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103 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is Social Research?
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Social research is consists of the process of formulating and seeking answers to questions about the social world.
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Why study research methods?
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the study of research methods may provide more immediate and useful information than any other single course of study.
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What can research methods help you understand?
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the study of research methods can help you develop the ability to understand and evaluate the validity and limits of social scientific knowledge.
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What are the four principal strategies of social research?
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Experiments, Surveys, Field Research, and the use of Available Data.
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What is altruism?
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The principle or practice of unselfish concern for the welfare of others.
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What is the best approach for investigating the causes of a phenomena?
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Experiments
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What is survey research?
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Survery research involves the administration of questionnaires or interviews to relatively large groups of people.
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What is field research?
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is essentially a matter of immersing oneself in a naturally occurring set of events in order to gain firsthand knowledge of the situation.
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What is the use of available data?
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using data that have been generated for purposes other than those fow hich the researcher is using them.
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What is the importance of social research?
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it helps us to understand the social world by producing scientifically valid answers to questions.
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What unites science?
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its objectives, presummptions, its general methodology, and its logic.
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What is the aim of science?
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to produce knowledge, to understand and explain the aspect of the world around us.
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What is the real goal of science?
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The real goal of science is to achieve understanding; the basic product is ideas.
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What are scientific questions?
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scientific questions are questions that can be answered by making observations that identify the condtions under which certain events occur.
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What are concepts?
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concepts are abstractions communicated by words or other signs that refer to common properties among phenomena.
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What are explanations?
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Are attempts to satisfy curiosity.
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What is empirical generalization?
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a generalization or hypothesis inductively derived from observations.
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What is a hypotheses?
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an expected but unconfirmed relationship among two or more variables.
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What is a theory?
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a logically interconnected set of propositions that show how or why a relationship occurs
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what is a casual relationship?
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a theoretical notion that change in one variable forces, produces, or brings about a change in another.
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What is essence of science?
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is neither a body of knowledge bnor a method of inquiry; rather, it is a cyclical process involving a continuous interplay bewtween theory and research.
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What is Wallace's Wheel of Science?
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Ssrts with testing a theoryto forming a hypothesis, developing a research design, performing observations, analyzing the data, and taking generalizations.
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What is a serendipity pattern?
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unanticipated findings that cannot be interpreted meaningfully in terms of prevailing theories and that give rise to new theories.
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What is deductive reasoning?
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a process of reasoning in which the conclusion necessarily follows if the evidence is true
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What is inductive reasoning?
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a reasoning process in which the conclusion goes beyond the evidence; unlike in a deductive argument, the evidence may be true and the conclusion false
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What is empiricism?
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a way of knowing or understanding the world that relies directly or indirectly on what we experience through our senses—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch; admissible evidence in science is limited to empirical phenomena
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What is objectivity?
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in science, the methological condition that makes it possible for two or more people to agree on the results of an observation; see also intersubjective testability.
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what ic control?
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a procedure (or procedures) that eliminates, as far as possible, unwanted variation, such as sources of bias and error that may distort study results. A common approach is to control potentially confounding variables by holding them constant or preventing them from varying.
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What is epistemology?
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The science of knowing things , experiential knowledge, authority, traditional beliefs, and becuase it was produced through science.
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What are teh two types of science?
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Pure and Applied
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What is pure science?
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research for research sake, to do just to do. if you have a questions you do research for the answer
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What is applied science?
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an evaluation of a policy, program or procedure.
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What is a qualitative research method?
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The qualitative method investigates the why and how of decision making, not just what, where, when. Hence, smaller but focused samples are more often needed, rather than large samples.
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Whatis quantitative study?
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The objective of quantitative research is to develop and employ mathematical models, theories and/or hypotheses pertaining to phenomena. Using large samples.
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What are the four methods of research?
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Exploratory- relatively little is known oabout subject Explanatory-seek answers to questions & hypthesis. Descriptive-describe a phenomenon. Evaluation-test a policy, procedure or theory.
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What are the two pillars of science?
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observation & logic
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What is confidentiality?
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When the researcher knows the participants, but information remains confidential.
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what is anonymity?
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when the reasearcher does not know the participants in the research.
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What are ethics?
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standards of right and wrong; guidelines or standards for moral conduct.
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Whatare research ethics?
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involves the application of ethical priniciples to scientific research. research ethics comes from two sources; society atlarge and research professions.
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What are the three broad ethical concerns in scientific research?
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data collection and analysis, ethics and treatment of human subjects, and ethics of responsibility to society.
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What is research misconduct?
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as defined by federal policy, unethical actions in proposing, conducting, or reporting research involving fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism.
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What are teh four problem areas of ethical treatment of human subjects?
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harm, lack of informed consent, deception, and privacy.
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What is IRB?
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It is the Institutional Review Board. It is used to ensure compliance with regulations, and to approve research, and treatment of human subjects.
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What is an expedited review?
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studies that do not involve no more than minimal risk are processed quicker and usually by a chairperson.
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What is cost-benefit analysis?
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(1) an examination of the potential costs (e.g., harm to subjects) and benefits (e.g., knowledge gained, beneficial application) of a study as a way of assessing the ethics of the study; (2) in evaluation research, an assessment of the economic efficiency of a program in terms of its monetary costs and benefits;
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What is the process of science?
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the process of producing generalized understanding (theory) through systematic observation (research).
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What is the most popular and quickest form of research?
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Secondary Data-Analysis
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What is debriefing?
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explaining the use of the information collected from the subject.
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Whatis a variable?
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Something that is not a constant. It reflects a concept with more than one attribute.
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What are Units of Analysis?
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The entities (objects or events) under study are referred to as units of analysis (e.g. people, positions, social roles, relationships.)
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What is aggregate data?
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information about one set of units that is statistically combined to describe a larger social unit. For example, information about students (gender, race, college board scores, etc.) might be aggregated to describe characteristics of their colleges (sex ratio, ethnic composition, average college board score, etc.
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What is an ecological fallacy?
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erroneous use of information pertaining to an aggregate (e.g., organizations) to draw inferences about the units of analysis that comprise the aggregate (e.g., individual members of organizations).
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What are explanatory variables?
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those variables that are the object of study--part of some specified relationship.
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What is a dependent variable?
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the presumed effect! it is the variable the researcher is interested in explaining and predicting.
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What is an independent variable?
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the presumed cause! the explanatory variables that do the influencing.
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What is an antecedent or intervening variable?
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a variable causally antecedent to others in a theoretical model. Two variables may be spuriously associated because both are affected by an antecedent variable.
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what are control variables?
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a variable that is held constant during the course of observation or statistical analysis.
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What are quantitative variables?
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quantitative variable a variable that has categories that express numerical distinctions (ratio, interval, and ordinal levels of measurement);
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What are qualitative variables?
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qualitative variable a variable that has discrete categories, usually designated by words or labels, and nonnumerical differences between categories (i.e., nominal level of measurement)
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What is a postive or direct relationship of variables?
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relationship in which an increase in the value of one variable is accompanied by an increase in the value of the other, or a decrease in one is accompanied by a decrease in the other; that is, the two variables consistently change in the same direction.
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What is a negative or indirect relationship of variables?
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a relationship in which an increase in the value of one variable is accompanied by a decrease in the value of the other; that is, changes in one variable are opposite in direction to changes in the other.
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What is a correlation coefficient?
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a measure of association, symbolized as r (Pearson’s), that describes the direction and strength of a linear relationship between two variables measured at the interval or ratio level; the square of Pearson ’s r represents the proportion of variance in one variable that may be predicted from the other using linear regression.
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What does it mean to be statistically significant?
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when the relationship between two variables is meaningful.
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What is a spurios relationship?
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a statistical association between two variables produced by extraneous variables rather than by a causal link between the original variables.
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What is a hypothesis?
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an expected but unconfirmed relationship among two or more variables.
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What is a null hypothesis?
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the hypothesis that an observed relationship is due to chance—the opposite of the research hypothesis—which is associated with tests of statistical significance; a test that is significant rejects the null hypothesis at a specified level of probability.
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what are the 7 stages of social research design?
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1-form hypothesis
2-develop research design 3-measurement 4-sampling 5-data collection 6-data processing 7-data analysis and interpretation |
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What is measurement?
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the process of assigning numbers or labels to units of analysis in order to represent conceptual properties.
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What is conceptualization?
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the development and clarification of concepts.
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What is operationalization?
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the detailed description of the research operations or procedures necessary to assign units of analysis to the categories of a variable in order to represent conceptual properties.
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What is an indicator?
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consists of s single observable measure, such as a single questionnaire item in a survey.
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What are the four levels of measurement?
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Nominal
Ordinal Interval Ratio |
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What does it mean to be exhaustive?
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the measurement requirement that a measure includes all possible values or attributes of a variable, so that every case can be classified.
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What does it mean to be mutual exclusive?
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Mean that things being measured must no tfit into more than one category.
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What is nominal measurement?
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Nominal-the lowest level of measurement, in which numbers serve only to label category membership; categories are not ranked but must be exhaustive and mutually exclusive.
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what is ordinal measurement?
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Ordinal-a level of measurement in which different numbers indicate the rank order of cases on some variable.
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What is interval measurement?
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a level of measurement that has the qualities of the ordinal level plus the requirement that equal distances (intervals) between assigned numbers represent equal distances in the variable being measured; consequently, with interval measurement it is possible to perform basic mathematical operations such as addition and subtraction.
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What is ratio measurement?
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the highest level of measurement, which has the features of the other levels plus an absolute (nonarbitrary) zero point; consequently, it is possible to form ratios of the numbers assigned to categories.
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What is reliability?
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the stability or consistency of an operational definition
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What is validity?
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the congruence or “goodness of fit” between an operational definition and the concept it is purported to measure.
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What is face validity?
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a personal judgment that an operational definition appears, on the face of it, to measure the concept it is intended to measure.
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What is content validity?
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a subjective judgment of whether a measure adequately represents all facets (the domain) of a concept.
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What is construct validity?
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measurement validation based on an accumulation of research evidence, which may include evidence that the measure in question (1) relates to other variables in a theoretically expected manner, (2) correlates highly with other measures of the same concept (convergent validity), (3) correlates not too highly with measures of other concepts (discriminant validity), and (4) varies among groups known to differ on the characteristic being measured.
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What is convergent validity?
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the extent to which independent measures of the same concept correlate with each other; the higher the correlation, the greater the convergent validity.
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What is target population?
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in sampling, the population to which the researcher would like to generalize his or her results.
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What is statistics?
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estimated guessof population parameters.
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What is sampling error?
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the difference between an actual population value (e.g., a mean) and the population value estimated from a sample.
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What is standard error?
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a statistical measure of the “average” sampling error for a particular sampling distribution; the standard deviation of a sampling distribution and thus a measure of how much sample results will vary from sample to sample.
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What is stratified random sampling?
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a probability sampling procedure in which the population is divided into strata and independent random samples are drawn from each stratum.
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What is heterogeneity?
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the degree of dissimilarity among cases with respect to a particular characteristic. For example, the gender composition of groups might vary from 100 percent female (maximum homogeneity) to 50 percent female (maximum heterogeneity).
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what is internal validity?
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sound evidence in an experiment that rules out the possibility that extraneous variables, rather than the manipulated independent variable, are responsible for the observed outcome.
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what is external validity?
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the extent to which experimental findings are generalizable to other settings, subject populations, and time periods.
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what is mundane realism?
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when the events in an experiment are similar to everyday experiences.
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What are field experiments?
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a “true” experimental design conducted in a natural setting. they also tend to be higher in external validity than laboratory experiments.
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What is directional hypothesis?
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A hypothesis that specifies the nature and direction of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables.
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What is a non-directional hypothesis?
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A hypothesis that does not specify the nature and direction of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables
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What is an interrupted time-series design?
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a quasi-experimental design resembling the one-group pretest-posttest design but with a series of observations (measurements) before and after the treatment manipulation.
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What are some threats to validity?
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history
maturation of subjects statistical regression instrumentation testing placebo effect |
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What are the two types of questions in a survey?
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open-ended (requires respondents to answer in their own words) and close-ended (only specific response options are provided).
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What is predictive validity?
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predictive validity is the extent to which a score on a scale or test predicts scores on some criterion measure
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What is attrition?
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The loss of subjects in an experiment.
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What is teh greatest threat to internal validity?
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Attrition poses the greatest threat to internal validity when there is differential attrition, when the conditions of an experiment have different dropout rates.
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