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58 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What are the four ways of knowing?
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Tenacity (tradition), Authority, Intuition, and Science
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What does science involve? How is science superior to other ways of knowing?
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Science involves the combination of rationalism and empiricism (logic & observation), and is superior to other ways of knowing because it protects from the common pitfalls of human inquiry.
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What are the basic steps in the scientific method?
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i. Select problem
ii. Review existing research and theory iii. Develop Hypothesis iv. Research design v. Collect relevant data vi. Analyze and interpret in an appropriate form vii. Replicate |
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Define Theory
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a systematic explanation for observations that relate to a specific aspect of life
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Define Concept
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abstract elements representing classes of phenomena within the field of study
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Define Variable
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an observable characteristic of an object or event that can be described according to some well-defied classification or measurement scheme… can be any property that can take on different values (1) conceptual definitions that specifiy multiple conceptual aspects of a variable using words (2) operational definitions that specify observable indicators of a variable and how the indicators can be observed and measured
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Hypothesis
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A specified testable expectation about empirical reality that follows from a more general proposition; the relationship is derived from existing theories, research, observation
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How do research questions and hypotheses differ?
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Hypothesis specifies the direction of the relationship between variables, whilst the RQ may or may not.
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What does it mean to specify the “direction” of a relationship?
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The direction refers to the measurable aspect of the variable (ie Postive versus negative relationship). The relationship is derived from existing theories, research, and observation.
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What is a variable?
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A variable is basically any property that can take on different values.
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What are the two types of variables used in research?
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the independent variable and dependent variable. The independent variable is the force that is affecting the dependent variable, and the dependent variable is the thing being affected by the independent variable.
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What is conceptualization?
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“the mental process whereby fuzzy and imprecise notions (concepts) are made more specific and precise”
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What is operationalization?
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Specify observable indicators of a variable and how these indicators can be observed and measured.
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What is measurement?
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A precise and specific scheme for the assignment of numbers or symbols to specify different characteristics of a variable.
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What are the four levels of measurement? How do they differ?
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i. Nominal Measures – variables with attributes that can be placed into discrete, unordered, mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories
ii. Ordinal Measures – variables with attributes we can logically rank order, that is, ordered from least to most (for frequency, quatity, magnitude, size, value etc.) iii. Interval Measures – has all the characteristics of of ordinal measures + the distance between categories iv. Ratio Measures – has all of the characteristics of ordinal and nominal measures + an absolute zero value can be identified, indicating an absence of a variable being measured |
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Why do we care about the levels of measurement?
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The level of measurement is determined by the analytic uses uve planned for a given variable, keeping in mind that some variables are limited to a certain level.
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What are the implications of the levels of measurement?
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ii. Certain quantitative analysis techniques require variables that meet certain minimum levels of measurement
1. T-Test – Interval or higher; correlation: ordinal or higher; chi-square: nominal or higher 2. Statistical test are in fact moe flexible if you know them inside out. But for now, its simpler when you match level of measurement with the type of test |
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How can the norm of voluntary participation go against the goal of scientific research?
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The scientific goal of generalizability is threatened if experimental subjects or survey respondents are all the kind of people who would be willing to participate in such things.Because this orientation probably reflects more general personality traits, the results of the research might not generalize to all people
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If researchers have to violate the norm, what should be considered?
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If you have to violate the norm, remember not to harm the participants.
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What were implications of Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment to this norm?
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i. Philip Zimbardo’s 1971 “Stanford Prison Experiment” stimulated a prison and randomly assigned students to be prisoners or prison guards. However, Zimbardo noticed that the experiment was negatively impacting the subjects psychologically and thus terminated the experiments and did extensive psychological debriefing to ensure that the effects were not long lasting.
1. The ethical norms of voluntary participation and no harm to participants have becomes formalized into the concept of informed consent. |
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Anonymity and confidentiality – How do these two norms differ?
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Anonymity and Confidentiality differ because in Anonymity the researchers can’t identify a given response with a given respondent; whereas in confidentiality they can identify, but promise not share the responses publically.
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Deception – What procedure must be done if researchers had to deceive participants?
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Researchers should debrief their participants.
1. Debriefing entails interviews to discover any problems generated by the research experiment so that those problems can be corrected |
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What is a unit of analysis?
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The what or whom being studied
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What types of units of analysis are there?
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Individuals, groups, organizations, social artificats
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What is a cross-sectional study?
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A study based on observations representing a single point in time
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Longitudinal study
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A study design involving the collection of data at different points in time
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What are types of longitudinal studies? How do they differ?
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1. Trend studies - examines changes in a population over time
2. Cohort Studies – examines specific subpopulations over time 3. Panel studies – examines the same set of people over time |
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How can researchers infer about longitudinal processes from cross-sectional data?
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1. Even though we made our observation s at only one time, we would feel justified in drawing conclusions about processes being taken ober time
a. Logical inference b. Ask people to recall past c. Ask people to present past records or grant permission to access them |
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What is survey?
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A systematic method for collecting information from (a sample of) entities for the purposes of description and explanation. (excellent vehicles for measuring attitudes and orientations in a large population)can be auseful tool for social inquiry
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What are the important aspects of survey methodology?
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1. Sampling – Deciding on respondent.. whom and how many?
2. Asking questions: Howto ask questions? 3. Methods for getting responses: Using what medium (eg interview, phone, online) |
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Why is asking questions well important in survey?
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1. Asking questions affects the quality of measurement
b. Questions serve as operationalizations of variables |
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What steps are involved in respondents’ cognitive process of answering questions?
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1. Comprehension of the question – respondent interpret the questions
2. Retrieval of information – they recall the information needed to answer them 3. Judgement and estimation – they combine or summarize the information they recall 4. Reporting an answer - formulate response in required format9 |
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What are the four ways in which survey questions can go awry
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1. Misinterpreting
2. Memory 3. Question Formats 4. Motivated misreporting |
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What is a response rate?
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It is one guide to the representativeness of the sample respondents
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How is response rate calculated?
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The number of complete interviews with reporting units divided by the number of eligible reporting units in the sample
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vii. What are the pros of doing face-to-face interview surveys?
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a. High response rate
b. Beneficial for long surveys c. Allows for clarification d. Good or open ended questions |
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What are the cons of doing face-to-face interview surveys?
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a. Requires a lot of training
b. Expensive c. Interviewer may unintentionally affect responses d. Higher likelihood of socially desirable responses |
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What are the pros of doing self-administered surveys?
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a. Extremely cheap (esp, Internet administration)
b. Allows you to reach a large number of people ina short period of time |
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What are the cons of doing self-administered surveys?
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a. No ability for clarification
b. People may answer questions randomly c. People may not take the survey seriously d. Lower response rates |
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i. What are the three criteria for determining causality?
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1. Time order
2. Correlation 3. No alternative explanations |
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ii. What is experimental control?
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1. Experimental control is derived from techniques, or practices, that help s establish the three requirements for casuality. It is attempted to reduce the impact of confounds as much as possible.
a. There are confounds associated with participants and procedure. |
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iii. What is a confound?
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1. Confounds are factors that are not
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2 major sources of confounds
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a. participants
b. procedure |
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iv. What is the most powerful way to control for confounds that arise from participants?
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Randomization is the most powerful way to control for confounds that arise from participants. Randomization is a compilization of participants solely on the basis of chance
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Random sampling
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selection of participants from a larger population to participate in a research study
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Random assignment
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assignment of selected participants to groups (ie. Experimental group(s) and a control group)
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What is the most appropriate way to control for confounds associated with experimental procedure?
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1. Having a control group usually balances effects from confounds associated with procedure because both the control and experimental groupa re both subject too equal effects of confounds (the only difference is the treatment/stimulus)
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What are the pros of laboratory experiments?
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a. The main advantage of doing experiments is that is allows us to make casual inferences
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What are the cons of laboratory experiments?
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The main disadvantage is the experiments have weak generalizability as experimental scenarios often do not represent how things might occur in the real world
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What is a field experiment?
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1. A field experiment takes place in a natural setting where the researcher manipulates IV without the participants knowledge
a. Facebook field experiment(Bond et al., 2010) with 61 million users during 2010 US Congressional elections |
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What is a natural experiment?
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2. Natural experiments take place in a uncontrolled natural setting where the researcher does NOT manipulate IV
a. After a hurricane in a particular town, you may observe different behavioral consequences by residents depending |
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What is content analysis?
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“research technique for the objective, systematic, quantitative description of the manifest content of communication”
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What are some problems with experiments and surveys?
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a. We have to interrupt people’s lives to get participants and as a result we place a burden on our participants
b. serving or measuring something can influence the results you get i. Influence the experiment ii. Social desirability bias in survey |
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Advantages of Content Analysis
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a. You place no burden on participants, it uses existing data that has been created for another purpose and is thus unobtrusice
b. It allows for observation of phenomena that are not easily or accurate observed in experiments |
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What topics are studied in content analysis?
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1. Histoorians reviewing past events
2. Mass comm researchers analyze news articles or tv content to describe poli biases, racial prejudices, gender steeotypes 3. Interview, focus group transcripts, survey openended answers can be content analyzed 4. Marketers analyze online consumer created content to gauge consumer evaluation of their products/services |
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What are the steps for conducting content analysis?
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1. Unitizing
a. Determine unit of analysis i. Sampling unit – a unit distinguished for selective inclusion in an analysis ii. Recording/Coding Unit – A unit distinguished for separate description, transcription, recording or conding with a sampling unit 2. Sampling 3. Recording/coding – The process in which observers, readers, or analysts interpret what they see, read, find and then put the interpretations in the formal terms of analysis a. Requirements of coding i. Mutually exlusive – make clear distinctions ii. Exhaustive – categories must represent all recoding units 4. Reducing – presenting the data in an efficient manner by using statistical techniques |
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What is inter-coder reliability?
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1. Inter coder reliability in content analysis is measured b the degree to which different coders tend to assign exactly the same rating to each object (high agreement among coders interpretations -> higher reliability)
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What are the two types of inter-coder reliability measures? Which one is better?
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2. Two types of reliability measures
a. Percent agreemtns - proportion of units with matching escriptions on whichtwo coders agree b. Chance-correlated agreement – several scholars have propsed measures that account for chance agreements c. Chance correlated is better |
