Research Methods in Human Services Exam Bank
Course Introduction
This course provides an in-depth exploration of research methodologies applicable to the human services field. Students will learn to design, conduct, and critically evaluate qualitative and quantitative research studies relevant to diverse populations and community settings. Topics include ethical considerations, data collection and analysis, literature review techniques, interpretation of findings, and the practical application of research to inform policy and practice in human services. Emphasis is placed on developing analytical skills and an understanding of evidence-based practice to address real-world challenges and improve service outcomes.
Recommended Textbook Research Methods for Social Work 8th Edition by Allen Rubin
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Chapter 1: Why Study Research
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Q1) Which of the following statements is true about research utilization and social work practice:
A) Whether or not social work practitioners bother to keep abreast of research findings on which interventions are the most effective for their clients has no bearing on how professionally ethical those social workers are.
B) Whether or not social work practitioners bother to keep abreast of research findings on which interventions are the most effective for their clients has no bearing on how compassionate those social workers are.
C) Whether or not social work practitioners bother to keep abreast of research findings on which interventions are the most effective for their clients has no bearing on social work values.
D) All of the above are true.
E) None of the above is true.
Answer: E
Q2) Legitimate ex posacto hypothesizing requires additional research.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 2: Evidence-Based Practice
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Q1) Which of the following statements is/are true about critically appraising the quality of evidence found in the evidence-based practice search process?
A) All evidence produced by randomized clinical trials should be deemed strong evidence
B) Randomized clinical trials always reside at the top of any research hierarchy.
C) Only evidence produced by randomized clinical trials should be considered as worthy of guiding practice decisions, regardless of the nature of the decision.
D) All of the above are true.
E)None of the above is true.
Answer: E
Q2) Some evidence-based practice questions do not specify a particular intervention in advance of the search for evidence.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 3: Philosophy and Theory in Social Work Research
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Q1) Which of the following best illustrates the idiographic model?
A) A study of one client, seeking to understand the causes of the client's problems and what is effective in helping the client.
B) A study of 200 clients, seeking to generalize about whether ethnicity is related to premature termination of services.
C) Quantitative studies using graphs of population trends.
D) Studies that reject the idea of determinism.
Answer: A
Q2) Which of the following statements is/are true about theory is
A)It is a set of paradigms.
B)It is a set of values.
C)It a systematic set of interrelated statements that can help make sense of patterns in diverse observations.
D)all of the above.
Answer: C
Q3) The nomothetic model is inevitably probabilistic in its approach to causation.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 4: Comparing Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Methods of Inquiry
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Q1) Which of the following statements is/are true about subjectivity in social work research?
A) It should be minimized in all studies, regardless of the research question.
B) It should be avoided in mixed methods studies, only.
C) Subjective inquiry can be complimentary with objective inquiry.
D) None of the above.
Q2) Which of the following is/are an aim of quantitative studies?
A) Deeper understanding.
B) Precision.
C) Discovery.
D)All of the above.
Q3) Mixed-methods studies cannot put an equal emphasis on both quantitative and qualitative methods; they must emphasize one or the other type of methods.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Designing the study is the first phase of the research process in mixed-methods studies.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 5: The Ethics and Politics of Social Work Research
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Q1) Choose an ethical issue presented in this chapter,create a research situation in which this issue could arise,and tell how you would handle it.
Q2) Which of the following statements is/are true about the Tuskegee syphilis study?
A) It was stopped shortly after it began.
B) Despite the controversy surrounding it, ethicists agreed that its benefits justified its risks.
C) A social worker was instrumental in getting it stopped.
D) Physicians were NOT involved in it.
Q3) Are there any situations in which a researcher is justified in deceiving subjects? Explain your answer.
Q4) Although social work researchers rarely plan studies that could harm participants,the issue of harm to participants is still a real possibility. A)True B)False
Q5) The quality of an ethically controversial study's research design is never considered relevant to whether that study can be justified. A)True B)False
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Chapter 6: Culturally Competent Research
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Q1) It is not always easy to define who qualifies as a member of a specific ethnic minority group.
A)True
B)False
Q2) If research participants from two different cultures have the same average score on a scale measuring caregiver burden,that means that the two groups of participants subjectively perceive the same degree of caregiver burden.
A)True
B)False
Q3) When recruiting minority and oppressed populations in research studies,you should A) use exactly the same informed consent procedures as with the majority population. B) use the same types of advertisements or referral sources as with the majority population.
C) obtain endorsemenor your study from community leaders.
D) avoid the use of community members as research staff.
Q4) Explain the difference between linguistic,conceptual and metric equivalence.
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Chapter 7: Problem Formulation
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Q1) Dr.Jordan chronicles people's attitudes toward an upcoming poverty program.Jordan is doing explanatory research.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Identify and give an example of each of the four units of analysis.Illustrate the ecological fallacy and reductionism using your examples.
Q3) Which of the following is an attribute of a good research question?
A) There should be many possible acceptable answers to it.
B) It need NOT be stated in specific terms.
C) It need NOT be answerable by observable evidence.
D) Its answer should be relevant to others concerned about social work or social welfare.
Q4) If researchers wanted to find the average age of all licensed social workers in a country,they would undertake:
A) a descriptive study.
B) a trend study
C) a cohort study.
D)an exploratory study.
E) an explanatory study.
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Chapter 8: Conceptualization in Quantitative and Qualitative Inquiry
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Q1) If we find that test performance improves as level of anxiety increases from low to moderate amounts and then worsens as level of anxiety increases beyond moderate amounts,then we have found what type of relationship?
A) positive.
B) negative.
C) curvilinear.
D) causal.
Q2) Concepts are
A) empirical measurements.
B) variables.
C)mental images.
D) hypotheses.
E) definitions.
Q3) Illustrate how a child's level of behavioral problems could be operationally defined in three different ways using three different sources of data.
Q4) Concepts are mental images that summarize collections of seemingly related observations and experiences.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 9: Measurement
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Q1) Unobtrusive observation can be used for the purpose of minimizing social desirability bias.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Mr.Isle has noticed that several women he considers to be very feminine wear dresses or skirts often.Therefore,he decides he will determine a woman's degree of femininity by finding out how many times she wears a skirt or a dress over a period of a month.The women who wear dresses or skirts mosrequently will be considered the moseminine; those who rarely wear either will be considered the leaseminine.Is Mr.Isle's method of measuring femininity reliable? Why or why not? Is his method of measuring femininity valid? Why or why not? What is the tension that often exists between the criteria of reliability and validity?
Q3) Factorial validity refers to how many different constructs a scale measures and whether the number of constructs and the items comprising those constructs are what the researcher intends.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Describe how qualitative studies attempt to deal with reliability and validity.
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Chapter 10: Constructing Measurement Instruments
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Q1) Which of the following statements is/are true about questionnaires?
A) Researchers can avoid the need for pretesting if they are very careful in the way they word questions.
B) Because it is virtually impossible to avoid some mistakes in wording, questionnaires should be pretested in a dry run.
C) When pretesting, the pretest sample should be very large.
D)When pretesting your questionnaire, it's better to ask people to read through it looking for errors rather than to complete the questionnaire.
Q2) In looking over the responses given to the items in question 8,you notice that a respondent checked "strongly agree" to all four items.As a methodologist,which of the following statements BEST describes your ideas about the respondent?
A) The respondent is a scale type 12.
B) The respondent probably fell into a response set.
C) The respondent is probably unsure about his or her feelings toward education.
D) The respondent must strongly agree with all the items.
E) The respondent has a high opinion of education.
Q3) Identify acceptable options for handling missing data in an index or scale.
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Chapter 11: Causal Inference and Experimental Designs
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Q1) The problem of an interaction between the testing and the experimental stimulus is handled by
A) the Solomon four-group design.
B) the one-shot case study.
C) the classical experimental design
D) the static-group comparison.
E) a and b only are correct.
Q2) The one-group pretest-posttest design controls for passage of time.
A)True
B)False
Q3) A friend of yours,a senior,took the Graduate Record Exam in September and scored in the 99th percentile.In February your friend took the same exam over again.This time your friend scored in the 84th percentile.As a research methodology student,you told your friend that his/her lowered score was probably due to:
A) testing.
B) history.
C) statistical regression.
D) demoralization.
E) compensation rivalry.
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Chapter 12: Quasi-Experimental Designs
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Q1) Which of the following is/are NOT a characteristic of a cross-sectional study?
A) It is conducted at only one point in time.
B) It can be exploratory, descriptive, or explanatory.
C) It concentrates on the changes that take place within a specific sample over a period of time.
D) It provides a means for studying a large variation in the population at the same point in time.
Q2) When selecting a comparison group in a quasi-experimental design,one should
A)select a group unlike the experimental group:
B)select a group as similar as possible to the experimental group:
C)use random assignment.
D)avoid the use of switching replications.
Q3) To avoid or alleviate practical pitfalls when carrying out experiments in social work agencies,researchers should:
A) Include agency staff in the research planning phase.
B) Keep research staff away from program staff during the study.
C) Avoid developing or using treatment manuals for the experimental or control conditions.
D) Refrain from recruiting clients on an ongoing basis throughout the study.
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Chapter 13: Single-Case Evaluation Designs
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Q1) The length of the baseline in single-case designs should be
A) as long as is practically and ethically possible.
B) shorter with a low frequency behavior than with a high frequency behavior.
C) shortened if an unstable trend appears.
D) as short as possible.
Q2) Which of the following statements is/are true about ambiguities in the visual significance of single-case design outcomes?
A) They can be reduced by unobtrusive measurement.
B) They can be reduced by replication.
C) They are caused by transforming auto-correlated data.
D) Nothing can be done to reduce the ambiguities.
Q3) The term research reactivity means that
A) at least some client improvement can be attributed to the impact of the research. B) the research was effective in depicting desired results.
C) there is a strong social-desirability bias in measurement.
D) a generalization of effects occurred.
Q4) Explain why it is important to obtain a stable baseline,if possible.Explain your answer in connection to threats to internal validity.
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Chapter 14: Program Evaluation
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Q1) Agency administrators who ask in-house program evaluators to assess their program's effectiveness are likely to
A) promote an atmosphere in which the paramount priority is on free, scientific inquiry.
B) give the evaluator complete autonomy in designing the research and interpreting its findings.
C) desire a study that is methodologically as rigorous as possible. D) imply that they expect the results of the evaluation to be positive.
Q2) Cost-benefit techniques enable evaluators to put a true dollar value on all possible program costs and benefits,without respect to vested interests and value judgments.
A)True B)False
Q3) Focus groups are an example of a qualitative approach to needs assessment. A)True B)False
Q4) Discuss and provide an example of the value of the value of qualitative approaches to program evaluation.
Q5) Describe the impact managed care has had on program evaluation.
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Chapter 15: Sampling
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Q1) The unit about which information is collected and which provides the basis of analysis is called
A) universe.
B) sampling unit.
C) unit of analysis.
D) sampling frame.
E) element.
Q2) In general,as sample size increases
A) sampling error increases.
B) sampling error decreases.
C) sampling error will remain the same regardless of changes in sample size.
D) measurement error decreases.
Q3) Telephone directories are notorious for being inadequate sampling frames.Suppose the population were defined as "all telephone subscribers in the directory's service area." What criticisms could you make of the telephone directory as a sampling frame?
Q4) Multi-stage cluster sampling is the best sampling procedure for small populations that are geographically close to one another.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 16: Survey Research
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Q1) In contrast to interviews,self-administered questionnaires have the advantage of A) being more effective in dealing with complicated issues.
B) producing fewer incomplete questions.
C) dealing with the context of social life.
D) handling sensitive issues more effectively.
Q2) Professionals who are conducting survey interviews in very poor neighborhoods should:
A) Dress down so as to appear as if they live in that neighborhood.
B) Read questionnaire items verbatim.
C) Never probe into unclear responses to see if respondents meant what the interviewers think they meant.
D) Wear formal attire.
Q3) Probes are used more frequently in open-ended questions than in closed-ended ones.
A)True
B)False
Q4) The response rates to online surveys need to exceed 60 percent if the findings are to have any value.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 17: Analyzing Existing Data: Quantitative and Qualitative Methods
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Q1) Describe a study for which content analysis is the appropriate research method.Discuss how you would use manifest and latent coding.Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the two coding schemes.
Q2) Unobtrusive measures reduce the impact of the data collection on the phenomena being studied.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Whish of the following statements is true about coding in content analysis
A) The coding scheme cannot be pretested.
B) Both inductive and deductive methods should be used in creating code categories.
C) You must choose to code either manifest content or latent content; you cannot use both methods.
D) Manifest content coding provides a better reflection of depth and underlying meaning than latent content coding.
Q4) Historical and comparative data analysis often is influenced by a particular theoretical paradigm.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 18: Qualitative Research: General Principles
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Q1) When qualitative studies involve observing people in their natural environment,ethical issues are less likely to be a concern than in other types of research.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Among the advantages of qualitative research is that it
A) yields precise descriptive statements about a large population.
B) involves the uniform application of precise operational definitions.
C) allows for the modification of research design.
D) produces definitive conclusions.
E) is an extremely reliable technique.
Q3) According to contemporary positivist standards,which of the following strategies is NOT recommended for enhancing the rigor of qualitative studies?
A) Prolonged engagement.
B) Triangulation.
C) Negative case analysis.
D) Leaving a paper trail for auditing.
E) evoking actions by participants to effect desired change.
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Chapter 19: Qualitative Research: Specific Methods
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Q1) It is possible to assume both the emic and etic perspectives in the same research study
A)True
B)False
Q2) In qualitative research the unstructured interview is used to
A) minimize interviewer bias.
B) gain an in-depth understanding of respondents' views, attitudes, values, and beliefs.
C) obtain easily tabulated data.
D) obtain responses to closed-ended questions.
E) control for factors that may affect the respondents' answers.
Q3) Which of the following is the best probe in an informal conversational interview?
A) "Is that job better or worse then your old job?"
B) "Is that a better job because of the hours?"
C) "Tell me more about why that's a better job."
D) "Are you sure that that's a better job?"
Q4) Group conformity or groupthink is a potential disadvantage of focus groups.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 20: Qualitative Data Analysis
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Q1) It is as important to identify the standardized unior coding in qualitative analysis as it is in quantitative analysis.
A)True
B)False
Q2) If a researcher examined Jeremy's story from the prior question and then looked at other people "like" Jeremy in order to develop a theory about job loss and veterans,the researcher would be
A) using inductive reasoning.
B) using a cross-case method approach.
C) developing grounded theory.
D) using inductive reasoning and a cross-method approach and developing grounded theory.
Q3) Define what is meant by qualitative analysis and what is meant by quantitative analysis.What are the differences between the two forms of analysis? Are there similarities between the two? If so,describe some of the similarities.If no,why not?
Q4) Variable-oriented research is similar to the nomothetic model of explanation.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Identify at last one way that computer programs analyze qualitative data.
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Chapter 21: Quantitative Data Analysis
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Q1) Provide an example of how descriptive statistics can be used in qualitative research.
Q2) Which of the following statements is true about data processing?
A) It is best to run your data analyses immediately after you enter your data.
B) Computers will automatically correct data entry errors.
C) Using possible code cleaning, you examine the distribution of responses to each item to see if some responses exisor codes you didn't use.
D) None of these statements is true
Q3) Your codebook contains codes 1,2,and 9 for the variable "religion." Your data show a single code of 5 in the distribution on religion.You should
A) assume this is a random error and ignore it.
B) do possible-code cleaning.
C) do contingency cleaning.
D) do some data analysis.
E none of the above.
Q4) Using a hypothetical example,illustrate how blending descriptive statistics with a qualitative inquiry can enhance the value of the qualitative inquiry as well as the interpretation of the descriptive statistics.
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Chapter 22: Inferential Data Analysis
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Q1) Interpret the meaning of an odds ratio finding in which 80 percent of Intervention A recipients had a successful outcome,and 50 percent of Treatment As Usual recipients had a successful outcome.
Q2) Risk ratios show the proportion of unsuccessful outcomes in one group divided by the risk of unsuccessful outcomes in the other group A)True B)False
Q3) A Cohen's d effect size of .60 is
A) stronger than the average Cohen's d effect size reported in meta-analyses in social work and allied fields.
B) weaker than the average Cohen's d effect size reported in meta-analyses in social work and allied fields.
C) about the same as the average Cohen's d effect size reported in meta-analyses in social work and allied fields.
D) substantively significant.
E)not substantively significant.
Q4) Explain the difference between statistical significance,relationship strength,and substantive significance.
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Chapter 23: Inferential Data Analysis
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Q1) If your probability of a Type Il error is .30,then your statistical power is:
A).30
B).05
C).70
D).80
Q2) Identify the key things to look for when critically appraising the trustworthiness of meta-analysis.
Q3) Which statistical significance test should be used in a study of whether the mean number of days worked by case-managed clients is greater than the mean worked by non-case-managed clients?
A) t-test.
B) chi-square.
C) Pearson's product-moment r.
D) Fisher's exact test.
Q4) One of the best ways to determine which hypotheses have been tested is to firsind which variables are significantly related.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 24: Writing Research Proposals and Reports
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Q1) A good abstract does NOT include a statement about:
A) the purpose of the research.
B) the findings of each table and graph.
C) the major findings.
D) the methods used.
Q2) Which of the following is NOT plagiarism?
A) Using another writer's exact words without using quotation marks.
B) Taking a passage of eight or more words without a citation.
C) Editing another's words and presenting them as your own.
D) Paraphrasing another's words and presenting them as your own.
E)All of these constitute plagiarism.
Q3) Very long titles for research reports are better than short titles, because they convey more information about the methods and findings of the report
A)True
B)False
Q4) Reports of qualitative research studies tend to be shorter than reports of quantitative studies.
A)True
B)False
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