Deck 4: General Issues in Research Design

Question 1

With respect to causation,

A) it is the focus of explanatory research
B) it suggests a cause-and-effect relationship
C) cause in social science is inherently probabilistic
D) all of the above

Answer 1

all of the above

Question 2

Social artifacts refer only to paper documents, such as newspapers, court opinions, and police crime reports.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Joseph Maxwell identified "how credible and believable it is" as one criterion for assessing an idiographic explanation.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Construct validity refers to generalizing from what we observe and measure to the real-world things in which we are interested.

Question 5

One common threat to statistical conclusion validity is

A) the manner in which a sample is pulled
B) whether the sample is randomly selected
C) the size of the sample
D) all of the above are threats

Question 6

Threats to internal validity result from nonrandom, systematic error.

Question 7

When two variables are empirically correlated with each other, they must

A) occur together
B) occur at different times
C) be on separate time and space continuums
D) occur in succession

Question 8

Our ability to determine whether a change in the cause is statistically associated with a change in the effect is referring to what type of validity?

A) face validity
B) statistical conclusion validity
C) internal validity
D) construct validity

Question 9

The idea that two variables must vary together (i.e., must be empirically correlated)-is a nomothetic explanation of causality.

Question 10

Prospective studies are completed quickly since you only have to ask people to project what they would do or how they will act in the future.

Question 11

Systematic error would be found in what type of validity problem?

A) internal validity
B) statistical conclusion validity
C) external validity
D) construct validity

Question 12

Causation in social science is the foundation for exploratory research.

Question 13

Science is the enterprise dedicated to exploring.

Question 14

Which of the following does not represent a criterion for causality?

A) there is a correlation between the cause and the effect
B) the cause precedes the effect in time
C) the change in the effect is not caused by some third variable
D) it is not necessary for two variables to be correlated with each other

Question 15

Nonsystematic bias would be found in what type of validity problem?

A) internal validity
B) statistical conclusion validity
C) external validity
D) construct validity

Question 16

Explanatory studies are not cross-sectional.

Question 17

It is necessary to be charged before one can be convicted. This statement is representative of

A) real cause
B) necessary cause
C) sufficient cause
D) probabilistic cause

Question 18

Retrospective studies have the danger of faulty memories or even subjects lying.

Question 19

When we are concerned with whether we are correct in inferring that a cause produced an effect, we are concerned with the

A) reliability
B) generalizability
C) validity
D) probability

Question 20

A researcher compared the recidivism rates of drug abusers who were given probation with those who were sentenced to prison and discovered that the recidivism rates were highest for those sentenced to prison. What potential error is reflected by this conclusion?

A) internal validity
B) statistical conclusion validity
C) construct validity
D) external validity

Question 21

Despite a record number of cars being stolen in Newark, NJ, in 2000, Newark's auto theft rate was really lower than that of Miami, Denver, and Chicago. What is unit of analysis used in this example?

A) group
B) organization
C) individual
D) social artifacts

Question 22

After a one-year study of the recidivism rates of boot camps in the state of Georgia, the lowest rates were found in the boot camps located in Macon. What units of analysis were used in this study?

A) social artifacts
B) individuals
C) groups
D) organizations

Question 23

Which of the following is not a type of longitudinal study?

A) cross-sectional study
B) panel study
C) trend study
D) cohort study

Question 24

In a general sense, external validity is concerned with whether research findings from one study can be

A) exhaustingly conclusive
B) reproduced in another study, often under different conditions
C) reproduced in another study, often under the same conditions
D) validated by the National Academy to Advance Scientific Learning

Question 25

What type of study attempts to account for errors in drawing a sample by measuring the same people on two or more occasions?

A) cohort study
B) panel study
C) trend study
D) cross-sectional study

Question 26

Which of the following would serve as an example of a cross-sectional study?

A) Uniform Crime Reports
B) the 2010 U.S. census
C) a single wave of the National Crime Victimization Survey
D) both Uniform Crime Reports and a single wave of the National Crime Victimization Survey

Question 27

Regarding nomothetic explanation, which of the following specific criteria for causality do researchers consider?

A) Two variables must vary together-they must be empirically correlated.
B) The cause must occur before the effect.
C) The empirical correlation between cause and effect is not due to some other factor.
D) all of the above

Question 28

Which of the following would not be an example of social artifacts as units of analysis?

A) newspaper editorials
B) probation officers
C) television news programs
D) diaries

Question 29

The well-known Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment, discussed in Chapter 1, provides another example of

A) construct validity problems
B) internal validity problems
C) statistical validity problems
D) replication validity problems

Question 30

Households used by the National Crime Victimization Survey are an example of which unit of analysis?

A) individuals
B) groups
C) social artifacts
D) organizations

Question 31

After careful study of the relationship between the economy and arson, the conclusion was drawn that when the economy is poor and unemployment is high arson rates go up. The researcher concluded that unemployed people are more likely to commit arson than are those that are employed. What error was just committed?

A) the ecological fallacy
B) reductionism
C) using the wrong time dimension
D) an internal validity threat

Question 32

Which of the following would not be an example of organizations as units of analysis?

A) police departments
B) federal courthouses
C) drug treatment facilities
D) civilians in the military

Question 33

Causally related can also be expressed as

A) one relies upon the other
B) one precedes the other
C) one causes the other
D) none of the above

Question 34

In examining the relationship between drug use and crime discussed in your text, which of the following represents an internal validity threat?

A) the amount of variation in drug use and crime participation
B) the different patterns among different population groups means that there is no cause-and-effect relationship
C) both drug use and crime can be attributed to other causes
D) all of the above

Question 35

Which of the following would be an example of a retrospective approach to longitudinal studies?

A) asking how many victims of childhood abuse later abuse their own children
B) asking how many child abuse victims' parents were also abuse victims
C) asking how many offenders incarcerated in the state of New York have high school degrees
D) none of the above is an example of a retrospective approach

Question 36

The effects of violence in children's programming is a major research endeavor that requires counting the number of violent acts in Saturday morning cartoons for an entire year. The units of analysis being used for this project are

A) social artifacts
B) individuals
C) groups
D) organizations

Question 37

Which of the following would serve as a "snapshot" of a phenomenon at one point in time?

A) panel study
B) cross-sectional study
C) cohort study
D) trend study

Question 38

Marvin Wolfgang's study of males born in Philadelphia in 1945 was an attempt to measure delinquency by following those males from their tenth birthdays until they were 18. This is an example of what type of study?

A) cohort study
B) panel study
C) trend study
D) cross-sectional study

Question 39

All but which of the following would be a unit of analysis?

A) individuals
B) groups
C) organizations
D) social sentiments

Question 40

A major Midwestern university does annual surveys of its alumni. These surveys are designed to gauge the attitudes that alumni hold about the university, its academic programs, and the major team sports. These surveys have been an annual event for the last two decades and represent which type of study?

A) cohort study
B) panel study
C) trend study
D) cross-sectional study

Question 41

Which of the following is an example of a panel study?

A) National Incident-Based Reporting System
B) U.S. Census
C) National Crime Victimization Survey
D) Uniform Crime Reports

Question 42

Which term best describes an overly strict limitation on the kinds of concepts and variables to be considered as causes in explaining the broad range of human behavior represented by crime and criminal justice policy?

A) individualistic fallacy
B) ecological fallacy
C) reductionism
D) pluralism

Question 43

According to the textbook, because time order is a requirement for causal inferences, the time dimension of research requires

A) careful planning
B) controlled environmental design
C) a minimum of two researchers working in tandem
D) none of the above

Question 44

Which of the following would allow a researcher to measure change in a general population over time?

A) trend study
B) cohort study
C) panel study
D) cross-sectional study

Question 45

In an examination of violent crime among the most populous nations in the world, the United States ranks very high along with England, France, and Australia. The chance of being raped is higher in France than in the United States. What units of analysis are being used?

A) individuals
B) organizations
C) social artifacts
D) groups

Question 46

A survey distributed on a college campus discovered that males support the death penalty in greater numbers than females. The units of analysis in this case would be

A) social artifacts
B) groups
C) organizations
D) individuals

Question 47

Which of the following refers to the danger of making assertions about individuals as the unit of analysis based on the examination of groups or other aggregations?

A) individualistic fallacy
B) ecological fallacy
C) reductionism
D) pluralism

Question 48

Which of the following are social artifacts?

A) citizen attitudes about the death penalty
B) police crime reports
C) cities with over 250,000 inhabitants
D) months of the year

Question 49

Dr. Stone is interested in comparing attitudes about teenage pregnancy in the United States and in the Netherlands. He selects samples in both countries of ten-year-old males and females and plans to survey a portion of them every other year for the next ten years. Stone is using what technique?

A) cross-sectional study
B) trend study
C) cohort study
D) panel study

Question 50

Professor Hardy has spent the last decade conducting a study of the effects of early childhood "wellness" programs on subsequent delinquency. Every year, researchers visit participating families and collect a variety of data. Over the course of ten years, many families have moved away and the research staff has been unable to locate them. What problem has Professor Hardy encountered?

A) cross-sectional distortion
B) cohort distortion
C) panel attrition
D) experimental mortality

Question 51

Which of the following is not a type of validity?

A) internal
B) external
C) concept
D) statistical conclusion

Question 52

A study of the commentary made about the Patriot Act in 50 major newspapers' editorials found that newspapers in the Northeast gave more attention to the subject than papers in any other part of the country. What is the unit of analysis being used?

A) newspaper editorials
B) Patriot Act
C) area of the country
D) newspaper names

Question 53

Which of the following is not true concerning a cohort study?

A) all members of the cohort have something in common
B) members of a cohort may be all born in the same year
C) cohort members are studied as individuals as well as their group affiliation
D) members of a cohort may be all police officers hired in a particular year

Question 54

In the following research conclusion, what units of analysis are being used? "An enormous variation of deviant activities was represented in a sample of 1,485 news items. We categorized these deviant activities into five general types of analysis: violence, economic, political, ideological/cultural, and diversionary."

A) individuals
B) social artifacts
C) organizations
D) groups

Question 55

Which of the following is correct?

A) X is a sufficient cause of Y if Y always happens when X is present.
B) Y is a necessary cause of X if Y always happens when X does.
C) X is a necessary cause of Y only if Y happens before X.
D) Y is a sufficient cause of X only if X happens before Y.

Question 56

In criminal justice research, there is a great deal of variation in what or who is studied-which are technically known as

A) causal inferences
B) population sampling distributions
C) trend studies
D) units of analysis

Question 57

Which of the following is not a characteristic of a cross-sectional study?

A) The study is conducted at one point in time.
B) Cross-sectional studies for explanatory or evaluation purposes have an inherent flaw.
C) The study assesses changes that take place in a specific sample over time.
D) It allows a large population to be examined at a specific point in time.

Question 58

Observations of shoplifters in Pueblo, Colorado, characterized as "72 percent men and 28 percent women, with an average age of 15.4 years" constitutes which type of analysis?

A) descriptive analysis
B) variegated analysis
C) trend analysis
D) cohort analysis

Question 59

Rather than try to exclude or otherwise control possible outside influences, scientific realism studies how such influences are involved in

A) external validity claims
B) cause-and-effect relationships
C) cohort and trend studies
D) patterns and trends

Question 60

Which type of research study project is designed to permit observations over an extended period of time?

A) cross-sectional studies
B) latitudinal studies
C) longitudinal studies
D) proportional studies

Question 61

When we are concerned with how well an observed relationship between variables represents the underlying causal process of interest we are concerned with  __________  validity.

Question 62

Interests, ideas,  __________ , and new programs are all possible starting points for a line of research.

Question 63

If a researcher restricts the kinds of concepts and variables to be considered as causes in criminal justice research, they are committing the error of  __________.

Question 64

Criminal justice  __________  has difficulty with regard to causality because researchers encounter very few perfect measures of correlation.

Question 65

Exploratory and descriptive studies frequently are  __________  in nature since they allow data to be gathered at one point in time.

Question 66

Rather than trying to exclude or control possible outside influences,  __________  studies show such influences are involved in cause-and-effect relationships.

Question 67

In order to avoid mistaken inferences, researchers must be careful to specify the people or phenomena being studied, known as the  __________ .

Question 68

It is often said that social science is inherently probabilistic. What is meant by that?

A) Social sciences are probably hard to study.
B) The best that can be said of findings is that they are more or less likely to occur, but never with certainty.
C) Researchers can reduce the probability of findings being wrong to zero.
D) If the independent and dependent variables are truly causal, one can be certain of the results.

Question 69

Which of the following is true with respect to validity threats?

A) Internal validity leads to problems with generalization.
B) Construct validity makes it easy to establish cause and effect.
C) Internal validity arises from bias.
D) Statistical conclusion validity impacts which groups the findings apply to.

Question 70

In research such as that done by the National Crime Victimization Survey, the __________ study technique is most frequently employed.

Question 71

When a researcher asks people to recall their past in order to obtain a measurement of some phenomena over time, the technique is called a(n)  __________  study.

Question 72

A(n)  __________  cause is a condition that must be present for the effect to follow.

Question 73

If a researcher is concerned with whether their findings can be generalized to another population or environment, the researcher is expressing concerns about  __________  validity.

Question 74

Provide an example of the way in which the ecological fallacy is the result of errors with units of analysis. Explain in detail.

Question 75

__________ , units, and time are key elements in planning a research study.

Question 76

Identify four threats to validity discussed in your text. Give an example of each.

Question 77

Research that aims to measure the recidivism rates for youths participating in a new boot camp program after its first year in operation may use the  __________  type of study.

Question 78

Scientists assess the truth of statements about cause by considering threats to  __________ .

Question 79

Which of the following is accurate with respect to time dimensions?

A) A cross-sectional study is like a snapshot and produces an image at one point in time.
B) A trend study is like a series of snapshots in sequence over time.
C) A panel study is like a motion picture that looks at the same people over time.
D) all of the above

Question 80

A(n)  __________  cause is a condition that more or less guarantees the effect in question.