I.
MULTIPLE CHOICE -- Circle the one best answer for each.
1. Which basic approach to
social research produces the strongest inferences about causal
relationships?
a. field and observational research
b. survey research
c. experimentation
d. available-data research
2. Reliability assessment is a
matter of checking for __________, while validity assessment is a matter of
checking for __________.
a. consistency; accuracy
b. accuracy;
consistency
c. similarity; dissimilarity
d. similarity; consistency
3. In a study of the effects of
religious beliefs on attitudes toward abortion, _________ would be the
independent variable and _________ would be the dependent variable.
a. religious beliefs;
attitudes toward abortion
b. attitudes toward
abortion; religious beliefs
c. the control group; religious beliefs
d. the control group; attitudes toward abortion
4. Induction is the process of
a. generating specific hypotheses from a general theory.
b. moving from data to
theory.
c. both of the above.
d. none of the above.
5. Several studies have found
that students who drink heavily are more likely than other students to miss
class, get behind in school work, and perform poorly on examinations. From this finding, we can conclude confidently
that
a. heavy drinking has a negative impact on academic performance.
b. heavy drinking impairs the cognitive tasks required to perform well
academically.
c. poor academic performance causes distress which leads to heavy drinking.
d. there is an association
between alcohol use and academic performance.
6. To study whether women are
stereotyped on television, Stephen Craig analyzed over 2,000 television
commercials. Among the information he
coded for each commercial was the gender mix of the characters, the role of the
primary visual character, and the type of product advertised. Craig’s unit of analysis was
a. gender.
b. gender stereotypes.
c. women.
d. television commercials.
e. television.
7. Suppose that among the 30
Major League baseball teams you found no association between a team’s average
salary (or total player payroll) and team performance, as measured by won-loss
record. It would be an ecological
fallacy to conclude from this finding that
a. teams with the lowest payrolls have the worst records.
b. attracting high-salaried players will not improve a team’s won-loss record.
c. there is no association
between individual player salaries and player performance.
d. teams would be better off developing their farm systems than signing
high-priced free|
agents.
e. wealthy team owners drive up player salaries.
8. To study marital adjustment
among newlyweds, researchers selected a sample of couples from those who
applied for marriage licenses in
a. cross-sectional study.
b. trend study.
c. panel study.
d. cohort study.
9. Suppose you hypothesize that
the more sociology courses a student takes, the more sensitive he or she
becomes to the needs of others. So, you
ask a random sample of UCSB students how many sociology courses they have taken
and then have them complete a test of social sensitivity. Finally, you calculate the association
between the two variables. This is an
example of a
a. laboratory experiment.
b. social network survey
c. cross-sectional survey.
d. longitudinal survey.
10. A positive association
between variables X and Y in a bivariate table indicates that
a. X causes Y.
b. Y causes X.
c. both X and Y are caused by other factors.
d. either (a) or (b) could be correct.
e. any of the above could
be correct. .
11. Suppose for a given set of
data that we regressed respondent’s years of education (Y) on father’s years of
education (X) and obtained the following result: Y = 9.39 + .34X. The regression coefficient (+.34) is
statistically significant. How much change in respondent’s education is
associated with a change of 1 year in father’s education?
a. 1
b. 9.39 + .34
c. 9.39
d. .34
12. Measures that are subject to
very little random error but a major source of systematic error
a. are reliable but not
valid.
b. are valid but not reliable
c. are neither reliable nor valid.
d. may be both reliable and valid.
13. Coding categories for
open-ended questions should be based upon
a. the researcher's data.
b. the researcher's theory.
c. both (a) and (b)
d. none of the above
14. Suppose that a researcher
conducting a survey of TV preferences, coded respondents’ favorite shows as
comedy, drama, and news. A major problem
with this set of values is that:
a. they are ordinal-level categories.
b. they are not
collectively exhaustive.
c. they are both
exhaustive and mutually exclusive.
d. they use sample data.
15. Which of the following is an
example of nominal level measurement?
a. family size (number of children in a family).
b. political party
affiliation (Republican, Democrat, Independent, Other, None).
c. educational
attainment (years of schooling completed).
d. Income (dollars earned per year).
16. Which of the following
questions concerns reliability?
a. What does the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) really measure?
b. Do attitude scales really tap personal feelings or just what people think
investigators want to hear?
c. Is poverty best represented by measures of low absolute income (a minimum
subsistence) or low relative income
(e.g., 50% of national median income)?
d. How closely does self-reported church attendance correspond to actual
church attendance?
e. Are scores on the
even-numbered and odd-numbered items on this midterm
highly correlated?
17. A comprehensive exam
purported to cover an entire quarter’s work only covers material from the first
four weeks of the course. As a measure of how much students learned overall,
this exam lacks
a. reliability
b. construct validity
c. content validity
d. criterion-related
validity
18. A researcher correlates
scores on a test of "pilot ability" with whether or not students
complete flight training. This is an example of assessing
a. test-retest reliability
b. test pilot reliability
c. criterion-related
validity
d. construct validity
19. In the National Health and
Social Life Survey, which sought accurate statistics on sexual practices, “all
people aged 18 to 59 with adequate English proficiency living in households
located in the 50 states and District of Columbia” describes the
a. target population.
b. sampling frame.
c. sample.
d. sampling distribution.
20. For which group would it be
impossible to select a probability sample?
a. a sample of caterers in a city
b. a sample of visitors to Disney World
c. a sample of nursery school patients
d. a sample of cardiologists
e. none of the above
21. A characteristic of a
____________ is called a ____________.
a. population; statistic
b. sample; parameter
c. population; parameter
d. statistic; parameter
22. Which of the following does
not affect the size of the standard error?
a. the population variance
b. the population size
c. the sample size
d. the population standard deviation
23.
Which of the following sampling techniques depends for its
effectiveness largely on the researcher’s knowledge and skill in selecting
appropriate cases?
a. systematic sampling
b. simple random sampling
c. purposive sampling
d. multistage cluster sampling
24.
Which of the following nonprobability sampling designs most closely
resembles stratified random sampling?
a. convenience sampling
b. purposive sampling
c. quota sampling
d. snowball sampling
25.
Drawing a sample of church members by first drawing a random sample of
churches and then randomly sampling members from the selected churches is
called a _________ sample.
a. whole
b. holy
c. cluster
d. stratified