Research Methods in Sociology
Exam Answer Key
Course Introduction
Research Methods in Sociology introduces students to the principles and practices of sociological research. The course covers a range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies used to investigate social phenomena, including surveys, interviews, observation, and content analysis. Students learn how to formulate research questions, design studies, collect and analyze data, and interpret findings within an ethical framework. Emphasizing both theory and practical skills, this course prepares students to critically evaluate research literature and conduct their own sociological inquiries.
Recommended Textbook
An Invitation to Social Research How Its Done 5th Edition by Emily Stier Adler
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Chapter 1: The Uses of Social Research
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements is factually testable?
A) All extra-terrestrials have large skulls.
B) Individuals with more education earn more than less educated individuals.
C) The death penalty is less moral than first-degree murder.
D) War should be outlawed.
E) None of these.
Answer: B
Q2) When individuals rely on their own experiences as a basis for knowledge about the world,they are using
A) knowledge from authorities.
B) a scientific approach.
C) personal inquiry.
D) intersubjectivity.
E) none of these.
Answer: C
Q3) In descriptive research,researchers aim to make judgments on whether interventions are working in the real world.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 2: Theory and Research
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Q1) The focal research example on role theory by Adler and Clark was an example of A) causal research
B) inductive reasoning
C) deductive reasoning
D) empirical association
E) non-spuriousness
Answer: C
Q2) An antecedent variable
A) comes after the independent variable.
B) comes after the independent variable and before the dependent variable.
C) comes before both the independent variable and the dependent variable.
D) comes after the dependent variable.
E) none of these.
Answer: C
Q3) The cyclical model of science is meant to represent the relationship between theory testing and theory building.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 3: Ethics and Social Research
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Q1) Many federal agencies have adopted the "Common Rule" which outlines a set of regulations for human subjects research.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) Desiree Ciambrone learned many lessons in her research of HIV/AIDS.Which ethical principle was not in question in her research?
A) deception
B) informed consent
C) confidentiality
D) integrity
E) none of these
Answer: A
Q3) It is ethical to ask permission to observe groups or organizations who meet in private settings.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 4: Planning a Research Project
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Sample Questions
Q1) Research typically has higher research costs than time expenditures.
A)True
B)False
Q2) In searching for literature that is relevant to your topic,it is useful to
A) use keywords.
B) rely on academic indexes.
C) confine your interest to a well-researched topic as early as possible in the study design.
D) use keywords and rely on academic indexes.
E) all of these.
Q3) What are the purposes of conducting a literature review?
Q4) "What impact do cell phones have on society?" This is an example of a researchable question.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Describe how funding sources may influence whether research is value free.
Q6) It is essential that researchers be "value free" in order to conduct credible research.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 5: Sampling
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Q1) As a surveyor,you call households on your call list and 10% never answered the call.What kind of error have you encountered?
A) coverage error
B) sample error
C) measurement error
D) nonrespondent error
E) nonresponse error
Q2) The sampling distribution of any statistic tends to hover around the population parameter,especially as the number of samples gets
A) heterogeneous.
B) very large.
C) biased.
D) homogeneous.
E) small.
Q3) Snowball sampling techniques are useful when gaining access to groups that are harder to find.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What lessons were learned in the presidential sampling examples?
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Chapter 6: Measurement
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Q1) A researcher who defines "elite families" as those with annual incomes larger than $250,000 has This concept.
A) defined
B) operationalized
C) described
D) created a marker for
E) validated
Q2) A nominal measure can only have five categories.
A)True
B)False
Q3) A researcher is checking the reliability of a measure by comparing results from one time to another.This researcher is using themethod.
A) internal consistency
B) interobserver
C) parallel forms
D) interrater
E) test-retest
Q4) What is the difference between reliability and validity?
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Chapter 7: Cross-Sectional, Longitudinal, and Case Study Designs
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Q1) The longitudinal nature of panel studies allows researchers to A) document patterns.
B) establish time order sequences.
C) take "snapshot" photographs of a particular moment in time.
D) document patterns and establish time order sequences.
E) all of these.
Q2) Longitudinal research requires data collection at at leastdifferent times.
A) two
B) three
C) four
D) ten
E) twelve
Q3) As we administer the same survey to panel members on several occasions,there is a chance they will be affected by the questions.This is known as
A) panel fatigue.
B) panel learning.
C) panel conditioning.
D) panel attrition.
E) questionnaire familiarity.
Q4) What are some good reasons to conduct a case study?
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Chapter 8: Experimental Research
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Q1) Professor Henry is interested in the effect of anti-violence videos on teenagers' involvement in interpersonal violence.Funding has been obtained to show these videos to 300 adolescents who attend a local school.Create a causal hypothesis and develop an experimental design to test it.Identify two advantages of applying this design and two disadvantages of the research approach.Use a classic experiment and a Solomon four group design.
Q2) Selecting treatment and control groups from the population by method of random sample increases the study's generalizability.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Which type of experimental design was employed by Chris Caldeira in the focal research example?
A) field experiment
B) posttest only control group experiment
C) quasi experiment
D) classic experiment
E) both a quasi experiment and a field experiment
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Chapter 9: Questionnaires and Structured Interviews
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Q1) List two advantages and two disadvantages of an in-person interview.
Q2) The anonymity of respondents of mailed questionnaires cannot be guaranteed.
A)True
B)False
Q3) A cover letter
A) provides context for the research.
B) provides legitimacy for the project.
C) is not really necessary for mail surveys.
D) should also be used with in-person interviews.
E) provides context for the research and legitimacy for the project.
Q4) Surveys are typically collected from which type of sample design?
A) cross sectional designs
B) non probability samples
C) large probability samples
D) trend and panel study designs
E) Surveys are collected from all of these sample designs.
Q5) Both a respondent's gender and race can affect responses to questions on a survey or questionnaire.
A)True
B)False
11
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Chapter 10: Qualitative Interviewing
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Q1) In standard interviews,the researcher has the flexibility to alter questions as needed.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Shulamit Reinharz labels the unstructured approach
A) an "intervieweeguided" interview.
B) the "reality constructing" approach.
C) a quantitative researcher's optimal method.
D) an "intervieweeguided" approach and the "reality constructing" approach.
E) none of these
Q3) Unstructured interviews
A) start with a sense of what information is needed and formulate questions as the interview unfolds.
B) are fairly open.
C) are flexible.
D) lend themselves to people telling the researcher about their own lives.
E) All of these are true.
Q4) A joint interview has one interviewer and two or more interviewees.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 11: Observational Techniques
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Sample Questions
Q1) What are the differences between thin and thick descriptions? How can visual sociology be used for observations and subsequent thick descriptions?
Q2) What are demand characteristics? How do they differ based on the role of the researcher? Give one example in research where demand characteristics affected validity of the data collection.
Q3) Purposive and other non-random methods of sampling are the most common kinds of sampling approaches in observational studies.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Data collected from observational methods can be generalized to a larger population.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Observational research techniques are often a problem because they cause the researcher to intrude into the lives of the research subjects.
A)True
B)False
Q6) Give two advantages and two disadvantages of using observational methods.
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Chapter 12: Using Available Data
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Q1) Personal records tend to have easier access than physical traces.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The "continuum of availability" refers to
A) the chance that all the subjects you wish to interview will be available.
B) the fact that at least available data is often worth exploring.
C) a measure of the worth of a source.
D) how researchers measure the value of a source against the costs of securing the data.
E) none of these
Q3) What is the dependent variable in the focal research by Martinez and Lee?
A) rates of immigration
B) ethnic backgrounds of immigrants
C) employment
D) homicide
E) immigrant victimization
Q4) Personal records,like diaries,family albums and personal correspondence should never be used in social science research because of ethical concerns.
A)True
B)False
Page 14
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Chapter 13: Content Analysis
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Q1) Content analysis typically permits one to avoid interaction with human subjects,and therefore avoid ethical dilemmas associated with research involving human subjects.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Content analysis allows researchers to study
A) surveys.
B) census data.
C) experiments.
D) available recorded data.
E) secondary data.
Q3) There are strict guidelines for doing qualitative content analysis.
A)True
B)False
Q4) The earliest sociological research based on visual analysis was
A) Goffman's Gender Advertisements
B) Marx's The Communist Manifesto
C) Durkheim's Suicide
D) Weber's The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism
E) Mills' The Sociological Imagination
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Chapter 14: Applied Social Research
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Q1) In participatory action research,the researcher must be intimately involved in the community.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Stakeholders are individuals or groups who participate in or have an interest in a program or a policy.Stakeholders can include program staff,funders,program participants,legislators,community groups,parents,and others.In the hypothetical case of a one-year intensive special reading program that is designed to increase the reading skills of third grade students at the Grant Urban Elementary School,discuss how and why these various stakeholders might react to an evaluation study that found that the program was not producing any significant improvement in students' reading skills.Be sure to consider the point of view of as many stakeholders as possible (e.g.,teachers,parents,school board officials,students,business community members,etc.)What might different stakeholders say about the evaluation study itself?
Q3) Stakeholders are people who are affected by a program.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Consider an existing program at your college/university.How would you go about evaluating that program?
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Chapter 15: Quantitative and Qualitative Data Analysis
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Q1) Dr.Eaton adds extensive commentary to her coding so that she can better understand their meaning.She is using A) operationalization.
B) displays.
C) memoing.
D) crosstabulations.
E) transcription.
Q2) Of the following variables,the one most appropriate for analyzing central tendency by using the mean is
A) city of residence.
B) height.
C) race and ethnic identity.
D) degree of attractiveness to the opposite sex.
E) major.
Q3) Qualitative report writing is a form of
A) data coding.
B) data analysis.
C) quantitative analysis.
D) memoing.
E) social anthropology.
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