SOME TINGS ARE BOUND TO BEEE

What is a population?

The group of people or things you’re interested

What is an example of unit of analysis?

If your population is SB students, the student is your unit of analysis (not SB as a school but the individual students).

If your population is NFL games, the _______ is your unit of analysis

game

What are cases? 

Each concrete single unit of your population 

What is an example of a case? 

If your population is SB students, each concrete student that you may study is one of your cases.

If your population is NFL games, _______ that you study is a case

each INDIVIDUAL game

What is the difference between a case and a unit of analysis?

case= EACH specific entity being analyzed

unit of analysis= the entity in general

What is a sample?

the subset of cases within your population for which you have information.

What is a variable? 

anything that has a quantity or quality that varies

What is an example of a variable?

height, weight, number of siblings, favorite song, etc (within a population/sample)

What are QUANTITATIVE variables?

NUMERICAL VALUES!!!

(age, income, how many cups of coffee you have in the morning)

What are QUALITATIVE variables?

WORDS AS VALUES!!!

(religion, where you are from, favorite pizza topping)

What are the formats of datasets?

spreadsheets

• Cases are rows

• Columns are variables 

In a dataset spreadsheet, cases are _________?

rows

In a dataset spreadsheet, variables are

columns

What is a visual example of a spreadsheet?

What is a visual example of a variable in a spreadsheet? 

What is a visual example of a case in a spreadsheet? 

What is a codebook?

a text document (MS Word or PDF) listing the variables (questions) and the options that respondents could choose from.

What is conceptualization (of variables)?

defining the variables

What are examples of conceptualizations?

• Dimensions

• Indicators

• Definition

In terms of a variable, what is a dimension?

different aspects or sides 

What are examples of a dimension? 

• different causes

• types of symptoms

• coping mechanisms 

In terms of a variable, what is an indicator?

simple measures “indicating” the absence/presence or frequency of something that may be revealing.

What is an example of an indicator?

If our focus in on schoolwork-related stress, an
indicator could be how often the student worries about schoolwork.

If our focus is on symptoms,
an indicator could be whether the __________

student is able to sleep restfully

Based on the dimension and indicator that we decide to single out, we can go ahead and ________ the concept

define

Stress, for instance, could be defined as _______________

• worrying about schoolwork on a
  regular basis

• by one its symptoms (as anxiety-induced loss of sleep)

What is operationalization (of variables)? 

how exactly to measure or observe the variable in the real world.

The way researchers usually employ operationalization is through ___________

questions 

Questions can either be ____________ or____________

open or closed

An open question is when the respondent can __________

answer any way they want

A closed question is when the respondent ____________

choose from a list of options

What are attributes/categories?

the options respondents choose from (within a closed question format)

What are some examples of attributes/ categories (within a closed question format)

If the variable is religion: (Muslim, Christian, Catholic, etc.)

If I write a question that
asks people to rank their preferences from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree,” the
attributes may be __________________

1) Strongly Agree

2) Agree

3) Neutral

4)Disagree

5) Strongly Disagree

The TWO REQUIREMENTS of an attribute are:

1) They must be EXHAUSTIVE

2) They must be mutually exclusive

When an attribute is EXHAUSTIVE, it means that ________________

meaning that all possible answers are covered by the attributes—that’s why it’s common to include “Other” as an option

When an attribute is MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, it means that ________________

here’s no overlap between attributes: they need to exclude each other

What is measurement level?

One of the main decisions we make in operationalizing our variables is whether we’ll collect
quantitative data  or qualitative data

Measurement level focuses on ________________ variables

continuous and categorical

What is a CONTINUOUS variable?

Variables that measure quantities

What is an example of a continuous variable?

age, income, blood pressure, number of siblings, hours worked per week, GPA

(NUMERICAL VALUES!!!)

What is an example of a categorical variable?

gender, race, religion, place of birth, favorite color, and any yes/no questions

(WORDS!!!!)

What are 2 types of categorical variables?

NOMINAL and ORDINAL.

What are examples of questions asked for nominal variables?

“Are you an athlete?” or “What’s your favorite
pizza topping?”

(NO PARTICULAR ORDER!!!!!)

What are examples of questions asked for ordinal variables?

“What is your school year”? or questions that ask strongly agree all the way
to strongly disagree

(YOU CAN ORDER THE ANSWERS FROM LOW TO HIGH (AND VICE VERSA)!!!!!)

What kind of variable is GENDER?

It’s a nominal variable

What kind of variable is RELIGION?

It’s a nominal variable

What kind of variable is RACE?

It’s a nominal variable

What kind of variable is AGE?

It’s a continuous variable

What kind of variable is EDUCATION? (number of years in school)

It’s a continuous variable

What kind of variable is EDUCATION? (highest level of education achieved)

It’s an ordinal variable

What kind of variable is PLACE OF BIRTH?

It’s a nominal variable

What kind of variable is ZIPCODE? (!!!!)

It’s a nominal variable

What kind of variable is INCOME?

It’s a continuous variable

What kind of variable is MURDER? (like how many murders were committed?)

It’s a continuous variable

What kind of variable is SCHOOL YEAR?

It’s an ordinal variable

What kind of variable is “FROM 1-5: HOW LIKELY ARE YOU TO VOTE?”

It’s an ordinal variable

Continuous variables offer ________ precise data than categorical variables.

more

What is an index?

a variable that results from combining other variables

(asking several questions and combining the answers)

What is a questionnaire?

The list of questions that you will use to create your survey form.

A typical questionnaire is likely to include both ________________

Demographic and Behavioral/attitudinal questions

In a questionaire, both question types are acceptable but __________ is preferred

closed

In deciding how to write our questions we need to pay attention to each question’s
________________ ; (whether we want it to be nominal, ordinal, or continuous)

measurement level 

What are demographic questions ?

questions that gather information about the respondent's personal
characteristics

What are some examples of personal characteristics being evaluated in a demographic question ?

age, gender, race, ethnicity, education level, income, marital status, and
location

For the population you are studying, you will adjust questions. For instance, if your population is college students, you will ___________

not be interested in education level, since you know that everyone is at the same level

Why do we ask demographic questions?

Because these basic characteristics about who we are or
where we live—even when they are not necessarily connected to our topic—may still make a
difference for the behaviors or attitudes we want to understand

It is common to ask the demographic questions at the _______ of the survey.

end

(we don’t want these questions to influence how people answer your other
questions!!!)

What are behavioral/attitudinal questions?

questions about things people do/don’t do, like/don’t
like, believe in/don’t believe in, etcetera.

What are some examples of behavioral/attitudinal questions? 

• how often you attend church

• whether you voted in the last election

• how much you enjoy meeting new people.

Demographic questions are used to ________________

describe the group in a general sense

Behavioral/attitudinal questions are used to ___________

explore the specific topic we want to study

What is the advantage of open questions?

people may say things that we don’t expect (unique answers)

What is the disadvantage of open questions?

difficult to organize

What is an example of a continuous question that ALSO works as closed question? 

“:How many pets do you have?”

(easy to organize)

What helps make an attribute exhaustive?

Adding OTHER as an option

For closed questions, you need to write the ___________ and the _________

the question and the attributes (options)

You can always turn a continuous data into ordinal or nominal data, BUT __________

NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!!!!!

More detail in a survery can lead to _______ accuracy

LESS

You need to decide what type of data to collect (nominal, ordinal, or continuous) based on ______________

what you want to know

The ideal question accomplishes three goals: 

• It measures the underlying concept it is intended to tap
• It doesn’t measure other concepts
• It means the same thing to all respondents

The following rules to accomplish the ideal questions are:

• Avoid vague terms

• Define things very specifically

• Avoid complex sentences

• Provide reference frames

• Avoid double barreled questions

What is an example of a double-barreled question? 

“Do you think that SB classes should be easier and more interesting?”

What is univariate analysis?

looking at one variable at a time

What is a frequency distribution?

it’s a way of looking at what answers are more or less frequent.

What is a frequency table?

It shows the answers and how many people
choose each of them, expressed both as total
number of cases (we call this N—for number of
cases) and as a percentage of the total number of
cases.

(represents the distribution for nominal
variables

What is a histogram?

another common way to represent a distribution

(represents the distribution for a continuous variable!!!!)

____________________ are used to represent the distribution for a continuous variable

histograms

________________ are used to represent the distribution for a nominal variable 

frequency tables

In terms of distribution, ordinal terms can be represented in both __________ and ______________

frequency tables and histograms

What is a normal distribution (BELL CURVE)?

The kind of distribution where most cases are in
the middle.

Most distributions in real life are not “normal”, However, one example of a variable that would have a “normal” distribution would be ______________? 

height

( as most people tend to be of “average” height,)

What is a positively skewed distribution? 

when most cases are on the lower end—but then
there are some relatively few cases on the very high end.

(“skew” the distribution to the right)

What is a negatively skewed distribution?

when most cases are on the high end of the distribution, but there are some relatively few
much lower cases on the left side

( low cases (“outliers”) skew the distribution to
the left )

Positively skewed distribution is skewed to the _______

right

Negatively skewed distribution is skewed to the _______

left

What is a bimodel/multimodal distribution?

the type of distributions where cases are concentrated not in one area but in two (bimodal distribution) or more (multimodal distribution)

An example of a bimodal/multimodal distribution?

traffic; It tends to be higher at rush hour, both
in the morning (when people go to work) and afternoon (when people come back home).