Chapter 2 Vocab Flashcards
the extent to which an instrument measures what it is intended to measure.
Validity
likelihood of obtaining consistent results using the same measure.
Reliability
the extent to which we can claim our findings inform us about a group larger than the one we studied.
Generalizability
a simulated treatment given to a control group in an experimental study to factor out the effect of merely being in an experiment from the effect of the actual treatment under consideration.
Placebo
an experimental study where neither the subjects nor the researchers know who is in the treatment group and who is in the control (placebo) group.
Double-blind study
analyzing and critically considering our own role in, and effect on, our research.
Reflexivity
a set of systems or methods that treat women’s experiences as legitimate empirical and theoretical resources, that promote social science for women (think public sociology, but for a specific half of the public), and that take into account the researcher as much as the overt subject matter.
Feminist Methodology
an entire group of individual persons, objects, or items from which samples may be drawn.
Population
the subset of the population from which you are actually collecting data.
Sample
an intensive investigation of one particular unit of analysis in order to describe it or uncover its mechanisms.
Case study
a qualitative research method that seeks to uncover the meanings people give their behavior by observing social actions in practice.
Participant observation
an ordered series of questions intended to elicit information from respondents
Survey
research that collects data from written reports, newspaper articles, journals, transcripts, television programs, diaries, artwork, and other artifacts that date to a prior time period under study.
Historical methods
a methodology by which two or more entities (such as countries), which are similar in many dimensions but differ on one in question, are compared to learn about the dimension that differs between them.
Comparative research
methods that seek to alter the social landscape in a very specific way for a given sample of individuals and then track what results that change yields; often involve comparisons to a control group that did not experience such an intervention.
Experimental methods
