Introduction to Social Research Study Guide Questions
Course Introduction
Introduction to Social Research provides students with a foundational understanding of the methods and principles used to study society and human behavior. This course explores the key concepts, research designs, data collection techniques, and ethical considerations that underpin systematic social inquiry. Students will learn to critically evaluate research findings and develop practical skills in both qualitative and quantitative approaches, preparing them to design and conduct their own research projects in various social science disciplines.
Recommended Textbook Basics of Social Research Fourth Canadian Edition by W. Lawrence Neuman
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2
Chapter 1: Doing Social Research
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Q1) Define the following:scientific method
Answer: The ideas,rules,techniques,and approaches that the scientific community uses.
Q2) Define the following:quantitative data
Answer: Empirical evidence in the form of numbers.
Q3) Define the following:public sociology
Answer: A type of sociological inquiry that is concerned with connecting the results of research with the general public,often through activism.
Q4) Which of the following are the two major approaches or orientations to social research methods?
A)Micro and macro
B)Qualitative and quantitative
C)Explanatory and exploratory
D)Applied and academic
E)Cross-sectional and longitudinal
Answer: B
Q5) Define the following:experimental research
Answer: Research in which one intervenes or does something different to one group of people but not another,then compares the results for the groups.
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Chapter 2: Theory and Social Research
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Q1) Verstehen is a term associated with which major paradigm of social science?
A)Positivist
B)Interpretative
C)Conflict
D)Structural functionalist
E)Feminist
Answer: B
Q2) Define the following:positivism
Answer: The philosophical orientation that the social world should be studied in a similar manner to the natural world.
Q3) Define the following:grounded theory
Answer: Social theory that is rooted in observations of specific,concrete empirical details.
Q4) Define the following:aggregate
Answer: A collection of many different individuals,cases,or other units.
Q5) Define the following:interpretivism
Answer: The philosophical orientation that the study of society requires research techniques specific to understanding the interpretation of meaning.
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Chapter 3: Ethics in Social Research
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Q1) What is the general ethical principle regarding deception in social research?
A)It is fully acceptable and does not involve ethical issues.
B)It is forbidden under all circumstances of ethical research.
C)It can be ethically used if essential to the research so long as subjects are not physically harmed.
D)It can be ethically used if essential to the research,but only to the minimal degree necessary and it must be followed by debriefing.
E)Deception can only be ethically used when subjects are “captive”populations (e.g.,prisoners,students,mental hospital patients,military personnel).
Answer: D
Q2) Define the following:privacy
Answer: Privacy is the state of being free from intrusion into one’s personal affairs.Researchers regularly invade subjects’privacy and these invasions raise ethical concerns,which are sometimes addressed by assurances of anonymity and confidentiality.
Q3) Define the following:whistle-blower
Answer: A person who sees ethical wrongdoing and tries to correct it internally,but then informs an external audience,agency,or the media.
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Chapter 4: Reviewing the Scholarly Literature and Planning a Study
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Q1) What distinguishes a strong from a weak literature review?
Q2) Which of the following is considered a negative feature of using the internet for social research?
A)The internet has a “democratizing”effect.
B)The internet can make a specific piece of information accessible quickly.
C)There is no quality control over what gets put on the internet.
D)It provides new and important ways to find information.
E)There are no negative features of using the internet for social research.
Q3) Define the following:state of the field
Q4) Define the following:open access journals
Q5) Define the following:keywords
Q6) Describe the page-numbering system used in most scholarly journals.
Q7) Why are citations useful?
A)To locate sources
B)To summarize sources
C)To reference sources
D)B & C
E)A & C
Q8) Learning to paraphrase is an important step in honing your academic writing skills.What are the seven steps to effective paraphrasing? Page 6
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Page 7
Chapter 5: Designing a Study
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Q1) Durkheim's classic study,Suicide (1897),was criticized because
A)of his treatment of group data as though they were individual-level data.
B)of his treatment of individual-level data as though they were group 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
Q2) 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.
Q3) Define the following:dependent variable
Q4) 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.
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Chapter 6: Qualitative and Quantitative Measurement
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Q1) Name the levels of measurement and explain how they differ.Give examples.
Q2) Mildred Magnificent got on the scale at 7:00 a.m.and weighed 295 pounds.At 7:02 a.m.she again got on the scale and weighed 200 pounds.At 7:04 a.m.she weighed 499 pounds.The measurement of Mildred's weight has problems with A)reliability.
B)induction.
C)standardization
D)conceptualization. E)precision.
Q3) Define the following:predictive validity
Q4) Define the following:mutually exclusive attributes
Q5) Define the following:Likert scale
Q6) A social researcher takes an abstract idea and develops a clear conceptual definition for it.This is called A)androtempration. B)conceptualization. C)operationalization. D)replication. E)triangulation.
Page 9
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Chapter 7: Qualitative and Quantitative Sampling
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Q1) When is it appropriate to use a snowball sampling technique?
Q2) Define the following:sequential sampling
Q3) Adam Andrews of the Quit Today Institute wants to know how many students at the local university smoke cigarettes.Adam obtains a list of phone numbers for every student enrolled at the college from the Dean.He selects students from the 24 000 on the list by taking every fiftieth student,giving him a sample of 480 students. What sampling method is Adam Smith using?
A)Simple random
B)Systematic
C)Disproportionate
D)Cluster
E)Stratified
Q4) Define the following:sociogram
Q5) Define the following:deviant case sampling
Q6) Define the following:cluster sampling
Q7) How do researchers decide on the size of a sample to use in quantitative research?
Q8) Define the following:haphazard sampling
Q9) Define the following:hidden populations
Q10) Define the following:central limit theorem
10
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Chapter 8: Survey Research
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Q1) Define the following:standard format question
Q2) What is a "probe" in survey research?
A)A trick question to determine whether a respondent is lying
B)A two-part question in survey research where the answer to the first part of the question determines which of two different questions a respondent next receives
C)A sequence of questions starting with general ones and ending with specific ones
D)The name for the middle or neutral choice among the answers to an attitude question
E)A follow-up question where a respondent is asked to clarify or elaborate on a previous answer
Q3) Survey respondents are most likely to over-report
A)tax evasion.
B)a venereal disease.
C)alcohol consumption.
D)giving to a charity.
E)salary.
Q4) Define the following:contingency question
Q5) What are two advantages and two disadvantages of closed questions?
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Chapter 9: Experimental Research
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Sample Questions
Q1) After the delivery of a baby,new parents at Fraser Valley General Hospital were given a poison knowledge test.Before leaving the hospital they were given literature to read on poison awareness.A week later,they were invited back and took the poison test again to determine whether distributing poison awareness literature enhanced the knowledge of new parents.What kind of design is being used here?
A)One-group pretest-post-test design
B)Two-group post-test-only design
C)Nonequivalent control group
D)Static group comparison design
E)Equivalent time series design
Q2) Identify and describe three practical issues that all experimenters should be aware of.
Q3) Define the following:deception
Q4) Define the following:quasi-experimental designs
Q5) Define the following:pre-experimental designs
Q6) Define the following:interaction effects
Q7) Define the following:interrupted time series
Q8) Define the following:design notation
Q9) Define the following:static group comparison
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Chapter 10: Nonreactive Quantitative Research and Secondary Analysis
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Q1) Define the following:unobtrusive measure
Q2) Define the following:recording sheet
Q3) Pete Patterson is interested in how mayoral candidates from different parties were presented in local newspapers during the 10-week campaign period of the last municipal election in his town.Each paper published five issues per week throughout the 10-week period.Each of the 150 issues contained an average of 42 articles,giving Pete a total of 6 300 articles.Due to budget and time constraints,Pete decides to sample 630 of the articles.What is Pete's sampling frame?
A)The 150 issues of the three local newspapers
B)Each individual article
C)All 6 300 articles
D)The list of 630 articles
E)10 percent of 6 300 articles
Q4) What is quantitative content analysis and what is its specific limitation? What three types of research problems is content analysis usually used for?
Q5) Define the following:frequency
Q6) Define the following:social indicator
Q7) Define the following:accretion measures
Q8) Define the following:direction Page 13
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Page 14
Chapter 11: Analysis of Quantitative Data
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Q1) Define the following:standard deviation
Q2) Define the following:contingency cleaning
Q3) If the true situation in the world is that there is no causal relationship,but a researcher states that there is a causal relationship,what error occurs?
A)Type I
B)Type II
C)Falsely reject the null hypothesis
D)Falsely accept the null hypothesis
E)A and C
Q4) Connie and Tom both received 75 percent on the social research methods final exam.The mean for all women who took the test was 80 percent and the median was 75 percent with a standard deviation of 5 percent.The mean and median for the men was 65 percent with a standard deviation of 10 percent.What is the z-score for Connie and Tom relative to those of their own sex?
A)Connie’s z-score is +1 and Tom’s is -2,so Connie did better.
B)Connie’s z-score is -1 and Tom’s is +1,so Tom did better.
C)Both Connie and Tom have the same z-score,1.
D)Connie’s z-score is 0 and Tom’s is +1,so he did worse.
E)Connie’s z-score is -2 and Tom’s is -1,so Tom did better.
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Chapter 12: Qualitative Interviewing
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Q1) <a name="_GoBack"></a>Define the following:devil's advocate
Q2) Define the following:introducing questions
Q3) Which of the following statements about moderators is false?
A)Moderators are trained to be directive
B)Moderators are sometimes called facilitators
C)Moderators ask questions
D)Moderators probe quieter individuals for their opinions
E)Moderators defuse arguments
Q4) Groupthink refers to
A)a person whose role is to argue against a dominant idea.
B)a person’s natural desire to avoid conflict and lean toward group consensus,even when the group’s opinion does not reflect his/her own opinion.
C)the tendency for interviewees to think alike.
D)the use of a moderator to get focus group participants to respond similarly on questions.
E)respondents who share similar socio-economic attributes.
Q5) Define the following:interpreting questions
Q6) Describe five features of the qualitative interview that make it different from a normal everyday conversation.
Page 16
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Chapter 13: Field Research
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Q1) When does "guilty knowledge" occur?
A)A researcher becomes overinvolved in the field setting and loses objectivity or the role of researcher becomes a complete participant
B)The researcher selects a smaller set of observations based on time or activity in order to further develop theory and test developing hypotheses
C)Members tell the researcher untruths to purposely mislead or give a false view
D)A researcher learns about secret,illicit,or illegal activities during the course of conducting field research
E)A person with formal or informal authority controls access to the field setting
Q2) Define the following:audit trail
Q3) <a name="_GoBack"></a>Define the following:<a name="_GoBack"></a> <a name="_GoBack"></a>trustworthiness
Q4) Define the following:overt observer
Q5) What kinds of issues are field researchers confronted with when it comes to the problem of adopting social roles in the field research setting?
Q6) Define the following:go native
Q7) Define the following:confirmability
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Chapter 14: Nonreactive Qualitative Research
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Q1) Key elements of the narrative form include conjuncture,symbolized as
A)if X,then Y
B)if not X,then not Y
C)if X,then not Y
D)if not X,then Y
E)None of the above
Q2) Define the following:recollections
Q3) Which of the following research questions is directly applicable to historical research?
A)How do recent changes in big cities like London,Toronto,New York,and Tokyo reveal the rise of a new urban global system?
B)What was it like to live in a hamlet in a remote region of the Yukon during the Gold Rush days?
C)What is the causal relationship between gender and occupational earnings?
D)How do residents feel about recent episodes of vandalism in their neighbourhood?
E)How do members of the Amish community in the Kitchener-Waterloo region engage in helping behaviour?
Q4) Define the following:contextual equivalence
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Chapter 15: Analysis of Qualitative Data
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Q1) NVivo and ATLAS are examples of
A)qualitative coding strategies.
B)quantitative coding strategies.
C)qualitative coding software.
D)quantitative coding software.
E)common multiple sorting procedures.
Q2) Describe the features of the analytical memo.In what ways is it related to the coding process during the analysis of qualitative data?
Q3) Compare the key differences that set qualitative data analysis apart from quantitative data analysis.What four features differentiate these two approaches? Identify and briefly describe each one.
Q4) After formulating concepts,qualitative researchers link them together.Which of the following is NOT one of the types of links qualitative researchers make between concepts?
A)Sequences
B)Correlations
C)Oppositional sets
D)Similar categories woven into statements
E)None of the above
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Chapter 16: Combining Methods in Social Science Research
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Q1) Define the following:institutional ethnography (IE)
Q2) Define the following:concurrent data analysis
Q3) Define the following:sequence
Q4) What is one of the major advantages of survey research compared to other quantitative approaches?
A)It is the only technique that allows for causation to be demonstrated.
B)It is possible to cover very large populations in a relatively simple way and in a straightforward manner.
C)It is often inexpensive.
D)It is nonreactive.
E)Data are often free and fairly easy to access.
Q5) What is one of the major advantages of using qualitative interviews compared to other qualitative forms of data collection?
A)They make studying hidden or deviant groups possible.
B)They are inexpensive.
C)They are nonreactive.
D)Participants tend to feel empowered.
E)They allow for unexpected answers.
Q6) Define the following:priority
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