Social Research Methods

Front 1

Milgrams obedience experiments

Back 1

teacher and learner in separate rooms. test of how much the subject will obey.

Front 2

nuremberg war crime trials

Back 2

horrific scientific experiments using humans during WWII

Front 3

50s and 60s

Back 3

soldiers unknowingly exposed to radiation during atomic bomb testing

Front 4

tuskegee syphilis study

Back 4

1930s, 400 black men were studied because the scientists wanted to follow the natural course of the disease. studied for 5 decades. did not tell them they had it or were refused treatment for it until 1972 (cure found in the 50s.

Front 5

1979 Belmont Report

Back 5

established 3 parameters:
1. respect for persons
2.minimizing possible harms and maximizing benefits
3. justice-distributing benefits and risks of research fairly

Front 6

Zimbardo's prison simulation study

Back 6

people falling into roles and taking them too seriously

Front 7

humphreys' tearoom trade

Back 7

followed homosexual men home by writing down their license plate numbers. did not tell the subjects of his research.

Front 8

ethical guidelines

Back 8

1.protect research subjects
2.maintain honesty and openness
3.achieve valid results
4. encourage appropriate application

Front 9

levels of measurement

Back 9

nominal
ordinal
interval
ratio

Front 10

nominal

Back 10

data characterized by names, labels, or categories only. can't be arranged in order (male/female)

Front 11

ordinal

Back 11

numbers indicating a variable's values specify only the order of the cases. Greater than and less than.

Ex: How much education do you have?

1-high school diploma 2-some college 3-college degree 4-masters degree

Front 12

interval

Back 12

fixed measurement units but have no absolute, or fixed, zero point + or -.

ex: temperature

Front 13

Ratio

Back 13

equal intervals as well as a true or known zero point.

Front 14

validity

Back 14

the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to do.

Front 15

reliability

Back 15

extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to do. can be duplicated and produce same results.

Front 16

interitem reliability

Back 16

assesses the degree of consistency among the items on a scale

Front 17

hypothesis testing

Back 17

a statistical procedure used to accept or reject the hypothesis based on sample info

Front 18

inductive research
inductive logic

Back 18

collecting data then forming a theory

moving from the specific to the general

Front 19

deductive logic
deductive research

Back 19

moving from the general to the specific

having a theory then testing it with data

Front 20

research cycle

Back 20

theory, hypothesis, data, empirical generalizations

Front 21

exploratory study

Back 21

uncover processes, organizational structure

basketball cohesiveness study
asks "what's going on here?"

Front 22

explanatory study

Back 22

offer insight into why variations exist, often determines causal links or production

neighborhood's effect on youth's future

seeks cause and effect

Front 23

evaluation

Back 23

describes or identifies impact of social policy program

improving social capital in neighborhoods and the political side effects.

applied "bowling alone" study to evaluate its accuracy

Front 24

distributions

Back 24

the highest frequency occurs in the middle and frequencies tail off to the left and right of the middle

Front 25

conceptualization

Back 25

i. Coming to an agreement on a specific concept
ii. Sometimes you have to make up a new term to label this new concept

Front 26

3. ECOLOGICAL FALLACY

Back 26

a. An error in reasoning in which incorrect conclusions about individual level processes are drawn from group level data
b. Using group data to predict individual behavior is a mistake

Front 27

reductionist fallacy

Back 27

a. An error in reasoning that occurs when incorrect conclusions about group-level processes are based on individual level data

Front 28

pragmatic language

Back 28

words can have different meanings

Front 29

point estimate

Back 29

the value of a sample stat that is used to estimate a population parameter

Front 30

central tendency

Back 30

i. The most common value or the value around which cases tend to center

Front 31

dispersion

Back 31

i. The extent to which cases are spread out or clustered around one value

Front 32

index

Back 32

composite measure based on summing, averaging, or otherwise combining the responses to multiple questions that are intended to measure the same concept

Front 33

scale

Back 33

when questions on an index arrage themselves in a hierarchy in which one answer effectively indicates answers on others.

items on a scale are weighted before summing or averaging

Front 34

longitudinal research design

Back 34

study where data is collected at two or more points.

takes time and extra work

much preferred over cross sectional

Front 35

3 types of longitudinal designs

Back 35

TREND: samples taken at two different times from different participants


PANEL: same as trend but the second sample is taken from the same people rather than different ones.

COHORT: data taken at two or more points from people in the same cohort (people born in the same decade for example)

Front 36

positive and negative relationships

Back 36

positive: as income increases so does happiness

negative: as income increases, happiness decreases

Front 37

hypothesis testing

Back 37

observations
hypothesis
experimentation
data analysis
acceptance or rejection of hypothesis

Front 38

overgeneralizations

Back 38

seeing one Canadian= all Canadians are unhappy.

Front 39

selective or inaccurate observation

Back 39

seeing one unhappy canadians in a group of canadians = all canadians are unhappy

Front 40

illogical reasoning

Back 40

people with very few friends are anti-social

Front 41

casual validity

Back 41

when someone says A causes B and they are correct.

ex: online counseling leads to decreased anxiety

can be difficult to prove casual validity

Front 42

concept

Back 42

mental image that summarizes a set of similar observations, feelings or ideas

Front 43

conceptualizations

Back 43

process of specifying what we mean by a term.
DEDUCTIVE RESEARCH: conceptualization helps to translate portions of an abstract teory into testable hypotheses involving specific variables.

Front 44

operationalization

Back 44

the process of specifying the operations that will value of cases on a value