A research team wants to study the influence of childhood neighborhood poverty on long-term health,such as life expectancy.As with many sociological questions,there are constraints on how this can be studied.Researchers interested in finding the most developed and reliable answers to such questions should
A)carefully design multiple experiments to establish causality.
B)use multiple strategies to analyze multiple sources of data.
C)target a very large sample for one well-elaborated study.
D)randomly select several neighborhoods,all of which are poor.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Using multiple strategies to analyze multiple sources of data would allow the researchers to control for confounding variables and increase the validity and reliability of their findings. This would also enable them to triangulate their results across multiple methods, increasing the robustness of their conclusions. Randomly selecting several neighborhoods, all of which are poor, would not adequately control for confounding factors such as genetics or individual health behaviors. Furthermore, pursuing a large-scale study with limited methodology would likely lead to marginally useful results. Carefully designed experiments can establish causality but may lack the breadth and scope that multiple methods and sources of data can provide.

A Research Team Wants to Study the Influence of Childhood