Deck 4: Surveys

Question 1

Surveys consist primarily of ______.

A) open-ended questions
B) loosely structured questions
C) semi-structured questions
D) closed-ended questions

Answer 1

closed-ended questions

Question 2

You are conducting applied research for a nonprofit. You got a grant to do the research, so you have a decent budget, and you have several months to collect the data. Your population is military veterans who served for the 50 years between 1960 and 2015. You want to ask them questions related to their experiences with PTSD. You are especially interested in reaching low-income and homeless veterans, since your literature review suggests they may be more likely to experience untreated PTSD symptoms. Which mode of delivery would be the best choice, given the situation?

A) Internet
B) face-to-face
C) phone
D) mail

Answer 2

face-to-face

Question 3

You are conducting basic research for a thesis. You are studying attitudes about academic dishonesty among college students. Because this is for a thesis, any costs will have to be paid out-of-pocket by you. Which mode of delivery would be the best choice, given the situation?

A) Internet
B) face-to-face
C) phone
D) mail

Answer 3

Internet

Question 4

You are conducting basic research with the family members of prison inmates about their most recent visit to the prison. You have a small budget for collecting the data. You are particularly interested in how visiting the prison impacts the family members emotionally and financially. Which mode of delivery would be the best choice, given the situation?

A) phone
B) take-home
C) Internet
D) face-to-face

Question 5

You are conducting applied research for a chain of discount retail stores about their customers' satisfaction with their shopping experience. You have a big budget and a staff to work on the research, but it is important that you get a representative sample of your shoppers. Which mode of delivery would be the best, given the situation?

A) mail
B) take-home
C) Internet
D) face-to-face

Question 6

You are conducting a follow-up survey of people who participated in conflict mediation during a divorce. You are interested in knowing how their attitudes about mediation have been affected by their participation in the process. You have a small budget but are not in a hurry. Many of the participants chose mediation because they could not afford a divorce attorney, so your population includes many low-income individuals. Which mode of delivery would be best, given the situation?

A) phone
B) Internet
C) mail
D) face-to-face

Question 7

According to a positivist definition, objectivity means ______.

A) to try not to influence the results of your study in any way
B) to accurately represent the participants' perspective
C) to work deductively
D) to get to know your participants informally and develop rapport

Question 8

How do positivist researchers test their theories?

A) by making sure that the data are subjective and include the respondents' feelings
B) by using inductive research
C) by trying to get sample sizes as large as possible in order to get the input from as many people as they can
D) by breaking down the theories into hypotheses and then collecting data that confirm or disconfirm the hypotheses

Question 9

The main goal of positivist methodology is to ______.

A) understand the participant's experiences as deeply as possible
B) observe patterns of behavior without making interpretations of them
C) build trust and rapport to get information that is as complete and truthful as possible
D) test hypotheses and theories

Question 10

Positivists aim to ______.

A) generalize their results to a larger population
B) understand a small group as deeply as possible
C) admit their biases so as to let the reader decide how much they may have affected the research
D) develop good rapport with participants to elicit rich, thick description

Question 11

Describe what a hypothesis is and why it's important in survey research.

Question 12

You are testing the hypothesis: "Children who receive counseling between the ages of 5 and 10 for past trauma are less likely to see a therapist regarding substance abuse later in life than children who receive such counseling for between the ages of 11 and 15." Are you engaging in inductive or deductive research? Why?

Question 13

What is the relationship between number of children and type of child discipline used by parents? This question is ______.

A) descriptive
B) explanatory
C) expository
D) demographic

Question 14

Which of the following is an appropriate question for survey research?

A) What is the relationship between social class and job satisfaction?
B) How do college students decide whether to experiment with drugs?
C) How does power manifest within women's sexual relationships?
D) What could schools do to prevent bullying?

Question 15

Seniors who identify themselves as "undecided" about their career goals are more likely to add a second major than are seniors who report being "very clear" about their career goals. Which of the following is NOT a variable in this hypothesis?

A) class standing
B) degree of clarity about career goals
C) likelihood of adding a second major
D) They are all variables in the hypothesis.

Question 16

Which of the following makes the best hypothesis?

A) Freshmen are more likely than seniors to report feeling homesick, unfulfilled, lonely, and dissatisfied with their college experience than are seniors.
B) Juniors who meet with their counselor every semester are more likely to have high GPAs than seniors who meet with their counselor once a year.
C) College students prefer big universities more than small universities.
D) Seniors who identify themselves as "undecided" about their career goals are more likely to add a second major than are seniors who report being "very clear" about their career goals.

Question 17

A local program coordinator at the county juvenile hall has implemented a new rehabilitation program to better serve the youth population. She has hired you to research the effectiveness of their new program. Your research question is: How do graduates of the new rehabilitation program at county juvenile hall evaluate the program's effectiveness in preparing them for life after release? What is an appropriate research objective for this question?

A) to calculate the financial burden re-offenders have on the county
B) to identify areas of the program that have not met the desired outcomes
C) to interview staff about how well they think the program is working
D) to determine how the standard of living in the youths' home environment has changed over time

Question 18

What are the similarities and differences between hypotheses and research objectives?

Question 19

Writing survey items constitutes which component of research?

A) conceptualizing
B) operationalizing
C) hypothesizing
D) sampling

Question 20

Explain the three steps to operationalizing a variable.

Question 21

How many caffeinated beverages did you drink in the last 24 hr?
0-2
3-4
5-6
7 or more
Which level of measurement is used in this survey item?

A) nominal
B) ordinal
C) ratio
D) interval

Question 22

How many caffeinated beverages did you drink in the last 24 hr? Which level of measurement is used in this survey item?

A) nominal
B) ordinal
C) ratio
D) interval

Question 23

What was the last caffeinated beverage you consumed?
Coffee
Tea
Soda/soft drink
Energy drink
Other
Which level of measurement is used in this survey item?

A) nominal
B) ordinal
C) ratio
D) interval

Question 24

What is your favorite team sport to play?
Basketball
Hockey
Rugby
Football
Lacrosse
What is wrong with this survey item?

A) The question is threatening.
B) The answers aren't mutually exclusive.
C) The question is double-barreled.
D) The answers aren't exhaustive.

Question 25

There are several things wrong with the following survey item. Of the choices given, what is one of them?
The President is officially elected by the Electoral College, whose members are unknown to most voters, and who could ignore the wishes of the voters. Should we abolish the Electoral College?
Yes
No
Don't know

A) The question needs a specific time frame.
B) The question is biased.
C) The question is threatening.
D) The question is too short.

Question 26

What is wrong with this survey item?
How much do you support or oppose technology training and new job creation to stimulate our economy?
Strongly support
Somewhat support
Somewhat oppose
Strongly oppose

A) The question is threatening.
B) The question is double-barreled.
C) The answers are not mutually exclusive.
D) The question uses absolutes.

Question 27

Which of the following is the best survey question?

A) How much time did you spend doing homework per night in elementary school?
B) On average, how much time do you spend studying on weekdays?
C) In the last 24 hr, how much total time did you spend doing work for your classes outside of class time (including reading for classes, studying, and/or working on class assignments)?
D) Last year, how many times did you do your homework in math class and study for tests?

Question 28

What are the most appropriate response categories for the following survey item?
How difficult do you find the content material in this class?

A) strongly agree to strongly disagree
B) very difficult to not at all difficult
C) very difficult to very easy
D) easy to hard

Question 29

You are studying graduating seniors at your university about their career plans after graduation. What is your population?

A) all graduating seniors at your university
B) all students at your university
C) all graduating seniors at your university who have decided upon career plans
D) all of the students regardless of class enrolled at the university

Question 30

You are studying graduating seniors at your university about their career plans after graduation. What is your sampling frame?

A) all graduating seniors at your university
B) the list of graduating seniors produced by the registrar's office
C) your group of friends who are graduating
D) all of the students walking through graduation ceremonies

Question 31

Your university e-mail system allows you to send e-mails to all students enrolled in a specific course at one time, so you use a random numbers generator to choose 436 courses at your university to sample and send e-mails out to all students enrolled in the selected courses. What kind of sampling are you using?

A) simple random sampling
B) stratified sampling
C) cluster sampling
D) nonprobability sampling

Question 32

You are conducting an exit survey of graduating seniors in your major. You send a survey link for an Internet survey to every graduating senior in the major. What kind of sample are you using?

A) quota
B) census
C) convenience
D) probability sampling

Question 33

Why is it important to use probability sampling whenever possible in survey research?

A) to increase validity of your findings
B) to increase reliability
C) to be able to generalize your findings
D) to increase the odds that you will get a high response rate

Question 34

Which of the following conditions would lead you to choose to use cluster sampling?

A) You are able to obtain a pretty good sampling frame but you don't have additional information about the people listed on it.
B) There is a very small group whose opinions are important to oversample and you are using a phone survey.
C) You can't get a sampling frame but there are naturally occurring groups of the people you want to participate.
D) You are using a mail survey and you have additional information about the individuals listed on the sampling frame.

Question 35

Explain when stratified sampling would be a better choice than random sampling.

Question 36

If you are conducting basic survey research on worker satisfaction in the state of Iowa, using random digit dialing for phone surveys, which of the following would you be most likely to use as your sample size? Note that Iowa's state population is approximately 3.15 million.

A) 150,000
B) 1,500
C) 150
D) 1.5 million

Question 37

List three reasons it is important to oversample your population.

Question 38

The following informed consent statement is most appropriate for which kind of research?
The City of Wilmington is conducting a survey of citizens' opinions about the city parks. The information will be used by the city council in making funding decisions for current and new parks projects. The survey will take about 10 min to complete. Your responses are entirely anonymous. If you have any questions about this survey, you may contact the mayor's office at [e-mail]

A) Internet
B) mail
C) face-to-face
D) phone

Question 39

Where do demographic questions belong in a survey?

A) at the beginning
B) interspersed throughout
C) at the end
D) it doesn't matter

Question 40

It is a bad idea when ordering survey items to ______.

A) put the more sensitive questions at the end
B) put a long list of demographic questions at the beginning
C) put five or six Likert-type Scale questions one after another in a grid pattern
D) group questions together by topic

Question 41

You ask people from the population you are studying to pretest your survey by having them take the survey and asking them questions about how they interpreted the questions and why they chose the answers they did. This form of pretesting is called ______.

A) cognitive interviewing
B) behavior coding
C) split-half design
D) quota model

Question 42

The difference between other forms of pretesting and pilot testing is that in pilot testing ______.

A) everything is done exactly as it would be in the actual survey, including preliminary data analysis
B) you will include the data from the pilot testing in the actual survey results
C) the sample is drawn from a slightly different population than the one you will actually be using for the survey
D) the participants in the pilot survey will be included again in your finalized survey

Question 43

In survey research, coding the data means ______.

A) to identify patterns such as types, magnitudes, and frequencies
B) to give numbers to each response choice in the survey
C) to look for negative cases
D) to define key concepts

Question 44

A table that shows how respondents answered a question about gun control by their frequency of religious service attendance is a ______.

A) frequency
B) crosstab
C) spurious analysis
D) univariate analysis

Question 45

The higher one's income, the more likely they support enhanced punishment for gang-related crimes. Which is the INDEPENDENT variable in this hypothesis?

A) enhanced punishment for gang-related crimes
B) likelihood of supporting enhanced punishment
C) number of gang-related crimes
D) income

Question 46

The higher one's income, the more likely they support enhanced punishment for gang-related crimes. Which is the DEPENDENT variable in this hypothesis?

A) income
B) likelihood of supporting enhanced punishment
C) number of gang-related crimes
D) enhanced punishment for gang-related crimes

Question 47

The higher one's income, the more likely they support enhanced punishment for gang-related crimes. Which of the following are true?

A) This is a positive relationship.
B) This is a negative relationship.
C) This is a spurious relationship.
D) There is no relationship at all.

Question 48

There is a negative relationship between age and likelihood of getting a DUI. What does this mean?

A) The younger one is, the more likely they are to get a DUI.
B) The older one is, the more likely they are to get a DUI.
C) Younger people get harsher penalties than older people when they get a DUI.
D) Younger people who receive DUI report it as a negative experience.

Question 49

Every time you wear your lucky shirt, you get an A on your class presentation. This is an example of ______

A) causation
B) association
C) a positive relationship
D) a negative relationship

Question 50

Every time you wear your lucky shirt, you get an A on your class presentation. Why can't we say this is a causal relationship?

A) It is missing temporal order.
B) There is no association.
C) We haven't ruled out the plausible alternatives.
D) We didn't make a crosstab with the information.

Question 51

Measuring attitudes about abortion by counting the number of times a person has voted in the last 5 years is a(n) ______ measure.

A) invalid
B) unreliable
C) nominal
D) dependable

Question 52

Asking respondents their level of agreement to the statement, "My social class is irrelevant to my popularity," is ______ because social class could be viewed as income by some respondents, educational level by others, and name brands worn by still others.

A) invalid
B) unreliable
C) nominal
D) dependable

Question 53

If you conduct phone surveys, but the survey administrators don't all read the questions in the exact same way to every respondent, what aspect of data quality is being threatened?

A) validity
B) reliability
C) causality
D) sampling

Question 54

How would you clean your data, and why is this necessary?

Question 55

What three things do you need to demonstrate in order to claim that there is a causal relationship between variables?

Question 56

List six important rules to follow when writing survey items and their responses.

Question 57

Describe two ways to pretest a survey.

Question 58

List two guidelines that are important to follow when deciding upon the order of your survey items.

Question 59

What would you do to increase the response rate for a survey delivered by MAIL?

Question 60

What would you do to increase the response rate for a PHONE survey?

Question 61

There is a negative relationship between income and number of children one has. What does this mean in layman's terms?

Question 62

You are doing a survey about what voters think their role is in political elections. Write your research question.

Question 63

Write one hypothesis to test your research question.

Question 64

Based on the hypothesis that you have just written, conceptualize one variable that you would need to use in order to test your hypothesis.

Question 65

Based on the hypothesis that you have just written, design a survey item for one variable that you would need to measure. What level of measurement did you use and why?

Question 66

In the study you are using the research question you just wrote, what is your population?

Question 67

What is your sampling frame?

Question 68

Which mode of delivery would you use and why?

Question 69

Based on the mode of delivery you chose, which sampling method will you use to sample from this population?

Question 70

Describe the steps you will take to draw this sample based on the mode of delivery you chose.

Question 71

Thinking about the mode of delivery you chose, list two problems you would be likely to have with getting a good response rate for this study, and what you would do to try to overcome these and thus maximize your response rate?

Question 72

Taking into account the mode of delivery you chose, how would you get informed consent?

Question 73

List four things that you will do to protect your participants, OTHER than getting their informed consent.

Question 74

Would your research be confidential or anonymous? Explain the difference, and why you choose to make it the one you indicated.

Question 75

How will you pretest your survey?

Question 76

You are doing a study regarding college students' attitudes about the effects of your state's budget problems. Write your research question.

Question 77

Write one hypothesis to test your research question.

Question 78

Based on the hypothesis that you have just written, conceptualize one variable that you would need to use in order to test your hypothesis.

Question 79

Based on the hypothesis that you have just written, design a survey item for one variable that you would need to measure. What level of measurement did you use and why?

Question 80

In the study you are doing using the research question you just wrote, what is your population?