SOCW 340 Final
Emmett Spencer, age 23, was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 19, is neither employed nor attending school and lives at home with his parents. Although his family is very supportive and committed to helping Emmett, he often refuses to take his antipsychotics and has, on more than one occasion, been hospitalized on emergency holds when he became acutely psychotic. His family is discouraged and wonders what could be done to help their son stay on his medication and have a more stable life. Which method is best supported by research?
Assertive community treatment and psychoeducation
Wanda is studying people who are receiving unemployment compensation. She wants to interview five individuals who are experiencing their first period of unemployment lasting at least a month and five who have been unemployed at least three previous times for at least one month each time. She plans to go to a local unemployment benefits office and, after explaining who she is and what she is doing, ask people waiting on line if they would be willing to answer some questions. If they are willing, Wanda will ask them questions to determine whether they are suitable for her study. As soon as she has five interviews completed for a particular group, she will stop interviewing individuals for that group. What type of sampling is she most likely to using?
Quota
The first step in the research process includes _____.
Posing the research question
A _____ is a graphic portrayal that depicts the essential components of a program, shows how those components are ultimately linked to long-term outcomes, and specifies measurable indicators of success at each level.
Logic model
_____ refers to a variety of arrangements that try to control the costs of health and human services.
Managed care
Josefina is performing a content analysis on what candidates say about social welfare issues during political debates. Her initial analysis involves identifying their positions on key issues. Josefina is analyzing _____ content.
Manifest
Ruben is constructing an employee satisfaction. Each item in the main body of the scale asks respondents to indicate how true the item is of him or her, using a five point scale where 1 represents "not at all true of me" and 5 is "completely true of me." By arranging the items and possible answers in a(n) _____, Ruben can use space more efficiently, use the respondent's time more efficiently and increase comparability among the items.
Matrix
Shawn is conducting research on interventions designed to improve parenting skills among 13 to 17 year-old adolescent parents. He observes his clients with their infants to rate the quality of the interactions, provides a three month psychoeducational group to his clients and then observes them with their infants again. Shawn finds that their parenting skills have improved. Which threat to internal validity is this especially vulnerable to?
Maturation/passage of time
Statistical ____ analysis deals with determining how large a sample needs to be in order for researchers to have an adequate probability of obtaining statistically significant findings.
Power
_____ help us organize our views about social work activities and may or may not reflect a synthesis of existing theories.
Practice models
Teri has developed an instrument she believes will identify women at high risk for postpartum psychosis, a particularly devastating and dangerous disorder that occurs in a very small percentage of women who have recently given birth. Teri's instrument is administered to a number of women who are followed for 6 weeks after birth to determine whether they develop psychosis. Teri is most likely assessing the instrument's _____ validity.
Predictive
Wendell excitedly tells his colleague about as intervention he read about in a professional journal, noting that it seems very promising in reducing dropout rates among high risk youth. Leeza retorts that nothing, including paying youth to stay in school, has ever been shown to reduce dropout rates and nothing ever well. Once kids decide to drop out, she says, they will. Leeza is engaging in _____.
Premature closure
Which experimental design is notated as: R O1 X O2 R O1 O2
Pretest-posttest control group design
Eugene is reviewing accounts from over the past century written by individuals with severe persistent mental illnesses about their experiences with inpatient treatment to characterize their interactions with nursing staff. Eugene is using _____ sources
Primary
During the _____ phase, conceptual elements, including the hypothesis and operational definitions, are explicated.
Problem formulation
_____ evaluations focus on identifying strengths and weaknesses in program implementation and recommending needed improvements.
Process
As Gwendolyn continues reviewing agency records in her study of loss of child custody associated with substance abuse, she begins to notice that, in the weeks prior to loss of custody, the parents' lives seem to have unraveled. Often they have lost jobs or other financial resources, housing and significant sources of social support. In some cases, they were actively using drugs prior to the major life stressors while in other cases the stressors were relapse triggers. In terms of Lofland and Lofland's patterns, Gwendolyn is looking for _____.
Processes
When the fact that an individual knows he or she is being observed changes the individual's behavior, _____ has occurred.
Reactivity
When deception can be justified by compelling scientific concerns, an institutional review board will likely impose a(n) _____ requirement.
Debriefing
The key process in the analysis of qualitative social research data is comparison.
False
The more reliable the measure, the more random error in it.
False
The safest solution to issues related to question order is to randomize the questions.
False
The term intervention quality refers to the degree to which the intervention actually delivered to clients was delivered as intended.
False
The unit of analysis is a single-case design is a single individual.
False
When survey research involves conducting interviews, the interviewer should _____.
Follow the question wording exactly
The first step in the EBP process is to _____.
Formulate a question to answer practice needs
Gwendolyn wants to understand why some parents who lose custody of their children due to substance abuse are able to regain custody of their children and do not have further contact with child protective services while other parents go on to cycle through reunification and removal over a period of years and may even lose custody permanently. She starts by reviewing agency records to determine how many families lose custody in a given year and why they lose custody. She also looks at how many families are reunified and examines why they had lost custody. In terms of Lofland and Lofland's patterns, Gwendolyn is looking for _____.
Frequencies
Gwendolyn is able to access videos made of family visits when the children and their parents had supervised visits at substance abuse treatment center and at child life centers after the parents were discharged from treatment. She studies the videos looking at the body language of the parents and children and how they interact. She notices, for example, that mothers who are doing well in their treatment often played with their children, while mothers who were not doing well would often cling to their children even when the children wanted to play with toys across the room. Gwendolyn is engaging in _____.
Semiotics
Mattie is conducting a survey of residents in a community that was recently evacuated following a chemical leak. Three weeks after her initial mailing, she has gotten back less than 25% of her surveys. Experts would suggest that she _____.
Send out a follow-up mailing
The notation for the _____ design is O1 O2 O3 O4 O5 X O6 O7 O8 O9 O10.
Simple interrupted time-series
Rochelle is conducting a study of adolescent sex workers. She met several adolescent sex workers at the drop-in center where she works and has asked them to introduce her to others. Rochelle will then ask those individuals to introduce her to others and so on. Rochelle is using a(n) _____ sample.
Snowball
In the _____, the exact wording and sequence of questions are determined in advance.
Standardized open-ended interview
In a cost-effectiveness analysis, _____.
The costs of the program itself are considered but the monetary benefits of the program's effects are not
Potential drawbacks of using self-report instruments in single-case evaluation designs include _____.
The potential for social desirability bias
Qualitative research is especially effective for studying subtle nuances in attitudes and behaviors.
True
Recruitment efforts of current studies can be hampered by the poisoned climate caused by previous studies that were conducted in a culturally insensitive manner.
True
Technological advances have reduced response rates and exacerbated sampling problems in telephone surveys.
True
One problem with the _____ design is that practitioners may feel that withdrawing an intervention that appears to be working is indefensible in light of the suffering or other costs the client may bear if conditions revert to baseline.
ABAB
The process in which a group or individual changes after coming into contact with the majority, taking on their language, values, attitudes, and lifestyle preferences is referred to as _____.
Acculturation
The tendency to agree or disagree with most or all statements in a measurement instrument regardless of their content is called the _____ bias.
Acquiescent response set
Cora maintains that children need both a mother and a father because "everyone" knows that is true. Cora is relying on _________ reliability.
Agreement
A research respondent has _____ when the researcher cannot identify a given response with a given respondent.
Anonymity
In the context of program evaluation, stakeholders are best described as _____.
Anyone who has any type of interest in the program and its outcomes
How might a practicing social worker use single-case designs?
As a part of evidence-based practice
Characteristics or qualities that describe something or somebody are called _____.
Attributes
Unlike _____ practitioners, practitioners engaged in EBP engage in critical thinking.
Authority-based
Candice works for a survey company where she sits at a computer workstation and the computer calls a phone number for her. If someone answers, she introduces herself and the survey using the text on her computer screen. If the individual agrees, she begins the survey, again reading the text on the computer screen and entering the responses. Candice is using a(n) ____ system.
CATI
The case control design compares groups of cases that have had contrasting outcomes and then _____.
Collects retrospective data that might explain the difference in outcomes
Guadalupe wants to learn more about the peer-group interactions of children between two and four years of age who have mobility disabilities that cause them to need wheelchairs. She obtains the necessary permissions and consents and arranges to observe children at daycare programs without interacting with them or their caregivers. Guadalupe is assuming the _____ role.
Complete observer
A(n) _____ is a mental image that symbolizes an idea, an object, an event, or a person.
Concept
Milton believes that the teenage boys who are about to become fathers will be more likely to form healthy, enduring bonds with their children if they know how to be fathers. Milton has developed a psychoeducational intervention and wants to find out if it is effective. His research is best described as _____.
Evaluation
Cynda's research on services for the families of children with serious emotional disabilities began with a focus group in which parents identified what they liked and what they disliked about existing services and what additional services they believed would be beneficial. Cynda used the information from the focus group to develop a scale in which parents rated various existing and possible new services are on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being not at all important and 5 being extremely important; and their satisfaction with current services on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being very dissatisfied and 5 being very satisfied. This approach is best characterized as _____.
Exploratory sequential mixed methods
Program evaluators who work for agencies such as government or regulating agencies and private research consultation firms are called _____ evaluators.
External
Qualitative research expands our knowledge of subcultures by providing accurate estimates of the size of such groups.
False
Semiotics involves the constant comparative method.
False
Which paradigm begins with observations and looks for patterns, themes, or common categories using constant comparisons?
Grounded theory
Enrique is conducting a qualitative study of adjustment after spinal cord injury results in quadriplegia (loss of ability to use all limbs). How is he likely to address reliability and validity?
He will provide detailed observations and quotations from multiple perspectives, making conventional definitions of reliability and validity of less concern.
Who is conducting a secondary analysis?
Jake, who is using a new method for understanding social support using purchased data from a study on aging
Maria has constructed a survey of client satisfaction that presents clients with a number of statements like "My worker treats me with respect" and "I feel comfortable in the waiting room" and asks clients to indicate whether they "strongly agree," "agree," "disagree," "strongly disagree," or are "undecided" regarding each statement. Maria is using a(n) _____ scale.
Likert
In comparison to quantitative instruments, qualitative instruments are _____.
More likely to have a free-flowing style
Multiple time-series designs have greater internal validity than simple time-series designs (because they add time-series analysis to the _____ design.
Nonequivalent comparison groups
When researchers try to be _____, they are trying to observe reality without being influenced by the contents of their own minds.
Objective
Being _____ requires that researchers continually reflect on how their own experiences, assumptions, and biases might be influencing what they research, what they or their research participants say or do, and how they interpret what their research participants say or do.
Reflexive
A sample is _____ of its population if the sample's aggregate characteristics closely approximate those same aggregate characteristics in the population.
Representative
In comparison to quantitative research, qualitative research is useful in _____.
Studying phenomena whose meanings are not sufficiently understood
Which type of program evaluation is best described as being concerned with the ultimate success of a program?
Summative
In _____ sampling, every kth element in the total list is chosen for inclusion in the sample.
Systematic
Which type of error occurs when the information we collect consistently reflects a false picture of the concept we seek to measure because of either the way we collect the data or the dynamics of those who are providing the data?
Systematic
The scientific method conceptualizes all knowledge as ____________.
Tentative
Which statement about secondary analysis of data is most accurate?
The researcher can explore trends over time, sometimes over several decades.
A(n) _____ is a systematic set of interrelated statements intended to explain something.
Theory
Milgram's study of obedience has been criticized because _____.
There was a potential for participants to suffer psychological harm
Cultural competence influences all phases of the research process, from conceptualizing research to reporting it.
True
In the mid-19th Century, superintendents at public mental hospitals used discharge rates to support the idea that they "cured" nearly all of their patients despite that they had no effective treatment to offer.
True
Operationalization in qualitative studies is made more difficult by the fact that the salient variables may not be known in advance.
True
Validity refers to the extent to which an empirical measure adequately reflects the real meaning of the concept under consideration.
True
Andre wants to improve attendance at parent/teacher meetings and arranges to offer services that he hopes will do just that at two very similar schools. The families in one school will be offered a free "family dinner" coupled with free childcare afterwards, allowing the parents to attend meetings with teachers and the other will offer free childcare while parents attend meetings with teachers. In the pilot phase of his study, which will last during the first half of the school year, Andre plans to look at the proportion of parents who attend meetings with teachers at each of the schools. What is the dependent variable?
Whether the parents come to the parent/teacher meetings
A paramount ethical issue that bears on feasibility is _____.
Whether the value and quality of the research will outweigh any potential discomfort, inconvenience, or risk experienced by those who participate in the study
Cynda is a school social worker who wants to improve services to the parents of children who receive special education services because of severe emotional disabilities. She starts with a free-flowing focus group in which parents identify what they like and what they dislike about existing services and what additional services they believe would be beneficial. Cynda uses the information from the focus group to develop a scale with two parts: one asks parents how important various existing and possible new services are on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being not at all important and 5 being extremely important; and the other rating satisfaction with current services on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being very dissatisfied and 5 being very satisfied. It is this instrument that is her primary interest. Cynda's approach is best described as _____.
qualitative → QUANTITATIVE
Which mixed method design is often used to generate research questions or techniques?
qualitative → QUANTITATIVE
Dominick is a social worker for a private adoption agency that specializes in the placement of older children and sibling groups. The agency wants to improve its services and starts by sending out a survey to all parents with whom children have been placed over the past two years. They are asked to rate a number of concerns they had adoption using a scale of 1 (not at all a concern) to 5 (an extremely important concern). The top five concerns are selected and Dominick then has focus groups in which he seeks a more nuanced, richer understanding of the concerns themselves and how the agency did (or did not) help. It is the focus group portion of the study that was of most interest to the agency. This research is best described as _____.
quantitative → QUALITATIVE
Which research project is most likely to be granted expedited review by an IRB?
A characterization of the ways social workers are represented in television shows and movies
Anthony and Sarah disagree vehemently about what sorts of counseling services ought to be offered to children who commit violent crimes. Anthony believes that, since they will almost certainly be released from supervision at 18 or 21 at the oldest, it is vital to provide intensive services. Sarah counters that the politician who is the biggest proponent for these services has been married three times, has seven children all of whom live with their mothers, and is known to be far behind in paying support for the children, who he rarely sees. What method is Sarah using to devalue the politician's comments?
Ad hominem attacks
Armando wants to know what the most important challenges in the field of social work are perceived to be, so he sends surveys to the social work faculty and students at his university. Armando is using a(n) _____ sample.
Availability
When considering the issue of compensation for research participants from minority of oppressed groups, it is best to _____.
Avoid paying so much that the amount could be considered coercive
Social workers often work in settings where superiors do not understand or appreciate EBP and do not give practitioners enough time to carry out the EBP process—especially if they follow the _____ approach in searching for evidence.
Bottom-up
In the single-case design, the _____ serves the same function that a control group does in group experiments.
Baseline phase
In constructing the possible responses for closed-ended questions, it is important to remember that they should be _____.
Both mutually exclusive and exhaustive
Stratified sampling may be used when it is either impossible or impractical to compile an exhaustive list of the elements that compose the target population.
False
The _____ is an international nonprofit organization that recruits researchers, practitioners, and consumers into review groups that provide reviews of research on the effects of health care interventions.
Cochrane Collaboration
As Gwendolyn continues her analyses of the data sources, she engages in memoing. For example, she writes _____ notes in which she identifies labels and their meanings.
Code
Sandy works at a crisis residential program for adolescents. In an attempt to improve academic performance, the agency pays youth for their grades. The have found that, as pay increases, performance improves up to a point, but beyond that point academic performance actually gets worse. What type of relationship does this illustrate?
Curvilinear
Christine is testing a new intervention for children who are extremely fearful about going to school and often refuse to go. Children are randomly assigned to the new treatment (experimental) group or the standard treatment (control) group. Christine runs the newly-developed group for the children and their parents while a colleague runs the standard treatment group. Christine's colleague, Sam, believes that the newly-developed treatment is far superior to the old group and feels bad for the children and parents receiving the standard group treatment, which has never been particularly effective. As a result, Sam puts in a lot of extra effort to try to make it up to the children and families in her group and goes well beyond what would normally been done in the standard treatment. Sam has introduced _____.
Compensatory equalization
Gwendolyn wants to make sense of the various ideas she has about loss of child custody associated with substance abuse. She has identified factors associated with the parents (e.g., history of substance abuse or other disorders, education and job skills), with the children (age, special needs), the availability of various types of support and the occurrence of stressors. To better understand them, she produces a graphic representation of the factors and how they are inter-related. Gwendolyn has created a(n) _____.
Concept map
Maura is conducting of how women adjust to having their first baby and is surveying the women just before discharge from the hospital with their babies and again six weeks later. She has an English-language questionnaire that will be translated into three other languages. From a culturally competent measurement point of view, what type of equivalence problem exists with this question, which is to be asked at the six-week follow-up: How often does your baby's crying get on your last nerve?
Conceptual
When instruments and observed behaviors have the same meanings across cultures, they are said to have _____ equivalence.
Conceptual
In research, the refinement and specification of abstract ideas is referred to as _____.
Conceptualization
The first step in operationalization is _____.
Conceptualizing the construct
Thanks to computerized records and algorithms that search for possible name matches based on name, date of birth, Social Security Number and other data, Gwendolyn is able to follow the children whose parents lost custody due to substance abuse once those children become adults. She can identify whether they receive various forms of assistance or social services, whether they have criminal convictions and so on. In terms of Lofland and Lofland's patterns, Gwendolyn is looking for _____.
Consequences
Which paradigm appraises the trustworthiness of research by the extent to which it maximizes objectivity and minimizes the distorting influences of reactivity, researcher biases, and respondent biases using techniques such as triangulation and negative case analysis?
Contemporary positivism
Max has developed a measure of stress among children whose sole care-giving parent has been deployed by the military to a dangerous reason. He wants to be certain that he has covered the range of the children's experiences and concerns. Max is concerned with _____ validity.
Content
Suppose you are conducting research at a social work agency and you want to identify likely pitfalls. Which technique would be most likely to help you?
Content analysis of agency documents and service delivery manuals
Question 5 in a questionnaire asks respondents if they have any children. If they answer yes, question 6 asks for the ages and sexes of their children. If they answer no, they are instructed to skip question 6 and go on to question 7. In this example, Question 6, asking for the ages and sexes of the respondent's children, functions as a(n) _____ question.
Contingency
Gwendolyn is also able to listen to the interactions of parents and children and parents and the worker supervising the visit and children and the worker. She pays particular attention to what is said and how it is said when children ask questions about what is happening or when parents spontaneously explain the situation to children. Gwendolyn is engaging in _____.
Conversation analysis
In discussions of causality, the requirement that changes in the cause are accompanied by changes in the effect is referred to as _____.
Correlation
Lucinda wants to know how different age groups get information about programs that provide assistance with utility bills. She interviews individuals between 19 and 78 years of age, and then analyses the data by 10-year age group (19 to 28, 29 to 38 and so on). This research is best described as _____.
Cross-sectional
The existence of so-called "common factors" regarding the quality of the relationship between the practitioner and the client makes it clear that the intervention itself is relatively unimportant.
False
Silvia is conducting a study that seeks to characterize the mood of remaining employees after a large-scale layoff. She will be using standardized measures of anxiety, depression and satisfaction. Her research is best categorized as _____.
Descriptive
Data analysis in single-case design evaluations includes _____.
Determining whether any change is clinically significant
Qualitative research may use _____, which entails examining cases that do not fit into the regular pattern.
Deviant case sampling
Sam knows that rates of cigarette smoking are higher among individuals with schizophrenia and, when doing street outreach for a drop-in program often carries cigarettes with him as a way to break the ice. If Sam assumes that Charles, who has told Sam that he has schizophrenia, smokes cigarettes and offers him one, Sam has fallen into the _____ fallacy.
Ecological
Barbara Ehrenreich's book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America describes her experiences living on minimum wage jobs. During her research for the book, she lived only on the wages she made, in rentals she could afford and eating meals she could afford. This approach is characteristic of the _____ perspective.
Emic
The term _________ refers to the use of evidence based on observations.
Empirical
Which paradigm appraises the trustworthiness of research by determining whether it provoked action by participants to effect desired change and a redistribution of power?
Empowerment
The term _____ refers to belief in the superiority of one's own culture.
Ethnocentrism
_____ involves following along and observing practitioners in their daily activities.
Ethnographic shadowing
Which qualitative research paradigm focuses on detailed and accurate description rather than explanation?
Ethnography
Hill's criteria for causality, derived from epidemiology but also applicable to social work, include the _____.
Existence of a plausible, consistent, and coherent explanation for the relationship
Dominick's research on services related to the placement of older children and sibling groups started with quantitative ratings of services. Suppose that the focus groups, rather than being the main focus, were used to better understand the quantitative results. This research is best described as _____.
Explanatory sequential mixed methods
_____ refers to the extent to which we can generalize the findings of a study to settings and populations beyond the study conditions.
External Validity
In the United States, the Tuskegee syphilis study, which started in 1932 in Alabama by the Public Health Service and involved poor African American male sharecroppers who had syphilis, _____.
Failed to tell the men they had syphilis, thus exposing them and their partners to risk
Aggregate data are typically analyzed at the level of the individual as the unit of analysis.
False
Content analysis is a way of transforming quantitative material into qualitative data.
False
Cross-sectional studies may have exploratory or descriptive purposes, but not explanatory purposes.
False
Double-barreled questions are particularly efficient and effective ways to collect information about complex topics.
False
EBP is a restrictive approach that downplays both professional expertise and client values and preferences.
False
In general, if a survey has less than a 70% response rate, it is of no value.
False
In general, it is best to take detailed notes first rather than trying to fill in details later.
False
In general, you should put off doing your literature review until after you have sharpened your research question to avoid reviewing irrelevant work.
False
In order to gain the cooperation of staff, it is best to allow them to decide what should and should not be included in the final report.
False
In selecting informants for qualitative research, the researcher is typically best served by selecting individuals who are "deviant cases" and thus atypical of the group being studied.
False
In social work research, the terms research problem and research question are considered to be distinctly different and not interchangeable.
False
It is not possible to operationally define variables that exist only in terms of our idiosyncratic conceptions of them.
False
Most scholars believe that social work research is typically value-free.
False
Katrina is conducting a longitudinal study of individuals with severe mental illnesses who are discharged by psychiatric hospitals back to the street rather than a shelter or other residence. In order to get back in contact with the participants, she must sometimes ask other people on the street about where they might be. Katrina is using the _____ method.
Field tracking
_____ groups are guided discussions among a small group of people that might stimulate some participants to think of or express things that they might not have considered or expressed in an individual interview.
Focus
The tendency for people in a group to conform with the opinions and decisions of the most outspoken members of the group is referred to as _____.
Groupthink
Which of the following questions is an open-ended question?
How do you feel about open- and closed-ended questions?
How are hypotheses generally used in historical and comparative analyses?
Hypotheses are revised and reformulated continuously in the process of analysis and synthesis.
When we try to explain a person's behavior by enumerating the many reasons for it, reasons that might be unique to that individual, we are using the _____ model of explanation.
Idiographic
Cal is preparing to appear before his university's IRB to discuss a survey he has proposed. His mentor suggested that he look at a particular question and revise it. What is the problem with this question: Is your gender male or female?
If the question is intended to get at the internal experience of being female, male or somewhere in between it is ok, but if it means the category to which an individual is assigned at birth, it should ask about sex or born-sex.
Reasoning from particular instances to general principles is referred to as _____ reasoning.
Inductive
In social work research studies, a(n) _____ is a conclusion that can be logically drawn in light of our research design and our findings.
Inference
A(n) _____ is an unplanned and unanticipated interaction between an interviewer and a respondent that occurs naturally during the course of fieldwork observation.
Informal conversational interview
In the evidence-based practice (EBP) model, research _____ decisions.
Informs
Any agency wishing to receive federal research support must establish a(n) _____, a panel of faculty and nonfaculty who review all research proposals involving human subjects and rule on their ethics.
Institutional Review Board
Gwendolyn decides to use grounded theory method to aid in her analysis of the data on parents who lose child custody because of substance abuse. She notices that even moderate severity substance abuse is associated with loss of child custody when the family has lost their housing, and suspects this is because workers at family shelters are willing to report concerns to child protective services. On the other hand, families that are socially and geographically isolated often do not come to the attention of authorities until the substance abuse is very severe and the child neglect is extreme. She also notes that the duration and severity of substance abuse are greater among families that have extensive social support and access to resources than it is among less well-supported families. Gwendolyn is best described as _____.
Integrating categories and their properties
Olivia has developed an instrument that measures the quality of the interactions between first-time mothers and their newborns. After administering it to a number of women, she assesses the correlation of the scores on each item with the scores on the rest of the items. What type of reliability is she assessing?
Internal consistency
_____ refers to the confidence we have that the results of a study accurately depict whether one variable is or is not a cause of another.
Internal validity
_____ researchers attempt to gain an empathic understanding of how people feel inside, seeking to understand individuals' everyday experiences, deeper meanings and feelings, and idiosyncratic reasons for their behaviors.
Interpretive
Tamara has developed an instrument to measure social isolation in young children. She has two research assistants observe the same children and score each child's behavior. Tamara then uses a statistical test to measure the degree of agreement. Tamara is assessing the instruments _____ reliability.
Interrater
The _____ method of behavioral recording involves dividing an observation period into short, equal blocks of time and then recording whether the target behavior occurred at all during each block.
Interval
Why evaluate an intervention if published studies have already provided credible evidence of its effectiveness?
Interventions are tested with specific population groups, and the client may be a member of a population for which it does not work.
Comparisons of survey methods suggest that _____.
Interview surveys generally produce fewer incomplete questionnaires
An advantage of probability sampling is that, when properly done, it _____.
Is unbiased
The _____ mixed-method design is distinguished by the use of several projects that are implemented over time in a longitudinal study in which the multiple projects focus on a common objective.
Multiphase
By using _____, researchers can detect whether one group is already engaged in a change process and the other is not.
Multiple pretests
Bradley is conducting a survey of the client services directors at private social services agencies. He is very concerned about being able to offer the participants, who he knows to be very busy, the ability to choose the most convenient way to completing the survey. Which method would be the best for him?
Multiple response modes / one contact mode
Oswald is conducting a content analysis of the portrayals of severely mentally ill individuals on television shows. After an initial review of data, he finds that individuals with schizophrenia are often portrayed as violent while those with other disorders are not. Oswald then reviews the data again, identifying individuals with other disorders who are portrayed as violent. Oswald is best described as engaging in _____.
Negative case testing
Your social services agency is on the state's emergency preparedness team. The state police superintendent wants to know how your agency would respond to a large scale incident resulting in widespread casualties. He has heard that critical incident stress debriefing is particularly helpful. Is he right?
No, it is not effective.
Annamae is a school social worker who believes that bullying prevention is critical to the wellbeing of children. She has developed a psychoeducational intervention that she believes will increase the ability of children to identify bullying for what it is and have the skills to report the bullying to adults and resist the negative effects of bullying. She wants to test the program's effectiveness with fifth graders but she cannot randomly assign students to the treatment or control groups. Since the school has two essentially equivalent fifth grade classes in separate classrooms, she decides that one class will receive the new program and the other half will receive the standard program. Which design is Annamae using?
Nonequivalent comparison groups design
After a particularly upsetting workplace violence incident at a social services agency, Juanita conducts a survey of licensed social workers in her state. She randomly selects 500 individuals from the list of over 8000 provided by the state board of social workers. Based on the information from the board, Juanita knows the licensure level of all of the individuals she recruited and she also knows the year in they were first credentialed by the state. Juanita asked about licensure level and year of initial credentialing in her survey and notices that the individuals who completed the surveys were much more likely to have only a bachelor's degree and were more likely to be recently licensed. Juanita is most likely having problems related to _____.
Nonresponse bias
_____ are what we experience in the real world that help us build a theory or verify whether it is correct.
Observations
Guy is conducting qualitative research involving bereaved fathers and is observing a support group of fathers who have lost newborns. The group is aware that he is there as a researcher and, although he interacts with group members in a social way, he does not participate in the group. What role has Guy assumed?
Observer as participant
Shawn tests his psychoeducational parenting skills group by observing his 13 to 17 year-old clients with their infants to rate the quality of the interactions, providing the group and then observing them with their infants again. Which design has Shawn used?
One-group pretest-posttest design
Which preexperimental design involves making an intuitive judgment as to whether the posttest result is "high" or "low?"
One-shot case study
What does research indicate about response rates for online surveys?
Online surveys appear to have response rates approximately comparable to mail surveys.
In research, developing specific research procedures that will result in empirical observations is referred to as _____.
Operationalization
The first step in content analysis is to _____.
Operationalize the dependent variable
Marlyss measures popularity in an elementary school classroom by asking the children to name the person they would most like to play with at recess. She then creates a composite rank for all of the children from most popular (the most nominations) to least popular (the fewest nominations). Marlyss' is using a(n) _____ scale.
Ordinal
Vida assisted in the provision of services to a large group of individuals who had been laid off when an urban factory closed. In addition to working with individuals, she was responsible for maintaining lists of other employers in the area who were hiring workers with similar skills and education. Several months later, Vida heard from Amy, with whom she had gone to school. Amy is a social worker in a rural community that just lost the employer of the majority of its residents when factory closed down. Vida has happy to provide advice on helping people find new jobs, but recognizes that, since Vida's experience was with a large urban area in which there were numerous other employers and Amy is in a rural community with no other factories or large employers, she will need to be conscious of the risks of _____.
Overgeneralization
Leila has been studying the career trajectories of a group of social workers for the past 20 years. They were randomly selected from among those who were newly licensed in 1995 and she has surveyed the same individuals every 5 years since then. This is best described as a(n) _____ study.
Panel
Nicole has volunteered working with Habitat for Humanity builds for several years. When she has the opportunity to work on an all-female build, she decides it would be a wonderful chance to document both the Habitat process and the strength of the bonds that develop among the volunteers. With the appropriate permissions and approvals, she works as a volunteer on the build but also, with the knowledge of other volunteers, works as a researcher. What role has Nicole assumed?
Participant as observer
In _____ the researcher's function is to serve as a resource to those being studied as an opportunity for them to act effectively in their own interest.
Participatory action research
Psychoeducational groups have been found to be effective in helping the family members of individuals who have just been diagnosed with schizophrenia. However, some families attend but choose not to participate and benefit very little. Kara decides to interview these families to understand why they attend but do not participate. Kara is using _____ sampling.
Purposive
Which research methods are more likely to tap the deeper meanings of particular human experiences and generate theoretically richer observations?
Qualitative
Arthur is conducting unstructured, open-ended interviews with a small number of practitioners regarding how the implementation of the Affordable Care Act has impacted their clients. This research is best described as _____.
Qualitative exploratory
Which research methods emphasize the production of precise and generalizable statistical findings?
Quantitative
Suppose your state created extensive and convoluted new paperwork for individuals applying for the Medicaid Waiver Program that is supposed to help individuals with severe disabilities remain in their communities rather than be placed in nursing homes. After nearly all applicants using the new paperwork are denied, your agency works with the state to develop a training on how to complete the new forms. Knowledge of how to complete the forms is assessed by scores on a multiple choice test given both before and after the training. This research is best described as _____.
Quantitative evaluation
Which paradigm appraises the trustworthiness of research by whether multiple subjective realities are adequately depicted using methods such as fittingness and transferability?
Social constructivism
The tendency to answer questions in ways that will make the respondent look good is referred to as _____ bias.
Social desirability
The _____ approach to needs assessment examines aggregated statistics that reflect conditions of an entire population.
Social indicators
What makes the _____ mixed-methods design distinct is not the degree of emphasis or the sequencing of the qualitative and quantitative methods, but rather, that it is aimed at collecting data that will yield a call for action to improve the plight of vulnerable, marginalized or oppressed groups.
Social justice
In interviewing, _____ are explanatory and clarifying comments about how to handle difficult or confusing situations that may occur with specific questions in the questionnaire.
Specifications
Jessie finds that, as the amount of time children spend playing video games at a local after school program increases, their academic performance increases. However, she soon finds that children do not get to play video games until their homework is complete and that the amount of time they get on the games is related to the quality of the work they have done. This suggests that the relationship between the amount of time children spend playing video games and academic performance is _____.
Spurious
After the Supreme Court decision regarding marriage equality, opponents argued that marriage equality opened the door to marriage to dogs and one politician, claiming a lawyer had told him that only one person was needed for a marriage, memorably suggested that a person could marry his or her lawnmower. This is best described as _____.
Straw person argument
Which design involves administering the treatment to the comparison group after the first posttest?
Switching replications
According to Gambrill, because EBP is primarily a compassionate, client-centered approach to practice, it is important to consider _____.
The values and concerns of clients
In 1994, NIH issued a directive that all research projects funded by NIH that involve human subjects must include adequate representation of women and members of ethnic minority groups in their samples, unless _____.
There is a clear and compelling justification for not including them
Key concepts in single-case evaluation designs are multiple measurement points and unlikely coincidences.
True
You feel absolutely certain that there will be pumpkin, sweet potato and pecan pie for dessert at your family's Thanksgiving supper because that is the way it has always been. Your knowledge is best described as being based on ___________.
Tradition
In the single-case evaluation design, _____ means that more than one indicator of the same target problem is to be measured.
Triangulation
Although key informants typically have more direct, personal knowledge of the subject under study than the researcher initially has, what they "know" is probably a mixture of fact and point of view.
True
Although the abstract model of science is divorced from ideology, the practice of science is not.
True
Ora works for a community mental health center and wants to make the case to the state that there is a need for more services for individuals who are victims of domestic violence. Ora knows that, as a part of the telephone intake process that occurs when someone calls for an initial appointment, individuals are asked about safety issues including domestic violence. However, as an experienced worker, she knows that a substantial number of individuals who are in violent relationships do not acknowledge this until after they have built a trusting relationship with their worker. This suggests that the telephone intake data may have a problem with _____.
Underestimation of the true rate
Myra reads the following statement on a consent form: You may decide not to participate at all or, if you start the study, you may withdraw at any time. Withdrawal or refusing to participate will not affect your relationship with Municipal Social Services Agency in anyway. You and/or your child's refusal to participate will involve no penalty or loss of benefits to which you or your child are otherwise entitled. You may withdraw your consent, and your child may draw his/her assent, at any time and discontinue participation without penalty. This statement pertains to the _____ of the research.
Voluntariness
When evaluating systematic reviews and meta-analyses, it is important to consider _____.
Whether the authors of their affiliated institutions or agencies had a financial stake in the findings.
Andre is a school social worker in a community in which getting parents involved in their children's education is difficult. Many of the parents work, and he suspects that coming home from a hard day's work, feeding the kids, arranging for someone to watch the kids and then going to school for a meeting is part of the problem. He works with the district's vocational school, which has both culinary and child development/care programs and, using donations from local businesses, arranges to provide services at two schools that serve very similar populations. Historically, only about 20% of the parents have shown up for the monthly parent/teacher meetings at each of the schools. The families in one school will be offered a free "family dinner" coupled with free childcare afterwards, allowing the parents to attend meetings with teachers and the other will offer free childcare while parents attend meetings with teachers. In the pilot phase of his study, which will last during the first half of the school year, Andre plans to look at the proportion of parents who attend meetings with teachers at each of the schools. What is the independent variable?
Whether the families get a meal + childcare or only childcare
Terence just received a package of delicious cupcakes from a gourmet food company. The company sent him an e-mail asking him to rate the deliciousness of his order and by clicking on the face that best represented his feelings, and showed him a selection of five emoticons ranging from very unhappy to very happy. Research suggests that the use of such "smiley faces" _____.
Yields about the same ratings as a verbal scale
