is necessary because...

A researcher cannot study every member of the population of interest.

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 he or she draws conclusions about a group based on individual-level data, the mismatch is called __________.

An ecological fallacy; reductionism.

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.

What kind of institutions must have institutional review boards?

Any institution that receives research money from the federal government.

Agata is planning two different studies. One will be a content analysis of how often romantic storylines occur among older adult movie characters. The second will be a study of whether those who see older adults in romantic film roles have different attitudes about older adult's sexuality than those who do not see older adults in romantic films. The form of measurement Agata will most likely use for the first study is __________. Alternatively, she will probably use __________ as the form of measurement for the second study.

Artifact counts; manipulation.

Mary is a researcher studying sexual harassment. What can she use to make the face-to-face interview setting more comfortable when discussing this topic?

Audio computer-assisted self-interview (ACASI) technology.

Sierra conducts a study of unemployment and reaches this conclusion: "In 2016, the unemployment rate in Dover County was 6%." Such a conclusion may be reached with which type of study?

Cross-sectional.

Measures collected by observing the overt and observable actions of participants are known as __________ measures.

Behavioral.

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 findings in later work, but not this one. Junmey has violated which Belmont principle?

Beneficence.

Elsie finishes her study of child actors in theater settings and decides to publish it as a monograph. She writes a...

Book-length publication that includes the research question, methods, and findings.

In the course of her study on drug use, Eileen finds many instances of criminal activity. She ensures her subjects confidentiality, because before the study began she received a(n)...

Certificate of confidentiality.

In scientific research, an idea that can be clearly named, defined, and eventually measured is called a...

Concept.

The __________ refers to the probability that a confidence interval includes the population parameter.

Confidence level.

When participants' identifying information is only accessible to members of the research team, this is called...

Confidentiality.

Survey researchers must take care to protect respondents' __________. It is unrealistic and impractical for survey researchers to promise __________ to respondents.

Confidentiality; anonymity.

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 advisor. 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.

Twila designs a sociology research study about gender-based violence. After she proposes the study, she decides that she really wants it to be applied research. Accordingly, she refines the study to...

Contribute to theory about local and global economic intersections.

Julio needs to collect data for his senior honors thesis and has decided to administer surveys to 500 students who are currently enrolled in an Introductory Sociology course at his college. Julio's sample is a good example of a __________ sample.

Convenience.

Eli is a family life educator and wants to intervene at the micro level to influence the issue of domestic violence. What should Eli do?

Counsel a family affected by domestic violence.

Lincoln and Guba (1985) argue that instead of validity and reliability, qualitative research should instead be judged based on...

Credibility and dependability.

Herman is a U.S. Census statistician and notices that in one zip code there is only one Arab-American family in an otherwise white neighborhood. He chooses the statistical technique that will make the Arab-American family's presence in society noticeable, but not traceable to the actual zip code where they live. Herman chooses...

Data swapping.

Johann took part in a study that he was told initially was about test-taking strategies. After the experiment was over, he was surprised to learn that the actual purpose of the experiment was to determine whether exposure to negative racial stereotypes causes changes in test performance. The interview after the study when Johann was informed of the actual purpose of the experiment is known as the...

Debriefing.

The central ethical principal at stake in Laud Humphrey's Tearoom Study was __________; in contrast, the central ethical principal at stake in the study of Harvard Facebook users was __________.

Deception; privacy

Megan is collecting data for a research project. She has decided to increase her sample size from 500 participants to 1000 participants. As her sample size increases, her sampling error __________ and her margin of error __________.

Decreases; decreases.

Dr. Sarty submits a manuscript to the American Journal of Sociology and receives a brief letter that states his manuscript is not being considered and was not even sent out for peer review. This is an example of a(n) __________ reject.

Desk.

Emile plans a study about the health of deep-sea divers. In determining whether to use a cross-sectional design or a longitudinal design, Emile should ask, "Do I want to know about...

Diver health in a single moment in time, or diver health over time?"

Which question would MOST likely be used as the basis for evaluation research?

Do housing subsidies reduce overcrowded housing?

A question that asks about two or more ideas or concepts in a single question is known as a(n) __________ question.

Double-barreled.

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.

__________ refers to the extent to which the conclusions drawn from a study generalize to a larger population or to a different setting.

External validity.

Suppose a researcher want to measure whether people have experienced racial discrimination in their neighborhood. The researcher might ask questions about whether the subject ever felt they were turned away from renting or buying a home because of their race. The researcher might also ask about whether they have ever been treated unfairly by store clerks or their neighbors. After writing the questions on their survey, the researchers felt they had accurate measures of discrimination because they seemed right. Which kind of validity would they feel they achieved?

Face validity.

What mode of administration is MOST susceptible to interviewer effects?

Face-to-face interviews.

Blackwell and colleagues conducted an experiment on seventh graders in a New York City school to assess whether teaching students that intelligence was a malleable rather than a fixed trait could improve students' classroom motivation and mathematical performance. This experiment is an example of a...

Field experiment.

If a researcher creates a measure of exercise frequency by averaging individual reports of exercise behavior across a neighborhood, this researcher is studying exercise at the __________ level.

Group.

For which of the following would it make sense to measure using a composite variable?

Happiness

It is desirable for a __________ to have a __________ impact factor.

Journal; high.

This figure describes the relations between variables in a causal hypothesis. 1 refers to __________ variable; 2 refers to __________ variable.

Independent; dependent

Social scientists prefer the active voice over the passive voice because the active voice...

Indicates who took action in the sentence.

Structural functionalism and conflict paradigms are more often criticized for neglecting __________; symbolic interaction is criticized for ignoring __________.

Individuals; social structures

The degree to which a study established a causal effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable is known as...

Internal validity.

What is a characteristic of physiological measures?

It can be difficult and expensive to collect physiological measures in the laboratory.

Why is validity a challenging ideal in a sociological study?

It is difficult to match a measure to the concept it is supposed to capture.

Experiments might potentially be critiqued for problems with external validity. Why?

It is hard to know if what happens in a lab setting will happen in the real world.

What is a characteristic of a natural experiment?

It is more observational than a true experiment.

Affonso 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 majors is a(n) __________ variable and individual annual income is a(n) __________ variable.

Nominal; ratio.

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.

Qualitative research, often using an inductive approach, typically starts with data collection, which means that conceptualization and operationalization...

Often come later than they do in a quantitative study.

If a poll oversampled teenagers at three times their proportion in the U.S. population, each teenager in the sample would only have __________ the weight of other respondents when researchers calculate population estimates.

One-third.

Horace is studying how chronic pain affects people's work lives. He has collected a massive amount of scholarly literature related to his topic. He read some of it and plans to read more later. He used some of it in his study, while other parts will be useful in a future, related study. What belongs in the bibliography of his about chronic pain and work lives?

Only the sources he cited in the research report.

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.

If a researcher wanted to see how spouses' marital quality changed over time if and when children were born, he or she would probably use a __________ design.

Panel study

Lisa wants to survey mothers and examine the kinds of attitudes about mothering that occur as their children grow older. Which type of survey would be best suited for this research?

Panel.

Observations about the noise level in the household, how well the respondent understood the questions, and whether another family member was present are examples of...

Paradata.

Raul wants to conduct a study on interracial dating by asking participants to read a description of a scenario and then answer questions about how they would react to the given situation. He would like the study to have high external validity. Which type of experiment would he choose?

Population-based survey

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.

An evaluation report is usually more __________, whereas a research report is usually more __________.

Practical; theoretical.

Biological responses to stimuli are known as __________ measures.

Psychological.

Critical race theory is part of the conflict paradigm because it...

Questions why some races are advantaged over others.

The key difference between an interval and a ratio variable is that only...

Ratio variables have a true zero point.

If a researcher were interested in the general attitude trends of a society over time, he or she would probably use a __________ design.

Repeated cross-sections.

Compared to telephone surveys, face-to-face interviews...

Require significant advanced planning.

The __________ inspired Stanley Milgram's experiment.

Role of ordinary people in carrying out the Holocaust.

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

Sampling frame.

Thomas Kuhn's ideas about paradigms and paradigm shifts show that...

Scientists are predisposed to prefer certain theories.

Jenna is conducting a study on gender bias in hiring. She has recruited participants to evaluate job applications. What is an effective way to manipulate the independent variable?

She can randomly put common women's names and common men's names on similarly qualified applications.

Researchers have found that delineating clear hiring criteria...

Significantly eliminates bias in hiring decisions.

Sociologists have studied social media use and loneliness for some time. What can most definitely be claimed, based on the research by Primack and colleagues?

Social media use and loneliness are correlated.

What is a strategy survey designers use for avoiding response set?

Word some question positively and others negatively.

The use of different types of research methods to study the same general research question is known as...

Triangulation.

A sociologist takes a problem-based approach, identifying drug addiction as a social ill that should be addressed. An anthropologist's cultural relativistic approach would...

Try to grasp the drug user's view (the insider view).

If you are interested in studying a city that has similar features to the average city in the Unites States, what type of case should you select?

Typical.

Which of the following is a research question for a descriptive study?

What is the rate of home ownership in the United States?

Jasmine is doing research on poor single mothers. For which question is leaving the response open-ended MOST appropriate?

What kinds of assistance do you think the government can provide that does not currently exist?

The goal in research involving a hypothesis is to...

disprove the null hypothesis.

Before she conducted her research on Hurricane Katrina survivors, Mary Waters carefully considered whether the study would produce useful knowledge and whether her subjects would be traumatized by talking about the experience. Such an assessment of ____________ and ____________ is central to the IRB review process.

risks; benefits