Midterm Flashcards
1
Q
Define: Social Research
A
a process in which people combine a set of principles, outlooks, and ideas (ie methodology) with a collection of specific practices, techniques, and strategies to produce knowledge.
2
Q
True or false: When you accept something as true because someone in a position of authority says it is true or because it is in an authoritative publication, you are relying on authority as a basis for knowledge.
A
True
3
Q
Define: Tradition
A
Tradition means you accept something as being true because “it’s the way things have always been.”
4
Q
Some traditional social knowledge begins as simple _______
A
prejudice
5
Q
T or F: Common sense is valuable in daily living, but it allows logical fallacies to slip into one’s thinking.
A
True
6
Q
Define: Overgneralization
A
Occurs when some evidence supports your belief, but you falsely assume that it also applies to many other situations.
7
Q
Define: Selective Observation
A
Occurs when you take special notice of some people or events and tend to seek out evidence that confirms what you already believe and to ignore contradictory information.
8
Q
Define: Premature Closure
A
Occurs when you feel you have the answer and do not need to listen, seek information, or raise questions any longer.
9
Q
Define: Halo Effect
A
Occurs when we overgeneralize from what we accept as being highly positive or prestigious and let its favourable impression pr prestige “rub off” onto other areas. (ie we assume a paper from UoT will be excellent and will form an opinion and prejudge the report and may not evaluate it by its own merits alone.)
10
Q
Define: Data
A
empirical evidence or information that one gathers carefully according to rules or procedures.
11
Q
Define: Empirical Evidence
A
refers to observations that people experience through the senses - touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste.
12
Q
Define: Scientific Community
A
a collection of people who practise science and a set or norms, behaviours, and attitudes that bind them together.
13
Q
Define: Scientific Method
A
Not one single thing; it refers to the ideas, rules, techniques, and approaches that the scientific community uses.
14
Q
What are the 7 steps to the research process?
A
- Select topic
- Focus Question
- Design study
- Collect Data
- Analyze Data
- Interpret Data
- Inform others
15
Q
_____ research is the source of most of the tools, methods, theories, and ideas used by applied researchers to analyze underlying causes of people’s actions or thinking.
A
Academic
16
Q
_______ research is designed to address a specific concern or to offer solutions to a problem identified by an employer, club, agency, social movement, or organization.
A
Applied social research
17
Q
In ______ research, someone other than the researcher who conducted the study uses the results.
A
applied
18
Q
What are the 3 purposes of research?
A
Exploration, Description, Explanation
19
Q
What are some factors of Exploration as a purpose of research?
A
- Become familiar with the basic facts, setting, and concerns
- Create a general mental picture of conditions
- Formulate and focus questions for future research
- Generate new ideas, conjectures, or hypotheses
- Determine the feasibility of conducting research
- Develop techniques for measuring and locating future data
20
Q
What are some factors of Description as a purpose of research?
A
- Provide a detailed, highly accurate picture
- Locate new data that contradict past data
- Create a set of categories or classify types
- Clarify a sequence of steps or stages
- Document a causal process or mechanism
- Report on the background or context of a situation.
21
Q
What are some factors of Explanation as a purpose of research?
A
- Test a theory’s predictions
- Elaborate and refine a theory’s explanation
Extend a theory to new issues or topics - Support or refute an explanation or prediction
- Link issues or topics with a general principle
- Determine which of several explanations is best
22
Q
What happens in exploratory research?
A
A researchers examines a new area to formulate precise questions that he or she can address in future research. May be the first stage in a sequence of studies.
23
Q
______ researchers tend to use qualitative data and not be committed to a specific theory or research question.
A
Exploratory
24
Q
What happens in descriptive research?
A
Descriptive research presents a picture of the specific details of a situation, social setting, or relationship. Focuses on how and who questions.
25
What happens in explanatory research?
Explanatory research identifies the sources of social behaviours, beliefs, conditions, and events; it documents causes, tests theories, and provides reasons.
26
Define: Cross-sectional research
They examine a single point in time or take a one-tie snapshot approach.
27
_________ research is usually the simplest and least costly alternative.
Cross-sectional research
28
What is a disadvantage or cross-sectional research?
It cannot capture social processes or change.
29
Define: Longitudinal Research
examines features of people or other units at more than one time. It is usually more complex and costly than cross-sectional research, but it is also more powerful and informative.
30
What are the 3 main types of longitudinal research?
time series, panel, and cohort
31
Define: Time-series study
gathers the same type of information across two or more periods.Researchers can observe stability or change in the features of the units or can track conditions over time.
32
Define: Panel Study
a powerful type of longitudinal research in which the researcher observes the same people, group, or organization across multiple time points.
33
Define: Cohort Study
a special type of panel study that focuses on the same people over time who share a similar life experience in a specific period.
34
Define: Case-study Research
a researcher examines, in depth, many features of a few cases over a duration of time with very detailed, varied, and extensive data, often in qualitative form. The researcher carefully selects a few key cases to illustrate and study an issue in detail and considers the specific context of each case.
35
What data collection techniques is quantitative research associated with?
experiments, surveys, and the analysis of existing statistics
36
What data collection techniques is qualitative research associated with?
qualitative interviews, focus groups, field research, and historical research
37
_______ research closely follows the logic and principles found in natural science research: Researchers create situations and examine their effects on participants.
Experimental research
38
_____ research is done by asking people questions using a written questionnaire or during an interview and then recording answers.
Survey
39
______ analysis is a technique for examining information, or content, in written or symbolic material.
Content analysis
40
______ research, a researcher locates previously collected information, often in the form of government reports or previously conducted surveys, then reorganizes or combines the information in new ways to address a research question.
existing statistics research
41
What are four quantitative data collection techniques?
Experiments, surveys, content analysis, existing statistics.
42
What are four qualitative data collection techniques?
Qualitative interviews, focus groups, field research, and historical research
43
Why do researchers conduct qualitative interviews?
Researchers conduct qualitative interviews with a selection of people to gain an in-depth understanding of the meaning of a social phenomenon to a group of people.
44
Name this method: Researchers using this technique will get data that are highly detailed and express the unique and comprehensive perspectives of the individuals who participated.
Qualitative Interviews
45
_____ research beings with a loosely formulated idea or topic, selects a social group or natural setting for study, gains access and adopts a social role in the setting, and observes in detail.
Field research
46
Define: Explanatory Research
Research that focuses on why events occur or tries to test and build social theory.
47
Define: Aggregate
Collection of many individuals, cases, or other units
48
Define: Social Theory
A system of interconnected abstractions or ideas that condenses and organizes knowledge about the social world
49
Define: Macrosocial Theory
Social theories and explanations about abstract, large-scale, and broad-scope aspects of social reality, such as social change in major institutions (eg. the family, education) in a whole nation across several decades.
50
Define: Microsocial Theory
Social theories and explanations about the concrete, small-scale and narrow level of reality, such as face-to-face interaction in small groups during a two-month period.
51
Define: Mesosocial Theory
social theories and explanations about the middle level of social reality between a broad and narrow scope, such as the development and operation of social organizations, communities, or social movements over a five-year period.
52
Define: Empirical generalization
A quasi-theoretical statement that summarizes findings or regularities in empirical evidence. It uses few, if any, abstract concepts and only makes a statement about a recurring pattern that researchers observe.
53
Define: Middle-range theory
A theory that focuses on specific aspects of social life and sociological topics that can be tested with empirical hypotheses.
54
Define: Concept
an idea expressed as a symbol or in words
55
Define: Assumptions
A part of social theory that is not tested by acts as a starting point or basic belief about the world. These are necessary to make other theoretical statements and to build social theory.
56
Define: Agency
refers to the individual's ability to act and make independent choices
57
Define: Structure
Refers to aspects of the social landscape that appear to limit or influence the choices made by individuals.
58
Define: Ontology
A branch of philosophy that considers the way we understand the nature of reality. (one view is that there is an objective social reality that exits and is the same for everyone; the opposite side of the spectrum is subjectivity - that social reality is constructed by individuals and that it is unique for everyone)
59
Define: Epistemology
A branch of philosophy that studies knowledge, including how we pursue knowledge. (refers to the techniques by which we study the world - positivism/interpretivism)
60
Define: Positivism
The philosophical orientation that the social world should be studied in a similar manner to the natural world.
61
Positivist researchers advocate for the use of _________
statistics, surveys, experiments
62
Define: Interpretivism
The philosophical orientation that the study of society requires research techniques specific to understanding the interpretation of meaning.
63
Interpretivists advocate for research techniques that involve:
understanding how individuals interpret the social world around them, usually focusing on qualitative methods.
64
Define: Paradigm
A general organizing framework for social theory and empirical research. It includes basic assumptions, major questions to be answered, models of good research practice and theory, and methods for finding the answers to questions.
65
_____ is the most widely practiced social science approach, especially in North America.
Positivism
66
______ put great value on the principle of replication.
Positivists
67
Define: Replication
The principle that researchers must be able to repeat scientific findings in multiple studies to have a high level of confidence that the findings are true.
68
Define: Nomothetic
An approach based on laws or one that operates according to a system of laws.
69
Define: Idiographic
An approach that focuses on creating detailed descriptions of specific events in particular time periods and settings. It rarely goes beyond empirical generalizations to abstract social theory or causal laws.
70
Define: Verstehen
A german word that translates as "understanding"; specifically, it means an empathic understanding of another's world view.
71
If you look at a theory and then test it with data you are using a _______ approach.
Deductive
72
If you gather data and then generate a theory, you are using a _______ approach.
Inductive
73
Define: Deductive Approach
An approach to inquiry or social theory in which one begins with abstract ideas and principles then works toward concrete, empirical evidence to test the ideas.
74
Define: Inductive Approach
An approach to inquiry or social theory in which one begins with concrete empirical details then works toward abstract ideas or general principles.
75
Define: Grounded Theory
Social Theory that is rooted in observations of specific, concrete details.
76
Define: Theoretical explanation
a logical argument that tells why something occurs and how concepts are connected. It refers to a general rule or principle.
77
Define: Ordinary explanation
makes something clear or describes something in a way that illustrates it and makes it intelligible.
78
Define: Prediction
A statement about something that is likely to occur in the future.
79
Define: Causal Explanation
A statement in social theory about why events occur that is expressed in terms of causes and effects. They correspond to associations in the empirical world.
80
What three things do you need to establish causality?
temporal order, association, and the elimination of plausible alternatives.
81
Define: Temporal Order
In establishing causation, the cause must come before the effect.
82
Define: Association
A co-occurance of two events, factors, characteristics, or activities such that when one happens, the other is likely to occur as well. Many statistics measure this.
83
Define: Eliminating alternatives
Eliminating alternatives means that a researcher interested in causality needs to show that the effect is due to the causal variable and not to something else.
84
Define: Positive Relationship
An association between two variables such that as values on one increase, values on the other also increase.
85
Define: Negative Relationship
An association between two variables such that as values on one variable increase, values on the other variable fall or decrease.
86
Define: Scientific Misconduct
When someone engages in research fraud, plagiarism, or other unethical conduct that significantly deviates from the accepted practice for conducting and reporting research within the scientific community.
87
Define: Research Fraud
A type of unethical behaviour in which a researcher fakes or invents data that he or she did not really collect or fails to honestly and fully report how he or she conducted a study.
88
Define: Plagiarism
A type of unethical behaviour in which one uses the writings or ideas of another without giving proper credit. It is "stealing ideas."
89
Define: Principle of voluntary consent
An ethical principle of social research that people should never participate in research unless they first explicitly agree to do so.
90
Define: Informed Consent
An agreement by participants stating they are willing to be in a study after they learn something about what the research procedure will involve.
91
Define: Special Populations
People who lack the necessary cognitive competency to give real informed consent, people in a weak position who might compromise their freedom to refuse to participate in a study, or groups who have been historically exploited and oppressed.
92
Define: Research Fatigue
The perception by a community that has been extensively researched that they have experienced no measurable gains from participating in the research and is therefore uninterested in further participation.
93
Define: Anonymity
Research participants remain anonymous or nameless
94
Define: Confidentiality
Information has participant names attached, but the researcher holds it in confidence or keeps it secret from the public
95
Define: Whistle-Blower
A person who sees ethical wrongdoing, tries unsuccessfully to correct internally, and then informs and external audience, agency, or the media.
96
Define: Meta-analysis
A quantitative overview of existing evidence on a particular topic
97
Define: Linear research path
Research that proceeds in a clear, logical, step-by-step straight line. It is more characteristic of a quantitative than a qualitative approach to social research.
98
Define: Nonlinear research path
research that proceeds in a circular, back-and-forth manner. It is more characteristic of a qualitative style of social research
99
A _______ researcher gives meaning by rearranging, examining, and discussing the numbers by using charts and statistics to explain how patterns in the data relate to the research question.
quantitative
100
A ________ researcher gives meaning by rearranging, examining, and discussing textual or visual data in a way that conveys an authentic voice, or that remains true to the original people and situations he or she studied.
Qualitative
101
Define: attributes
the categories or levels of a variable
102
Define: Independent variable
The first variable that causes or produces the effect in a causal explanation. (Often denotes by X by quantitative researchers)
103
Define: Dependent variable
The effect variable that is last and results from the causal variable(s) in a causal explanation. Also the variable that is measured by the pretest and post-test and that is the result of the treatment in experimental research.
104
What is the difference between independent and dependent variables?
The independent variable is "independent of" prior causes that act on it, whereas the dependent variable "depends on" the cause.
105
What are two questions that can help you identify the independent variable?
(1) Does it come before other variables in time? (Independent variables come before any other type.) (2) If the variables occur at the same time, does the author suggest that one variable has an impact on another variable? (Independent variables affect or have an impact on other variables.)
106
Define: Intervening variable
A variable that is between the initial causal variable and the final effect variable in a causal explanation
107
What comes between the independent and dependent variables and shows the link or mechanism between them?
Intervening Variable
108
Define: hypothesis
The statement from a causal explanation or a proposition that has at least one independent and one dependent variable, but it has yet to be empirically tested
109
What are the five characteristics of a causal hypothesis?
1 +2: define the minimum elements of a hypothesis
3: restates the hypothesis
4: states that the hypothesis should be logically tied to a research question and to a theory
5: requires that a researcher uses empirical data to test the hypothesis
110
True of False: A hypothesis is never proven, but it can be disproven
True
111
Define: Null Hypothesis
A hypothesis that says there is no relationship or association between two variables, or no effect.
112
Define: Alternative Hypothesis
A hypothesis paired with a null hypothesis stating that the independent variable has an effect on a dependent variable.
113
What are five characteristics of causal hypotheses?
1. It has at least two variables.
2. It expresses a causal relationship between the variables.
3. It can be expressed as a predication or an expected future outcome.
4. It is logically linked to a research question and a theory.
5. It is falsifiable; this is, it is capable of being tested against empirical evidence and shown to be true or false.
114
Define: Level of analysis
A way to talk about the scope of social theory, causal explanation, proposition, hypothesis, or theoretical statement. The range of phenomena it covers, or to which it applies, goes from social psychological (micro-level) to organizational (Meso-level) to large-scale social structure (macro-level).
115
What are some common units of analysis in sociology?
the individual, the group (family, friendship group), the social category (social class, race, gender), the social institution (eg. religion, education, the family).
116
Define: ecological fallacy
something that appears to be a causal explanation but it not. It occurs because of confusion about units of analysis. A researcher has empirical evidence about an association for large-scale units or huge aggregates, but overgeneralizes to make theoretical statements about an association among small-scale units or individuals.
117
Define: Reductionism
Something that appears to be a causal explanation but is not, because of confusion about units of analysis. A researcher has empirical evidence for an association at the level of individual behaviour or very small-scale units, but overgeneralizes to make theoretical statements about very large-scale units.
118
Define: Spurioussness
occurs when two variables are associated but are not causally related because an unseen third factor is the real cause. The unseen third or other variable is the cause of both the independent and the dependent variable in the apparent but illusionary relationship and accounts for the observed association.
119
Define: Tautology
refers to circular reasoning and can often be detected when the first half of a sentence appears to be a rephrasing of the second half of the sentence. ( For example, the statement, “People are poor because they have little money” initially seems like a cause-and-effect argument with the cause being “poverty” and the outcome being “no money.” But obviously, these two things—being poor and having little money—are the same thing.)
120
Define: Teleology
refers to an argument that explains the cause-effect relationship as one that fulfills a function or ultimate purpose.
121
Define: Survey Research
A quantitative social research technique in which one systematically asks many people the same questions, then records and analyzes their answers.
122
What are come examples of categories that can be asked about in a survey?
behaviour, attitudes/beliefs, opinions, characteristics, expectations, self-classification, knowledge
123
Should you ask why questions in a survey?
No
124
Survey research is often called ________
correlational
125
What are the 6 steps in the process of survey research?
1. Develop hypotheses, decide on type of survey (mail, online, interview, telephone), write survey questions, decide on response categories, design layout.
2. Plan how to record data, pilot-test survey instrument
3. Decide on target population, get sampling frame, decide on sample size, select sample.
4. Locate respondents, conduct interviews, carefully record data.
5 Enter data into computers, recheck all data, perform statistical analysis on data
6. Describe methods and findings in research report, present findings to others for critique and evaluation
126
What is the first step in the process of survey research?
Step 1:
- Develop hypotheses
- Decide on type of survey (mail, online, interview, telephone)
- Write survey questions
- Decide on response categories
- Design layout
127
What is the second step in the process of survey research?
Step 2:
- Plan how to record data
- pilot-test survey instrument
128
What is the third step in the process of survey research?
Step 3:
- Decide on target population
- get sampling frame
- decide on sample size
- select sample
129
What is the fourth step in the process of survey research?
Step 4:
- Locate respondents
- Conduct interviews
- carefully record data
130
What is the fifth step in the process of survey research?
Step 5:
- Enter data into computers
- recheck all data
- perform statistical analysis on data
131
What is the sixth step in the process of survey research?
Step 6:
- Describe methods and findings in research report.
- Present findings to others for critique and evaluation
132
What are the three principles for effective survey questions?
Keep it clear, keep it simple, and keep the respondent's perspective in mind.
133
What are some things to avoid when writing survey questions?
- avoid jargon, slang and abbreviations
- avoid ambiguity, confusion and vagueness
- avoid emotional language
- avoid prestige bias
- avoid double-barrelled questions
- avoid leading questions
134
Define: Prestige Bias
A problem in survey research question writing that occurs when a highly respected group or individual is linked to one of the answers.
135
Define: Double-barrelled Question
A problem in survey research question wording that occurs when two ideas are combined into one question and it is unclear whether the answer is for the combination of both or one or the other question.
136
Define: Leading question
A question that leads the respondent to choose one response over another by its wording.
137
Define: Threatening Question
A type of survey research question in which respondents are likely to cover up or lie about their true behaviour or beliefs because they fear a loss of self-image or may appear to be engaging in undesirable or deviant behaviour.
138
Define: Social desirability bias
A bias in survey research in which respondents give a "normative' response or a socially acceptable answer rather than giving a truthful answer.
139
Define: Mode of delivery
this refers to how the data were collected (eg. by postal survey, telephone interview, in-person interview, or over the internet)
140
What are the three areas of concern that online surveys have?
coverage, privacy and verification, and design issues.
141
Describe anonymity:
about concealing names, identity so that no one can find out that info. Use a participant ID # or fake name, alter quotes that could identify who the person is.
142
Describe confidentiality
keep names and details secret from public disclosure
143
Starts with an idea / theory and tests it with research:
Deductive
144
Conducts research, then arrives at an idea later:
Inductive
