Intro to research

Question 1

What are the three sources of research?

Answer 1

General (ex: newspapers, magazines), secondary (ex: textbooks, review articles), primary (ex: original research articles)

Question 2

What are the two types of research?

Answer 2

Basic: no specific purpose or application
Applied: specifically focused at addressing a problem

Question 3

What are the two modes of inquiry?

Answer 3

Qualitative and quantitative

Question 4

Tell me about qualitative research:

Answer 4

Typically larger and random samples; results reported with numbers, analyzed with statistics

Question 5

Tell me about qualitative research:

Answer 5

Typically smaller, nonrandom samples; results reported with quotes and stories, analyzed through themes

Question 6

What is the conceptual definition?

Answer 6

General / vague description of a term; what you might find in a dictionary; found in the introduction section of a paper

Question 7

What is an operational definition?

Answer 7

Specific to your study; how you will measure the variable; found in the methods section

Question 8

What are the four levels of measurement?

Answer 8

Nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio

Question 9

What is a nominal level of measurement?

Answer 9

Categories (ex: race, religion, gender, yes / no)
The ONLY categorical variable

Question 10

What is an ordinal measurement?

Answer 10

Ranks, but the distance between is unknown (ex: class rankings such as freshman, sophomore, etc / scale of agree, strongly agree, disagree, strongly disagree)

Question 11

What is an interval measurement?

Answer 11

Distance between units is known; no real zero (ex: temperature, even if it is at zero, that doesn’t mean temperature no longer exists)

Question 12

What is a ratio level of measurement?

Answer 12

Distance between units is known AND zero exists (ex: number of years, cars, candy bars, etc)

Question 13

What is a research question?

Answer 13

NOT A STATEMENT; two or more variables involved

Question 14

What are the two types of research questions?

Answer 14

Comparison - how do husbands and wives differ in their marital satisfaction?
Relationship - how does the birth of a child affect marital satisfaction?

Question 15

What is a hypothesis?

Answer 15

Predictive statement / educated guess / never proven, just supported

Question 16

What are the three types of hypothesis?

Answer 16

Null - no relationship
Non directional - there is A relationship
Directional - there is a positive / negative relationship

Question 17

What is a theory?

Answer 17

A framework of concepts meant to help organize and facilitate prediction; suggests future research

Question 18

What is the difference between deductive and inductive research?

Answer 18

Deductive research - starts with a theory, your study uses it as a guide and decreases from theory to observation
Inductive research - ends with a theory, you use your study to make a theory, increases from observation to theory

Question 19

What is reliability?

Answer 19

Consistency in your tests

Question 20

What are the statistical tests for reliability?

Answer 20

Cohen’s kappa (inter rater)
Croabach’s alpha (inter item)
Correlation coefficient

Question 21

What are the five types of reliability?

Answer 21

Inter rater - raters are consistent in their judgement
Alternate form - measures different test results between two different but equivalent versions of same test
Inter item - measures how consistently multiple items within a test assess the same underlying question
Test retest - are the results consistent with another round of testing?
Representative - are results consistent among different groups?

Question 22

What is validity?

Answer 22

The accuracy of your test

Question 23

What is the statistical test for validity?

Answer 23

Correlation coeffecient

Question 24

What are the six types of validity?

Answer 24

Face - at a quick glance, does it measure what it’s supposed to?
Content - does it cover all of the content and not just some parts of the question?
Concurrent - how well does it measure against another pre existing measure?
Predictive - does it accurately predict future results?
Discriminative - shows your tool is measuring a distinct concept without overlapping with other unrelated ideas
Convergent - does it correlate with other tests that assess the same concept?

Question 25

What are non probability samples?

Answer 25

Not random and not representative of the population

Question 26

What are the four types of non probability sampling?

Answer 26

Convenience - just pick whoever is easiest and most available to participate Purposive - intentionally select participants based on specific conditions (such as characteristics, knowledge, or experience) Snowball - referrals Quota - pulls from specific subgroups (like age, gender, etc) to meet specific quotas

Question 27

What are threats to internal validity?

Answer 27

Selection / bias effect - occurs when the participants for a study are not representative History - something external that affects the results of yours study Bad or changed instruments Mortality / attrition - when participants drop out mid study

Question 28

What are threats to external validity?

Answer 28

Multiple treatment interference Reactive / hawthorne effect - when participants change their behavior because they know they are being studied Experimenter effects - when the researcher's behavior / attitudes subtly influence the participants Confounds - hidden variables that confuse whether something is correlation or causation

Question 29

What is the difference between an internal and an external threat to validity?

Answer 29

Internal threats - factors within a study that can lead to incorrect conclusions External threats - limit the generalizability of the findings outside of the specific context of research

Question 30

What is a cross sectional study?

Answer 30

Study conducted at a single point in time; think snapshot

Question 31

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a cross sectional study?

Answer 31

Advantages: inexpensive, minimal attrition (dropout before the study is over), large samples Disadvantages: cannot make causal claims

Question 32

What are longitudinal studies?

Answer 32

Conducted over a period of time

Question 33

What are the advantages and disadvantages of longitudinal studies?

Answer 33

Advantages: can make a causal claim Disadvantages: high attrition rate, expensive, time consuming

Question 34

What are univariate statistics?

Answer 34

The analysis of data related to a single variable at a time; the simplest form of statistical analysis and does not explore the relationship between multiple variables; the purpose is to find patterns in the data for one characteristic

Question 35

What are the three types of univariate statistics?

Answer 35

Frequency distributions - visual depiction of data Measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode) Measures of variability (range, standard deviation)

Question 36

What is the alpha in data?

Answer 36

Standard of how extreme the data must be to reject the null hypothesis Always 0.05 in this class

Question 37

What is the P-Value?

Answer 37

The chance of your finding being due to randomness Compare this to the alpha If it's less than 0.05 (the alpha value), it is significant

Question 38

What is the R-Value?

Answer 38

Correlation coefficient: how strong is the relationship? The closer it is to zero either positively or negatively, the weaker the relationship is

Question 39

What is the B-Value?

Answer 39

Slope of line if you plotted your data; if your data is really close to the slope, that means a strong r value and strong correlation

Question 40

What is bivariate data?

Answer 40

Analyzes the relationship between TWO variables

Question 41

What tests can you use to measure bivariate data?

Answer 41

T-Test: seeing how significant are the differences between the means, produces a T-value This will tell you the correlation and regression (relationship between the two variables)

Question 42

Tests for multivariate variables?

Answer 42

ANOVA - analysis of variance Uses multivariate regression and structural equation modeling to analyze the structural relationships

Question 43

What are the three Belmont Report Principles in research ethics?

Answer 43

Respect for the person, beneficence, justice

Question 44

Who is considered a vulnerable subject?

Answer 44

Children, prisoners, pregnant women

Question 45

What is tuskegee?

Answer 45

Study that observed the progression of untreated syphillis in over 600 black men Uninformed, nonconsensual, withheld treatment Led to moral reform in research

Question 46

What are the ways to collect data for qualitative research?

Answer 46

Interviews (informal, interview guide, or open ended) Observation Documents

Question 47

What are the two conditions of trustworthy qualitative data?

Answer 47

Credibility - participants were accurately described and identified Confirmability - findings can be confirmed by someone else

Question 48

What makes data become more trusthworthy?

Answer 48

When it includes triangulation (Data came from multiple sources) Persistant observation Prolonged engagement - the depth of the researchers relationship with / understanding of their test subjects In depth descriptions Negative case analysis to examine abnormal cases Audit trail - how did you get to your conclusions? Conceptual saturation - did you get all of the information? Are themes starting to repeat? If so, your study is probably done Member checks present data to participants for their input - do you as the participant agree with these conclusions? Peer debriefing present data to other researchers for their input Explicit determination - clearly articulating your findings and reasoning

Question 49

What are the steps of data analysis steps?

Answer 49

Open coding - initial attempt to identify general themes Axial coding - second pass to see more specific themes Selective coding - finding cases that illustrate a theme well

Question 50

What is a type I error? What is a type II error?

Answer 50

Type I: false positive, you should have rejected the null hypothesis but you didn't Type II: false negative