Research Design in the Social Sciences
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Course Introduction
This course provides an in-depth exploration of the principles and practices foundational to designing research in the social sciences. Students will learn how to formulate research questions, develop hypotheses, and choose appropriate methodological approaches including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods designs. Emphasis is placed on understanding sampling strategies, data collection techniques, and issues of reliability, validity, and ethics in social science research. By engaging in hands-on projects and critical analysis of existing studies, students will develop the skills necessary to design rigorous, impactful research projects addressing complex social phenomena.
Recommended Textbook
The Art and Science of Social Research 1st Edition by Deborah Carr
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Chapter 1: The Art and Science of Social Research: An Introduction
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Q1) Which of the following is an example of a macrosociological topic?
A)dynamics of a town hall political meeting
B)common problems in therapist-client relationships
C)trends in global capitalism
D)how individuals experience grief
Answer: C
Q2) Rupert designs a basic research study about farmers' markets in rural Vermont.It is considered basic research because it
A)trains farmers to conduct important data collection.
B)uses an intersectional lens.
C)contributes to theory about local and global economic intersections.
D)will be used by the farmers to strengthen their markets.
Answer: C
Q3) Bella proposes a study about birdwatchers in national parks.In order to interpret her data,she chooses
A)among many sociological theories that she can apply to this topic.
B)one of two or three sociological theories that scholars use for this topic.
C)to avoid theory,so she can just learn from the data.
D)the theory that is the least abstract.
Answer: A
Page 3
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Chapter 2: Research Foundations: Linking Sociological
Theory to Research
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Q1) Positivism attempts to make the social sciences more like the natural sciences.Is positivism a worthy goal for the social sciences? Does it work?
Answer: Students who say yes,positivism is a worthy goal for the social sciences,may argue that positivism is the founding paradigm for modern scientific approaches in social science.It holds that all knowledge can be confirmed or refuted through empirical observations.If biologists and chemists can develop objective knowledge through empiricism,so can social scientists in their study of human populations.Students who argue for positivism will more likely support a quantitative approach to social research. Students who say no,positivism is not a worthy goal for the social sciences,may argue that social science is different than natural science.Human life and society are "messy," with too many variables at play for strictly positivist knowledge to even be possible.Both the subject (society)and the knowledge producers (scientists)have values,biases,and complexities that cannot be controlled enough to produce positivist knowledge.This position leans toward postmodernism,a paradigm characterized by skepticism toward claims of truth,fact,or principle.It may be more important to learn how people arrive at subjective truths,rather than seeking to find objective truth.
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Chapter 3: Ethical Issues in Social Science Research
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Q1) As a student at your university,you wish to conduct a study about some element of your university.Briefly describe a sociological study that would include an inappropriate conflict of interest.What makes it inappropriate?
Answer: A student with a borderline GPA for Honors may wish to conduct a study about Honors GPA levels at various universities.The potential conflict of interest is that the student may generate a sample that would encourage his or her university to shift the GPA downward,which would be in his or her personal interest. A student on probation for alcohol violations may wish to conduct a study of student attitudes toward the university's alcohol policy.Regardless of how the study is conducted,the researcher likely has a conflict of interest because he or she is currently in the formal process that he or she wishes to investigate.This is inappropriate because the researcher's lived experience is not just helpful background knowledge;it is an active and ongoing issue that would influence the collection and interpretation of data. The possibilities are endless,but the conflicts of interest should display interest or loyalties that would compromise the way research would be designed,conducted,or reported.
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Chapter 4: From Concepts to Models: Hypotheses,
Operationalization, and Measurement
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Q1) Mateo has designed a survey study in which he asks about respondents' marital quality.He administers the survey to several different samples over the course of two years and discovers that the respondents do not seem to be answering the marital quality question in very consistent ways.This suggests Mateo's measure of marital quality has a ________ problem.
A)ratio
B)reliability
C)validity
D)time span
Q2) Using statistical data on individual baseball players' performance in past games is not a good way to make predictions about which teams will win future games.Taking this approach would introduce the problem of A)aggregation.
B)reductionism.
C)manipulation.
D)an ecological fallacy.
Q3) Consider the concept social norms/rules.In three or four sentences,choose two or three dimensions of this concept that would be able to be represented in variables (you only need to develop this into dimensions,not variables).
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Chapter 5: Evaluating Research: Reliability and Validity
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Q1) The test-retest method is an approach in which
A)the same measure is administered to a sample and then re-administered to the same sample later.
B)the same measure is administered to two different samples at different points in time.
C)the same measure is administered to two different samples at the same point in time.
D)two different measures are administered to the same sample at two different points in time.
Q2) Experiments might potentially be critiqued for problems with external validity.Why?
A)Experiments are often poorly designed.
B)It is hard to know if what happens in a lab setting will happen in the real world.
C)Experiments are often poorly biased.
D)Participants who volunteer for experiments are often unreliable.
Q3) Write a paragraph in which you discuss two difficulties sociologists face in ensuring their research is valid and reliable.Use clear examples from the text to support your answer.
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Chapter 6: Sampling Strategies
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Q1) Divya is interested in learning whether students will support an increase in student fees to supplement child care costs for student parents.There are 10,000 undergraduate and 3,000 graduate students at her university.If she wants to ensure that she has an equal number of undergraduate and graduate students in her sample,what type of sampling method should she use?
A)cluster
B)simple random
C)stratified
D)systematic
Q2) ________ sampling allows researchers to oversample groups so that researchers have more data on those groups than they would with simple random sampling.
A)Systematic
B)Stratified
C)Convenience
D)Cluster
Q3) Propose a study for which systematic sampling is a better choice than simple random sampling.Justify your choice for why it is a better sampling method for your topic.
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Chapter 8: Experimental Research
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Q1) Biological responses to stimuli are known as ________ measures.
A)behavioral
B)attitudinal
C)physiological
D)longitudinal
Q2) Blackwell and colleagues conducted an experiment on seventh graders in a New York City school to assess whether teaching students that intelligence was a malleable rather than a fixed trait could improve students' classroom motivation and mathematical performance.This experiment is an example of a
A)laboratory experiment.
B)field experiment.
C)population-based survey experiment.
D)natural experiment.
Q3) The degree to which a study establishes a causal effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable is known as
A)internal validity.
B)external validity.
C)reliability.
D)salience.
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Chapter 9: Evaluation Research
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Q1) Which evaluation study is considered one of the MOST important educational investigations ever undertaken?
A)the STAR study
B)the Homebase program
C)the ROWE study
D)the Abstinence Education Program
Q2) In an intervention study of aging populations,a Midwest department of health attempted to measure the impact of providing in-home care to elderly patients.One group of patients,who had previously been treated in a hospital,was returned to their homes and visited by nurses and volunteers several times per week,while another group stayed in a traditional hospital setting.In 2-4 sentences,explain which group in this scenario constitutes the treatment group and which constitutes the control group.
Q3) In medical studies,what is the term meaning the treatment the participants would normally receive outside of the study and not some lesser treatment?
A)standard treatment
B)control group
C)treatment group
D)randomized sample
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Chapter 10: Ethnography
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Q1) Some sociologists see ethnography as more of an art than a science because
A)it is totally subjective.
B)its written product is expected to be persuasive.
C)it is highly personal,yet also has scientific rigor.
D)reflexivity is not part of science.
Q2) Design an approach for taking field notes that includes the four major elements of field notes.Your approach should also include time (when to record notes)and materials.
Q3) Knut begins a study of nose-picking at Home Depot,but after informing potential participants,he finds that no one picks his or her nose.He wants to reduce the Hawthorne effect,so he
A)waits,because people will resume their usual behavior fairly quickly.
B)begins in another location where he does not ask for consent.
C)goes native and picks his own nose in public.
D)shifts his role from participant observer to observer.
Q4) If Dr.Bodley were to triangulate his data,he would
A)use ethnography along with other methods to enrich findings.
B)save data in at least three locations,in case any of it is compromised.
C)develop a team ethnography with several researchers.
D)return to the field site on at least three separate occasions.
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Chapter 11: In-Depth Interviewing
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Q1) A sampling strategy in which cases are deliberately selected on the basis of certain features is ________ sampling.
A)snowball
B)qualitative
C)purposive
D)range
Q2) In an unstructured interview,the interviewer comes to the interview with
A)a detailed interview schedule.
B)a list of topics to discuss,but not specific questions.
C)a group of individuals to interview.
D)ideas in mind,but nothing written down.
Q3) Pascal wants to conduct in-depth interviews of preschool bus drivers.He follows Christine Williams's advice for first-time interviewers,so he
A)pretests interview questions on friends and family.
B)asks questions about bus drivers' direct experience,without asking them to interpret their experience sociologically.
C)ends each interview with an open-ended question,"Is there anything else you'd like me to know?"
D)treats his interviewees as informants instead of as respondents.
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Chapter 12: Materials-Based Methods
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Sample Questions
Q1) Dr.Swan is a sociologist with experience in ethnography and in-depth interviewing.She uses skills developed in those areas to begin a project in historical-comparative research about rural poverty.Accordingly,she selects
A)a governmental organization that can grant access to previously developed nation-level data sets.
B)big data available online that is derived from people's consumer habits.
C)a West Virginia town suffering from economic dislocation as the case she will examine.
D)a large sample of individuals drawn from 10 regions of the nation.
Q2) An archive is a
A)physical place where multiple items of any type are stored.
B)physical or virtual space where materials are brought together,organized,preserved,and made available for inspection.
C)collection of items whose validity and value have been evaluated by scholars.
D)storage space for big data only.
Q3) You are conducting a critical content analysis of traffic signs in your community (stop signs,speed limit signs,etc. ).List three themes you might look for in an effort to deconstruct traffic signs.How do these themes exemplify critical content analysis?
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Chapter 13: Social Network Analysis
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Q1) A researcher writes a survey question that asks,"Who are you close to?" Emily,a respondent,lists the neighbors who live on her street.The researcher meant to ask about relational closeness,but Emily interpreted the word close geographically.This is an example of ________ bias.
A)instrument
B)recall
C)projection
D)selection
Q2) Why is direct observation rarely used to collect social network data? Direct observation
A)used to be preferred,as in ethnographies of small societies,but it is less feasible with large populations.
B)does not reveal people's motivations or tie valences,and thus it does not produce useful data.
C)has been replaced by "big data" generated from people's digital lives.
D)cannot be reduced to matrix-based data organization.
Q3) You are conducting a study of college student friend networks.How would you use ecological momentary assessment in your study? First,define ecological momentary assessment.Then,explain how you would use it.
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Chapter 14: Univariate and Bivariate Analysis of Quantitative Data
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Q1) A ________ is the most fundamental concept in univariate analysis.
A)distribution
B)measure of central tendency
C)regression coefficient
D)standard deviation
Q2) ________ show the 95% confidence intervals for conditional means.
A)Percentiles
B)Marginal frequencies
C)Column percentages
D)Error bars
Q3) The ________ is more sensitive to outliers than the ________ is.
A)mode;median
B)median;mode
C)median;mean
D)mean;median
Q4) Should researchers report means of ordinal variables? Why or why not?
Q5) You are interested in studying gender role attitudes over time in the United States.Would you conduct repeated cross-sectional surveys or panel surveys? Choose one,and justify it as the superior approach for this topic.
Q6) Using an example,distinguish between an age effect and a period effect. Page 15
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Chapter 15: Multivariate and Advanced Quantitative Methods
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Q1) There is a wealth of research on the U.S.population showing that people with higher incomes have longer life expectancies.However,if we include gender in the model,the story can become more complicated because men have higher average incomes than women do,but have shorter average lives than women do.Here,we can see that gender could be a suppressor variable of the relationship between income and life expectancy because
A)we are not sure if health affects income or if income affects health.
B)once gender is controlled,life expectancy becomes a lagged dependent variable.
C)being female is still a disadvantage because it is associated with lower average income.
D)being male is positively associated with income,but negatively related with life expectancy.
Q2) Consider the relationship between education and income,such that more education is associated with higher income,on average.Identify 2-3 control variables that should be included in the study,making sure to explain why these are potentially important controls.Explain how this would specifically operate with the use of regression analysis,including the regression analysis equation as it corresponds to all the variables in your model.Finally,explain what you would look for regarding the potential of control variables on your results.
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Chapter 16: Analysis of Qualitative Data
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Q1) A label or tag for a chunk of text is called a(n)
A)abduction.
B)code.
C)finding.
D)name.
Q2) Sociologists Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss promoted a systemic,inductive approach to qualitative research that advocates the extrapolation of conceptual relationships from data,rather than the formulation of hypotheses from existing theory.Their approach is called
A)qualitative comparative analysis.
B)grounded theory.
C)purposive sampling.
D)abductive research.
Q3) What is the relationship between a typology and a theory? A typology
A)is a way of organizing data,and it leads to theory.
B)and a theory are the same thing.
C)is derived from theory.
D)is used more frequently than a theory.
Q4) Define grounded theory.Do you think grounded theory is a worthy approach to qualitative research or not? Why?
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Chapter 17: Communicating Social Science Research
Findings
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Q1) A legislative aide writes a policy brief about international development,to be provided to policy makers.The brief begins with an executive summary,which is a
A)protected portion available only to top leaders with clearance to view it.
B)version of the brief designed for economic leaders,such as executives,to understand.
C)one-page summary of the report and recommendations.
D)bulleted list of action steps to be taken.
Q2) One feature of a poster that is distinctive,not present in a written research report,is that a poster
A)allows for visuals such as photographs,tables,and figures.
B)can be clearly organized into sections.
C)allows two-way face-to-face interaction between author and audience.
D)can present only findings,without needing methods,literature review,or sources.
Q3) A bibliography may also be called a(n)
A)literature review.
B)works cited.
C)abstract.
D)list of reading material.
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