Extra Credit Test

what most accurately states the focus of sociology? Sociology is the study of

social life

which of the following is an example of a macrosociological topic?

trends in global capitalism

a cross sectional study cannot establish causality because

cross sectional studies measure people at just one point in time

in order to avoid the ecological fallacy, researchers should follow a simple rule:

Use triangulation as a principle for choosing research methods.

A _____design is the only type of time design that collects data at one time

cross-sectional

Three general conditions guide a social scientist's formulation of their question: its social importance, scientific relevance, and

feasibility

Most experts agree it is virtually impossible for researchers to be completely in their work.

value-free

What is the purpose of theory?

to explain and illuminate some element of social life

Most theories are testable and falsifiable as well as generalizable. But theories should also be

probabilistic

If a relation between concepts is _____ it cannot possibly be a causal relationship .

spurious

A key question is the main spark of a research project, but from where does this question come? The first step in asking a question is

selecting a topic

 ______ approaches move from the concrete to the abstract; _____ approaches move from

Inductive; deductive

A broad set of taken-for-granted and often unacknowledged assumptions about how social reality is to be defined Is

a paradigm

A hypothesis is a ____ statement of an_____ between two concepts

testable; relationship

A strong literature review identifies gaps in

the existing knowledge base related to a topic

In a causal hypothesis, the concept purported to be the cause is defined as the

_______, because it is the variable that ______.

independent variable; affects another variable

in mediation, a new variable may be introduced that links the independent variable to the dependent variable. This new "connecting variable" is called a(n) ____ variable.

mediating

One ______ a bad or evil person to perform unethical research. Many

instances of unethical research occur when researchers ____

does not have to be; have not fully thought through the ways in which their research could harm people

Three ethical principles were described in the _____Report of 1979, which

forms the foundation of our national system designed to protect humans who take part in medical or social science research.

Belmont

Which ethical guideline was violated in Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment?

benefits clearly outweighed harm

Which of the following statements about informed consent is true?

Informed consent can be given by signing a form or by agreeing orally.

In the United States, ______ boards ensure that research adheres to all ethical principles

institutional review

Under which scenario should subjects be debriefed?

 When researchers use deception

what did researchers do to the subjects in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment?

denied them newly available antibiotics so researchers could study the natural course of the disease

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

The process of precisely definite ideas and turning them into variables is called

conceptualization

What is an issue with using the federal poverty line (FLP) to measure poverty?

A and C are both correct

A sociologist who suggests that the local context of cost of living matters in calculating poverty would probably argue for which type of definition? 

relative

Variables that has values that can be ordered but have no fixed distance between them is called a(n) ____ variables

ordinal

Representations that capture different dimensions, categories, or levels of a concept are called

variables

A single concept can be studied with _____ unit(s) of analysis, in part because individual-level data can be ____.

different; aggregated

______ and _____ variables are always categorical

nominal; ordinal

 The response categories for closed-ended questions should be both mutually exclusive and

exhaustive

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

A measure that metaphorically can be said to “consistently hit the bullseye” is

both valid and reliable

The federal poverty line (FPL) is ____ measure

reliable

which statement about reliability and validity is true?

validity is much more difficult to assess than reliability 

cronbach’s alpha is a calculation that can be used to assess the reliability of _____. According to convention, cronbach’s alphas scored above _____ are generally considered to be reliable.

composite ; 0.7

One way to improve reliability is to assess _____. Which is a protocol testing how well a measure works

robustness

Is the purpose of a pilot test?

It is used to see how well the measure works and whether it presents any problems that need to be fixed before the study is carried out.

the degree to which the results of a study can be generalized is called

external validity

Why is internal validity difficult to assess in social research?

All of the above are correct.

After conceptualization and operationalization, which of the following steps generally occurs first in the research process?

sampling

A sample that is representative

does not systematically differ from the population.

Through which method are participants selected into a probability sample?

random selection

______ error refers to the difference between the estimates from a sample and the true parameters that arise due to random chance

unbiased

Which type of probability sample is useful why there is no readily available sampling frame from researchers to use?

cluster

For which type of research goal are representative samples a good choice?

hypothesis testing

Which sampling strategy is particularly useful for studying social groups about which little information is known?

 snowball

_____ sampling allows researchers to make decisions about what additional data on the basis of their findings from ongoing analysis of data already collected.

sequential

the concept “socioeconomic status” often incorporates income, education, and employment characteristic. what is this an example of?

dimensions of conceptualization

a variable that represents identification with different racial-ethic groups is a nominal variable because

values cannot be ranked

what of the following is a FALSE statement about a continuous variable

its values cannot be ranked

which of the following operationalization of poverty is an ABSOLUTE standard (select two answers)

1. whether a n individual feels they have less in savings than other in their neighborhood

2. whether a household earns less than the 10th percentile of income in the US

3. whether a household has enough savings to cover an emergency cost of $400

4. whether a household earns an income that is below the federal poverty line

3. whether a household has enough savings to cover an emergency cost of $400

4. whether a household earns an income that is below the federal poverty line

lila is interested in studying romantic relationship satisfaction, and she respondents to rate how satisfied they are with their romantic relationships on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being very dissatisfied and 5 being very satisfied. lila has created a/an _______ variable to measure satisfaction

ordinal

alfonso 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 major is a(n) _____ variable, and individual annual income is a(n) ______ variable

nominal; ratio

what is the correct order of each types of variable to the examples below?

• how happy would you say you are? (very happy, somewhat happy, somewhat unhappy, or very unhappy)

• income from paid work in the prior month

• an athlete’s pulse after 30 minute run

• how would you describe your living situation? (own your home, rent on a lease, live with someone who is a renter or owner, or other)

ordinal; ratio; interval; nominal

a criminologist conducted research on criminals and neighborhood and concluded as below

• more visible signals of low-level crime, like graffiti, in a neighborhood are associated with more high-level crimes, like assault. therefore, individuals who live in areas with low-level crime are more likely to commit higher-level crimes as well

what type of error did the research make?

ecological fallacy

a researcher conducted a study on owning pets and happiness. she found that people who owned pets were, on average, happier than those who did not. accordingly, she advocated for a nationwide campaign encouraging adults to adopt a pet for the purpose of improving mental health. what type of error did the researcher make?

reductionism

which of the following is NOT a scenario that uses manipulation in research?

in order to learn more about influences job satisfaction, a researcher asks women about their experiences with sexism on the job, but does not ask their martial status

imagine a group of researchers set out to improve the CES-D scale of depressive symptoms by revising the wording of some items to be applicable across racial or ethnic identification and immigrant background. select two the possible effects of this project

1. it would improve the scale’s external validity

2. it would improve the scale’s internal reliability

3. the new measure would produce the same data as the old measure

4. it would be more useful for comparing depressive symptoms across groups

1. it would improve the scale’s external validity

4. it would be more useful for comparing depressive symptoms across groups

fill in the blanks to complete the sentence about study validity. the two types of study validity are ______ validity, which concerns the degree to which a study is generalizable beyond the study itself, and ______ validity, which is concerned with whether a study can establish a casual effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable

external; internal

researchers measure the ____ of a composite variable by calculating _____.

internal validity; Cohen’s kappa (k)

the examples below show different ways to access _____.

• taking a random sample of 100 respondents, and testing a composite variable by giving 50 people half of the item in the larger variable and the other 50 people the other half, then comparing the average scores

• asking a small sample of answer a survey before distributing it to a much larger sample of respondents

• following a set of respondents for two months and asking them to take a survey about their work habits at the beginning and end of that period, then comparing the results

robustness

identify whether or not following studies have problems with external validity

• a survey on nutrition and eating habits is handed out each day in front of a fast-food restaurant

• researchers are interested in whether stress affects one’s sense of smell. they set up a lab experiments in which subjects are put through a difficult test and then asked to identify foods by scent

problems; problems

researchers gerwin and coakley wish to conduct a study on what prompts some people to use public transit rather than private cars. using cities than have a mass transit system, they want to balance their sample by urbanicity. place the steps of this balancing in order from first to last

1. randomly select residents within each city, with more residents selected from larger cities

2. divide the cities in small, medium, or larger categories

3. obtain a list of cities in the US with mass transit system

3-2-1

dr jackson has designed a survey to examine the effects of mental health resources on the stigma climate on college campuses. he sends his surveys to college administrators and support staff. he finds that greater mental health outreach on college campuses leads to lower levels of stigma on campuses. what is dr. jackson’s target population?

college campuses

fill in the blanks to complete the sentence about using a probability sample to estimate a population parameter

• using a probability sample to estimate a population parameter has the advantage of being ____ and assured that any difference between the estimate and the true population parameter is due to _____ rather than systemic error

unbiased; sampling error

which sampling is used in each study?

• a sleep study of people with gym memberships selected 100 gyms at random across the US and then 50 members from each selected gym;

• a study of students’ feelings of belonging at a single high school divided the students into groups by gender and year and selected 50 students from each group for a survey

cluster sampling; stratified sampling

choose the answer the best completes the passage. in study of older americans, researchers deliberately select a larger proportion of adults over the age of 90 than in found in the general population. this group of selected adults over the age is known as a(n)

oversample

a researcher wishes to study dating relationships among college students and wants to ensure that there are enough LGBTQ students included in her sample. in the study, researchers may be more likely to use ____ sampling.

stratified

fill in the blanks to complete the passage about over sampling.

• when researchers oversample a particular group of people, they are weighting to adjust their statistical estimated appropriately. for example, if a study oversampled asian americans so that researcher had ten times the number of asian americans respondents than they might expect by chance, researchers would need to multiple those individuals’ responses by ____ in their analysis.

one tenth

fill in blanks to complete the sentence about nonrepresentative samples

• researchers often use nonrepresentative sample to identify causal relationships, because the diversity of representative sample makes detecting cause-and-effect relationships more ____ and because researchers can gather better information from ____ sample

difficult; nonresponsive

julio needs to collect data from 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

convivence

researchers Hernandez and smith are interested in studying the effects of partner depression on romantic relationship quality and plant to use nationally representative survey data. to conduct their study, the research must complete several task. which of the following should be THIRD step of their research process?

decided how to measure depression and romantic relationship quality

after psychologists identify a possible cause and effect relationship among a small homogenous sample such as students at a local college, how might they extend their research to make it more generalizable? select two correct answers

1. they could try running the same experiment on other small and homogenous samples that are not college students

2. they could try running the same experiment on a nationally representative groups of people

3. they could try running the same experiment on the same group of college students

4. they could try running a different experiment on a new group of college students

1. they could try running the same experiment on other small and homogenous samples that are not college students

2. they could try running the same experiment on a nationally representative groups of people

dr williams is planning a study of how religious institutions create social capital among members. she decided to study three religious organizations, each of a different religion and each of moderate size and age for its type. which term describes this approach to selecting cases?

purposive sampling

identify ALL the scenarios in which snowball sampling would be useful (select two answers)

1. a researcher wishes to survey a nationally representative group of elderly americans

2. a research wishes to interview transgender men and women about their experiences in the workplace

3. a researcher wishes to interview college students at three local universities

4. a researcher wishes to interview former cult members

2. a research wishes to interview transgender men and women about their experiences in the workplace

4. a researcher wishes to interview former cult members