Final Exam Flashcards
(113 cards)
1
Q
What is Triangulation in Research?
A
Using 2 or more methods/ sources to study the same thing.
2
Q
What is Data Triangulation?
A
🔍 Studying the same issue using different data sources
e.g., Students + Teachers + Parents on the same topic
3
Q
what is Method triangulation
A
🔄 Using different research methods to study the same thing
e.g., Surveys + Interviews
4
Q
6 steps to reading research paper
A
- what am i reading - original research or literary reivew
- what is the research question - abstract/ intro
- literature review - what research has already been done
- sample method - data, mesuring, stratiges used
- results - quan vs qual
- discussion/ conclusion/ limitations
5
Q
what are Sampling Methods
A
🔍Choosing who & what will be in the study.
Goal: It is represents the population
6
Q
What is data
A
.
🎯 Focus: Who are the subjects? What info is gathered?
7
Q
measures
A
How are they measuring their focal point?
i.e with surveys, tests, obervations
8
Q
Analytical strategy
A
how did they analyze the data?
Using qualitative: coding strategy or quantitative: experiments/ surveys
9
Q
How to Critique a Research Paper?
2 things
A
- Read with a critical eye!
-Don’t just accept everything—question the logic behind claims - Is their method appropriate?
-Is the data valid? Are they measuring what they say?
10
Q
what is Field research
A
🔍 Studying social life in its natural setting
i.e. observing a childs beahviour in a classroom setting
11
Q
What are Ethnographic Studies?
A
🔍 a natural observation
i.e. Living in a community to study their life & norms
12
Q
Types of ethnographic studies
A
- Participant observation
- complete participations
- complete observer
13
Q
Participant observation
A
Actively involved in the study but still maintains some researcher role
14
Q
complete participations
A
engages fully in study with other members
15
Q
complete observer
A
observes the field but doesn’t participate
16
Q
What is a Case Study?
A
🎯 Detailed investigation of a single instance
goal: findings to be generalized
17
Q
What is Grounded Theory?
A
🎯 Developing theories directly from data
A form of Coding Mechanisms
18
Q
What is Coding
A
🎯 Attaching labels to data to keep oragnized
19
Q
Open coding
A
→ Labeling concepts from raw data
✂️ Break it all down!
20
Q
Axial coding
A
Refining & connecting categories
🔗 Find relationships between concepts
21
Q
Selective coding
A
Integrating categories to build a theory
🧩 Put the puzzle together!
21
Q
What is Constant Comparison?
A
🔍 Moving back and forth between data and theory
🎯 Goal: Refine ideas based on new data
22
Q
Two-Eyed Seeing framework
A
🌍 A method that blends Western and Indigenous ways of knowing
23
Q
Unobtrusive Methods
A
studying social behaviour without affecting it
○ Done via analysing existing statistics and content analysis
24
What was Durkheim’s main research question?
Why do people commit suicide?
24
What was Durkheim’s key thesis?
Suicide rates rise when social equilibrium is disrupted.
💬 More social stability & integration = less suicide & depression.
25
What did Durkheim find about religion and suicide?
Protestant had higher suicide rates than Catholic
26
Content analysis
🔍 A way to study culture and communication
i.e. hisotrical books
27
What is Manifest Content?
🔍 It’s the obvious, visible stuff you can easily see or count
i.e. Can count how many times aggression is in a movie
28
What is Latent Content?
🔍 hidden meaning
| latent = layers
29
What did Baumann & Ho (2014) find in their study on race in Canadian TV ads?
-Studied race in food commercials
⚠️ 87% of characters were white
🍜 Ethnic groups shown differently depending on the type of food being advertised
💡 Takeaway: TV ads create cultural stereotypes that don’t match daily reality
30
What is Cognitive Dissonance Theory? (Festinger)
😖 A mental tension that happens when our beleifs & actions are conflicting
🎯 People are motivated to reduce the discomfort by changing by changing 1 of the aspects
30
What did Baumann and Ho (2014) find in their study on race in Canadian TV ads?
White actors: Presented in positive roles
Black actors: Depicted as blue-collar workers
⚠️ Key takeaway: Underrepresentation and misrepresentation of visible minorities in media
31
What are 4 Qualitative Research Methods?
| "Silly Frogs Enjoy Carrots"
💬 Semi-structured interviews
🗣️ Focus groups
🌍 Ethnographies
📚 Content analysis
31
What did Festinger & Carlsmith (1959) find in their study on cognitive dissonance?
Ppl who were paid $1 to lie about a boring task rated it as more enjoyable than those paid $20.
💡 Why?
$1 group felt more dissonance — not enough money to justify lying, so they changed their attitude to reduce discomfort.
$20 group had enough external justification → less dissonance → no need to change attitude.
32
4 Quantitative RESEARCH METHODS
1. Experiments
2. Surveys
3. Content Analysis
4. Secondary Statistics
33
5 advantages of Focus Groups
1. real life situations
2. flexable
3. high face validity - mesures what its suppose to
4. rapid results
5. low cost
34
5 disadvantages of Focus Groups
1. Less control over the conversation
2. Many opinions to sort through
3. Moderators need training
4. Differences between groups can lead to inconsistent results
5. Need a conductive setting
35
4 advantages of Surveys
1. External validity
2. Large sample sizes
3. Flexible
4. Reliability
36
3 disadvantages of content alanysis
1. Limited context - hard to understand all context
2. Artificial - Not real life behaviours
3. Weak internal validity.
37
4 advantages of Content analysis
1. cheap
2. not time consuming
3. easy to repeat
4. cross study compairsions
38
2 disadvantages of Content analysis
1. Limited examination —missing out on deeper aspects
2. Relies on coding — Issues with reliability and validity
39
5 advantages of IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW STUDIES
1. flexable
2. low cost
3. in depth understanding
4. Lots of info
5. Ppl r more honest
40
4 disadvantages of IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW STUDIES
1. interview effect
2. external validity: Hard to generalize
3. time consuming
4. hard to find participants
41
3 advantages of Experiments
1. Strong internal validity - Indepedent easy to manipulate
2. Artificiality - can create rare circumstances
3. Easy to Replication
42
4 disadvantages of Experiments
1. Demand effects -Ppl change behaviour when studied
2. Unrealistic lab setting
3. Weak external validity - hard to generalize
4. Unethical
43
What are experiments
🔍 A test done under controlled conditions to test a hypothesis
44
What is Content analysis
research used to study culture and communication
-i.e. things like books, songs, paintings, etc
45
Ethnographies
research on detailed description of social life
| Used to study cultures
46
Semi-structured interviews
is organized around general questions and themes declared in advance.
47
Causation
| 3 conditions
need to meet all 3 to establish a causal relationship:
1. Temporal Order
2. Co-variation (association or correlation)
- But: correlation ≠ causation
3. Non-spuriousness
48
Spuriousness
When 2 variables seem related, but the relationship is actually caused by a 3rd variable.
49
Induction
Starts with specific observations and then builds a theory
50
Deduction
Starts with a general idea or theory and moves toward a specific prediction.
🔽 General → Specific
51
3 ways to check Reliability
1. Test–retest method: Same test, different time
2. Use proven tools from past research
3. Double-check coding with others for consistency
52
What is Validity?
It means the measure actually reflects what it's supposed to
i.e. An IQ test is more valid for measuring intelligence than hours spent in a library.
53
What is Face Validity?
It means a measure "looks like" it makes sense for what it’s trying to measure.
54
What is Criteria-Related Validity?
It checks if the measurement works in real life.
55
Construct validity
how well a test/ question measures the concept it's supposed to, based on the theory.
| just remember: does this match the theroy?
56
Content validity
does it measure what its suppose to?
57
Internal validity
Internal Validity = How confident are we that X caused Y?
✅ The study is well-controlled
🚫 No other variables messing with the results
58
external validity
📈 External Validity = Can the results be applied outside the study?
✅ Results generalize to real-world settings or other groups
🚫 Too specific = hard to apply broadly
59
Triangulation
method for double-checking data by using two or more sources or research methods.
60
Data triangulation
Studying the same thing with different data sources
| i.e. talk to parents, teachers, students
61
Method triangulation
more than one research method to study the same topic
| i.e. study, experiment
62
Operationalization
turning abstract ideas into measurable variables.
63
Measurement
turning observations into numbers so we can study them.
64
Surveys - 6 Guidelines for question construction
| B-SCOOP
1. B – Bias: Avoid biased
2. S – Simple: Keep questions short
3. C – Closed/Open: ended questions
4. O – One idea only: Avoid double-barreled
5. O – Opposites confuse: Avoid negative items
6. P – Pick the right form: appropriate format
65
2 types of Self-Administered surverys
* Mail-based
* Online
66
2 ways to administer Interviews
* Telephone interviews
* Face-to-Face interviews
67
response bias
occurs in response rates
68
* Response rates
The percentage of people who actually take part in the survey out of those selected.
| Response Rate = (People who responded ÷ People contacted) × 100
69
6 telephone survey design advantage
1. 💸 Moderate cost — Cheaper than in-person
2. 🎭 Privacy for interviewers
3. 🗣️ Honest answers
4. 🧑💼 Centralized control — Surveys done from one office = better quality control
5. ❓ On-site help
6. Safer
70
5 telephone survey design disadvantage
1. 📵 Limited reach — Only contacts people with phones
2. 📇 May miss people
3. 🤔 Distrust
4. Telemarketing fatigue — Many ignore calls due to spam
5. ☎️ Hang-ups
71
Cross-sectional studies
Snapshot of observations at a single point in time
72
Longitudinal studies
* Over time
3 types of Longitudinal
73
Trend studies
- same study conducted several times with different ppl
type of Longitudinal studies
74
Cohort studies
Studying a subpopulation over time to see how certain factors affect their outcome
-can be same OR different particiants
type of Longitudinal studies
| i.e. studying a specific culture
75
Panel studies
Same group is followed over time to observe changes in their lives.
76
Qualitative interview
interview with open-ended questions
77
Miner apporach
Participant has specific information the researcher wants to uncover.
The interviewer’s job is to dig it out through questions.
78
traveler approach
someone exploring a topic without much prior knowledge
Learns via conversations and qualitative interviews
79
Data saturation
No new information is discovered during data collection, so they can stop collecting
80
Achieving saturation
when you have enough info to stop interviewing participants
81
Focus groups
group interview method where participants discuss a specific topic or issue, guided by a moderator.
82
5 Elements of a focus group:
1. small groups - 6-10
2. Guided by a moderator
3. focused topic
4. non random sampling to choose participants
5. recording discussion
83
Coding
assigning numeric or category codes to responses
| coding = catirgorizing repsonce
84
Data Cleaning
The process of finding and fixing errors in a dataset to make sure all entries are valid
85
○ Contingency cleaning
Checking for logical consistency between variables.
i.e. If someone is marked as male, but later listed as a mother, there's a logical error.
86
Univariate analyses
Looks at only one variable at a time.
i.e. How many respondents are Muslim? (Only analyzing religion, no comparison)
| uni = 1 variable
87
Univariate analyses include
| "FAM"
* Frequencies
* Averages
* Measures of dispersion
88
measures of central tendency
* Describe the typical or central value of a set of observations
mean, median mode
89
measures of central tendency : Mean
Mean = The average of a set of numbers.
🧮 Add all numbers & Divide by how many numbers there are
90
measures of central tendency : median
An average representing the value of the “middle” case in a rank-ordered set of observations.
* If the ages of five men were 16, 17, 20, 54, and 88, the median=20
91
measures of central tendency: mode
The most frequently occuring value or attribute.
i.e. 7, 8, 4, 7, 4, 7, 7, 7 = mode is 7
92
what is Dispersion
how spread out the values are around a central point (like mean, median, or mode).
🔧 Includes mesurments like:
Range
Standard Deviation (SD)
Variance
93
Dispersion: Range
The distance between the highest and lowest value
94
Dispersion: standard deviation
Tells us the average deviation from the mean
5 steps
1. find Mean
2. Subtract Mean from Each Number
3. Square Each number
4. Find the Average of the Squared Deviations
5. Square Root
95
Deviation score
Shows how far a value is from the mean.
96
What Does a Larger Standard Deviation Mean?
A larger standard deviation means:
✅ Scores are spread out
97
Smaller standard deviation imply
- tightly clustered around the mean.
98
SD value of 1.41
* Relatively low spread of numbers
* Observations are close to the mean
99
Bivariate vs univariate analysis
In contrast to univariate analysis (one variable), bivariate analysis involve two variables.
100
Bivariate
two variables to see if there’s a relationship between them.
101
multivariate analyses
Analyzing the relationships among 3+ variables at the same time.
102
○ Reading contingency tables (cross-tabs)
Contingency tables (or cross-tabs) are used to present bivariate analyses, showing the relationship between two variables.
103
Regression analysis definition
Estimates how one variable (independent) affects another (dependent)
104
An association has two components
* A direction (positive or negative)
* A strength (weak versus strong)
105
Inferential Statistics
Used to make conclusions about a larger population based on a sample.
-you study a sample to make it more generalize to larger population
106
Sampling error
difference between the sample's characteristics and the true characteristics of the entire population.
107
Method vs. Data Triangulation — What’s the difference?
💡 Different methods vs. different sources
🧪 Method Triangulation = Using different research methods
→ e.g., Surveys + Interviews
📊 Data Triangulation = Using different data sources
→ e.g., Students + Teachers + Parents on the same topic
108
Difference between Complete Participation, Participant Observation, and Complete Observer?
1.Complete Participation
🎯 Engages fully in the study, becomes a full member of the group
2. Participant Observation
👀 Actively involved in the study but still maintains some researcher role
3. Complete Observer
👁️ Only observes, no involvement in the study itself
109
What’s the difference between Open, Axial, and Selective Coding?
1.🟢 Open Coding
→ Labeling concepts & categories from raw data
✂️ Break it all down!
2. 🟡 Axial Coding
→ Refining & connecting categories
🔗 Find relationships between concepts
3. 🔴 Selective Coding
→ Integrating categories to build a theory
🧩 Put the puzzle together!
