Deck 5: Designing a Study

Question 1

Professor Pugsworth examined the following types of marital status: married/common-law,single-never married,widowed,separated/divorced.The types of marital status are called the professor's

A) variables.
B) variable categories or attributes.
C) units of analysis.
D) theoretical elements.
E) sampling units.

Answer 1

B

Question 2

A researcher using "The Logic of Disconfirming Hypotheses" uses two different hypotheses.What are they? Why is negative evidence considered stronger?

Answer 2

-The two hypotheses are the null and alternative hypotheses.The null hypothesis says that there is no relationship between two variables,or no effect.The alternative hypothesis says that a relationship exists.
-Negative evidence is considered stronger because the hypothesis becomes "tarnished" or "soiled" if the evidence fails to support it.This is because a hypothesis makes predictions.Negative and disconfirming evidence show that the predictions are wrong.Positive or confirming evidence for a hypothesis is less critical because alternative hypotheses may make the same prediction.A researcher who finds confirming evidence for a prediction may not elevate one explanation over its alternatives.

Question 3

Explain how a linear and nonlinear path to doing research differ,and how a preplanned vs.emergent research question differ.What types of researchers are most likely to use each?

Answer 3

-A linear research path follows a fixed sequence of steps; it is like a staircase leading in one clear direction.It is a way of thinking and a way of looking at issues-the direct,narrow,straight path that is common in Western European and North American culture.
-A nonlinear research path makes successive passes through steps,sometimes moving backward and sideways before moving on.It is more of a spiral,moving slowly upward but not directly.With each cycle or repetition,a researcher collects new data and gains new insights.
-The linear research path is favoured by quantitative researchers and involves the preplanning and development of a focused research question(s)for a specific study.On the other hand,qualitative researchers tend to favour a nonlinear research path that often begins with a vague or unclear research question(s)and the topic emerges slowly during the study.

Question 4

Melissa was interested in consumer preferences of female undergraduate students.Melissa found participants for her study,conducted and transcribed interviews,and began to analyze interviewees' responses.After a first pass,Melissa realized class played a bigger role in shaping her interviewees' consumer preferences than she anticipated when designing her interview schedule and so decided to conduct a second round of interviews with additional questions before formulating her findings.Which path did Melissa's research take?

A) Linear
B) Regular
C) Nonlinear
D) Irregular
E) Repetitive

Question 5

A good causal hypothesis

A) cannot be shown to be false with evidence.
B) only contains one variable.
C) can be proven to be true once and for all.
D) must apply to all humans in all human history in all societies.
E) is logically linked to a research question and a theory.

Question 6

What is grounded theory,and why is it a widely used approach in qualitative research?

Question 7

What is the independent variable(s)in the following hypothesis? "Persons who experience economic deprivation during childhood socialization will place a higher priority on economic self-interest later in life than will people who did not experience economic deprivation during childhood."

A) Economic deprivation
B) Priority of economic self-interest
C) Persons
D) Later life
E) A and B only are correct.

Question 8

Use the following model for the questions that follow:
X → Y → Z
The dependent variable is

A) X.
B) Y.
C) Z.
D) all of the above.
E) none of the above.

Question 9

What is the independent variable in the following statement? "The continuing absence of a father leads to low educational attainment among offspring in single-parent families.This view is derived from socialization theory,which stresses the importance of the male role model to the cognitive and emotional development of children."

A) Educational attainment
B) Single-parent family
C) Socialization theory
D) Absence of father in the family
E) Emotional development of children

Question 10

Variables and attributes are two different things,but they are often confused by new members of the research community.Explain the difference between a variable and an attribute.Why is it easy to confuse variable with attributes? Use an example to illustrate your answers.

Question 11

In what ways do the ecological fallacy and reductionism involve problems with the units of analysis?

Question 12

Prime Minister Harper stated that an individual's political orientation has an effect on that individual's stand on the legalization of marijuana issue."Political orientation" was used as his

A) independent variable.
B) dependent variable.
C) unit of analysis.
D) aggregate.
E) attribute.

Question 13

State a hypothesis with an independent,dependent,and intervening variable.What are the units of analysis and levels of analysis of the hypothesis? Draw a diagram showing the relationship.

Question 14

Provide an example of a good versus a bad research question on abortion in Canada.Explain why each is an example of a good versus a bad question.

Question 15

Give an example of a spurious relationship and draw a diagram of the links among variables.

Question 16

Graduate student Lola Lively conducted a study of how children thought about society.She asked them about their attitudes toward the prime minister of Canada.Her unit(s)of analysis is(are)

A) the individual child.
B) attitudes.
C) the prime minister.
D) children's attitudes.
E) society.

Question 17

Graduate student Phineas Manly studied the admissions practices and sports records of 200 colleges and universities in the U.S.and Canada to see whether postsecondary institutions with more lax admissions standards won more games.What are the units of analysis in this study?

A) Sports teams
B) College students
C) Colleges
D) Admissions standards
E) Number of winning games

Question 18

Researchers rarely explicitly define their levels and units of analysis.Nevertheless,it is important to distinguish between the two.Define "levels" of analysis,list the levels of analysis,and provide examples of what they might encompass.Likewise,define units of analysis and provide some examples of common units of analysis in sociological research.

Question 19

Restate the following in terms of a hypothesis with independent and dependent variables: "The number of kilometres a person drives in a year affects the number of visits a person makes to gasoline filling stations,and there is a positive unidirectional relationship between the variables." What is the unit of analysis for the hypothesis?

Question 20

Use the following model for the questions that follow:
X → Y → Z
The intervening variable is

A) X.
B) Y.
C) Z.
D) all of the above.
E) none of the above.

Question 21

Professor Crimefighter looked at the number of arrests for drunken driving on the roads in 10 urban and 10 rural counties of Ontario.He found police made more arrests on roads in the rural counties.Professor Crimefighter concluded that people who live in rural areas are more likely to drive while intoxicated than are people who live in urban areas.Crimefighter's conclusion has the problem of

A) premature closure.
B) overextension.
C) ecological fallacy.
D) reductionism.
E) spuriousness.

Question 22

Below is a list of features of qualitative or quantitative research.Which one is a feature of qualitative research but NOT quantitative research?

A) Measures are created in an ad hoc manner and often specific to an individual setting.
B) Standard procedures are used and replication assumed.
C) Measures are systematically created before gathering any data.
D) Concepts are in the form of distinct variables.
E) The theory is usually causal and deductive.

Question 23

When quantitative researchers want to test a hypothesis about a relationship between two variables they often develop a null hypothesis and a corresponding alternative hypothesis.What does the null hypothesis say about the relationship being studied?

A) There is no relationship between the two variables.
B) The dependent variable has an effect on the independent variable.
C) There is no intervening variable affecting the relationship between the independent and dependent variables.
D) The relationship between the independent and dependent variables is spurious.
E) The independent variable has an effect on the dependent variable.

Question 24

Political Scientist Tom Travers tested whether the "military effort of modern industrial nations" is caused by the "electoral success by the right-wing parties" or the "popularity of nationalist beliefs" in a society.In this study,the dependent variable is

A) nationalist beliefs.
B) military effort.
C) gross national product.
D) International Labour Organization.
E) votes during national and local elections for right-wing parties.

Question 25

How does the intervening variable relate to the independent variable and dependent variable in a three-variable causal relationship?

A) The intervening variable acts as a dependent variable with respect to the dependent variable and acts as an independent variable toward the dependent variable.
B) The intervening variable acts as a dependent variable with respect to the independent variable and acts as an independent variable toward the dependent variable.
C) The intervening variable acts as an independent variable with respect to the independent variable and acts as an independent variable toward the dependent variable.
D) The intervening variable acts as a dependent variable with respect to the independent variable and acts as a dependent variable toward the dependent variable.
E) The relationship of the intervening variable to the independent and dependent variables is not fixed.

Question 26

When does a qualitative researcher focus a study into a specific research question?

A) Before selecting a general topic
B) After selecting a topic, but before gathering any data
C) After selecting a topic and deciding how to collect data
D) After selecting a topic, gathering some data, and conducting preliminary analysis of the data
E) There are no research questions in qualitative research.

Question 27

alternative hypothesis

Question 28

The worldwide "Great Depression" of the 1930s was caused by Michael Moneybags,a prominent New York Stock broker,who suffered from severe paranoia and told six wealthy friends to sell their stocks no matter what the price when he heard of a European bank going bankrupt in October 1929.Which logical error in causal explanation is presented in this explanation of the Great Depression?

A) Null hypothesis
B) Spurious statement
C) Ecological fallacy
D) Reductionism
E) None of the above

Question 29

Dr.Munroe of the Quick Stop Counselling Clinic noticed that female clients with eating disorders who were counselled during the hours of 8:00 to 11:45 a.m.recovered much faster than those who were counselled from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.She jumped to the false conclusion that time of day of counselling caused a quicker recovery.Dr.Elgin was more cautious.He noticed that all the clinic staff used the same treatment,but the clinic's female counsellors all worked at the clinic in the morning,and male counsellors worked in the afternoon.He found that the faster recovery had nothing to do with the time of day; rather,it was due to female clients responding to the treatment with female counsellors.What is Dr.Munroe's initial causal relationship called?

A) Null hypothesis
B) Spurious statement
C) Ecological fallacy
D) Reductionism
E) None of the above

Question 30

An error in explanation that relies on the fulfillment of an ultimate purpose is called

A) tautology.
B) teleology.
C) reductionism.
D) spuriousness.
E) ecological fallacy

Question 31

attributes

Question 32

The statement "People are poor because they have little money" is an example of what error in explanation?

A) Spuriousness
B) Reductionism
C) Tautology
D) Ecological fallacy
E) Teleology

Question 33

Which of the following is an example of a bad research question?

A) Do students attending high schools that offer sex education have lower teen pregnancy rates than those schools that do not?
B) Is premarital sex immoral?
C) Do teens who begin to engage in sexual relations when they are younger than 15 have lower self-esteem than teens who wait to begin until they are over 18?
D) Does an absence of reliable birth control information increase the chances that sexually active teens will catch and spread sexually transmitted diseases?
E) Does the age at which young men first engage in sexual intercourse differ among those who live in rural areas, small towns, suburbs, and large cities?

Question 34

hypothesis

Question 35

Benjamin hypothesizes that people who grow up in violent households are more likely to be violent as adults.Benjamin wants to conduct quantitative research to determine whether his hypothesis is correct.What should Benjamin's null hypothesis be?

A) The less violence one experiences in their childhood home, the less violence they will exhibit as adults.
B) There is no relationship between growing up in violent households and being violent as an adult.
C) Children who grow up in violent households are less likely to be violent as adults.
D) Children who grow up in violent households are more likely to be violent as adults.
E) There is a negative relationship between growing up in violent households and being violent as an adult.

Question 36

dependent variable

Question 37

ecological fallacy

Question 38

Which of the following is part of study design by someone using a quantitative research style?

A) Variables and hypotheses
B) Grounded theory
C) Use of different orders of interpretation
D) Nonlinear research path
E) Emphasis on cases and contexts

Question 39

Durkheim's classic study,Suicide (1897),was criticized because

A) of his treatment of aggregate data as though they were individual-level data.
B) of his treatment of individual-level data as though they were aggregate data.
C) he pooled his data and treated the populations across countries as though they were comparable.
D) A and C
E) B and C

Question 40

How does a qualitative researcher assign significance or a coherent meaning to something?

A) By rearranging, examining, and discussing the numbers by using charts and statistics to explain how patterns in the data relate to the research question
B) By rearranging, examining, and discussing textual or visual data in a way that remains true to the original people and situations that the researcher studied
C) By rearranging, examining, and discussing textual or visual data in a way that conveys an authentic voice
D) B and C
E) A and C

Question 41

null hypothesis

Question 42

level of analysis

Question 43

Simpson's paradox

Question 44

reductionism

Question 45

teleology

Question 46

spuriousness

Question 47

independent variable

Question 48

interpretation

Question 49

grounded theory

Question 50

intervening variable

Question 51

linear research path

Question 52

unit of analysis

Question 53

nonlinear research path

Question 54

tautology

Question 55

variable