Asking Questions And Identifying Goals Exam Prep Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Asking Questions and Identifying Goals

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Howard Becker told a story about a student who wanted to learn why mail carriers chose specific routes. His student thought mail carriers would choose their preferred routes based on safety concerns, but instead learned that mail carriers chose routes according to the how much uphill or downhill walking was required. This anecdote is a useful example of ________.
   1. determining a participant’s social ties to a neighbourhood
   2. determining what research design is necessary
   3. why asking what seem like straightforward questions in research is important
   4. why quantitative research data are generalizable
2. According to the textbook, research participants ________.
   1. are usually involuntary subjects who are observed covertly in their social settings by researchers
   2. are people who voluntarily welcome researchers to interview them, or join them in their social setting
   3. include anyone who is involved in social research (such as researchers, research assistants, respondents, etc.)
   4. only include those people who take part in experiments in laboratories
3. The best combination of the three central elements of the positivist tradition is ________.
   1. realist perspective, trust in causal knowledge, reliance on deductive reasoning
   2. focus on theory testing, no trust in causal knowledge, reliance on intuition
   3. realist perspective, truth as an objective reality, reliance on intuition
   4. trust in causal knowledge, systematic observation, reliance on inductive reasoning
4. Qualitative research began to re-emerge as a popular and mainstream method in ________.
   1. the early 1960s
   2. the early 2000s
   3. the late 1920s
   4. the late 1880s
      
5. The sociological term verstehen ________.
   1. means that if we define a situation to be real, it will be real in its consequences
   2. means that the definition of an object constantly evolves and is mediated through shared understandings
   3. is another way of saying “the looking-glass self”
   4. means putting yourself in the “shoes” of your research subjects
      
6. Symbolic interactionism was first formulated by ________.
   1. Howard Becker
   2. Thomas Kuhn
   3. W.I. Thomas
   4. Herbert Blumer
7. The textbook illustrates the concept of definition of the situation by referring to ________.
   1. Will C. van den Hoonaard’s experience of “baby talk” in Iceland
   2. Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of the Scientific Revolution
   3. how studying widows prepared the author for dealing with her own father’s death
   4. the importance readers place on the interpretations made by researchers themselves
8. The self we define through seeing ourselves as “things” and defining ourselves through our interactions with others is associated with the sociological concept of ________.
   1. verstehen
   2. reflexivity
   3. looking-glass self
   4. methodological individualism
      
9. Harold Garfinkel developed the ethnomethodological approach, which ________.
   1. recommends the use of causal experiments to uncover the truth of everyday interactions
   2. understands social interaction as an outgrowth of the relationship between internal identities and external expectations
   3. recommends the use of positivist theories as a foundation for the approach
   4. understands how people go about their everyday lives in the absence of formal rules
10. Genevieve’s qualitative methods instructor asked the class to perform a ________. The next day, whenever someone asked “how you are?” instead of responding with a simple “good, and you?” she responded with a further question such as “in regard to what—Life? School? Work?”
    1. rulemaking experiment
    2. breaching experiment
    3. ethnomethodological study
    4. norm deconstruction study
       
11. Qualitative researchers are least likely to use ________ to collect and analyze data.
    1. interviews
    2. document analysis
    3. surveys
    4. field methods
       
12. Qualitative researchers most often follow an inductive approach. This means that ________.
    1. they begin with a theory and then test the theory in the social world
    2. they begin with a theory and adjust it based on what they observe in the social world
    3. they test a theory and then write a critical analysis on how well it matches social reality
    4. they start with the social world and then develop a theory that is consistent with what they see
       
13. The textbook author describes her trip to China and, more specifically, a tour she took to the Great Wall. According to her own assessment and supporting statements, this tour could best be characterized as ________ in nature and approach.
    1. quantitative
    2. interactionist
    3. realist
    4. qualitative
14. The textbook suggests that qualitative research ________.
    1. is flexible and open to change
    2. seeks to unearth statistical significance
    3. tends to be atheoretical
    4. relies on objective experiments and subjectively doubts the validity of respondents’ viewpoints
       
15. When a researcher no longer learns anything new in a research setting, she or he has reached a stage of ________.
    1. ethnographic overkill
    2. “going native”
    3. theoretical saturation
    4. verstehen
16. According to the textbook, a “mixed-methods” research entails ________.
    1. using positivist and quantitative methods and integrating them into two different studies
    2. simultaneously using qualitative and quantitative methods in two parallel studies
    3. using both qualitative and quantitative methods and integrating them into a single study
    4. combining inductive and deductive approaches to a given research topic
       
17. The textbook suggests that one of the biggest challenges for mixed-methods research is ________.
    1. ensuring that the research is qualitative and quantitative in precisely equal ways
    2. finding ways to truly to integrate the findings so that the qualitative components do not disappear in the analysis
    3. reporting on generalizability and experiences “in the field”
    4. finding a research topic amenable to mixed-methods approaches
18. Dmitri is researching a northern community that does not conceive of what it means to be a person in this individualistic way. Rather, they see the self as connected to other human beings, to the land, ancestors and animals. The type of approach most in line with the community under study here is ________.
    1. realist methodologies
    2. ethnomethodologies
    3. indigenous methodologies
    4. positive methodologies
19. In his research on how medical students they felt about patients, Howard S. Becker found that ________.
    1. medical students and physicians held a shared definition of a particular concept
    2. medical students could not wait to become physicians
    3. medical students held a shared definition of a particular concept and that this definition reflected their own interest
    4. the interests of medical students had nothing to do with how they defined a particular concept
20. Maria is conducting research on a group of team of sledge hockey players. In her research report, Maria writes about her research participants’ “different abilities,” rather than referring to the participants as “handicapped.” Maria refers to her participants this way because ________.
    1. she recognizes that athletes should be described differently than other groups
    2. she recognizes that language is an essential mechanism for meaningful knowing and acting
    3. recent legislation demands that she use this language
    4. university research protocols demand that she use this language
21. According to the textbook, “generic social processes” include all of the following except ________.
    1. acquiring perspectives
    2. obtaining verstehen
    3. achieving linguistic fluency
    4. developing relationships
22. Social researchers were encouraged to mix and interact with the people they were studying in ________.
    1. the Frankfurt School (of Marx and Engels)
    2. the Chicago School of Sociology
    3. the Harvard School of Sociology and Anthropology
    4. Garfinkel’s Ethnomethodological School

True or False Questions

The author outlined a study conducted by her university where students were asked whether they preferred short (50 minutes) or long (80 minutes) classes. Through the use of supplemental qualitative interviews, she discovered that students disliked longer classes because they were harder to fit into their schedules.

The author tells a story of how, during her research on retirement communities in Florida, she began by considering members of the board of the Homeowner’s Association, but soon realized that the most productive group to interview would be the entertainment committee. This is an example of how the design of qualitative research is emergent.

Through the disassociation of theoretical preferences, most qualitative researchers agree that the error of bias affecting the research can be avoided.

Identifying a generic social process can help a researcher to expand the scope of her or his project to uncover hidden aspects of participants’ collective experiences.

The only important question asked in qualitative research is why people participate in certain social processes.

The inductive approach is central to qualitative research.

According to the symbolic interactionist approach, nothing has intrinsic meaning. The meaning of something is the result of the meaning we give to it in a particular situation.

Trust in causal knowledge involves a belief that the world is made up of causes that can be influenced by individuals.

Most researchers who choose a mixed-methods approach to research do so because of the lower ethical standards associated with that approach.

Mixed-methods researchers often find it challenging to truly integrate the findings so that the qualitative research components do not disappear in the analysis.

One of the foundations of qualitative research is to question the notion of truth as an objective reality.

Surveys, experiments, and the perspectives of researchers have become an integral part of indigenous research.

Short Answer Questions

1. Briefly define the three main components of positivism.
2. Outline the benefits of using a mixed-methods approach using the studies presented in the chapter.
3. Explain how the author’s example of planning and taking a vacation demonstrates how qualitative and quantitative research differ with respect to flexibility.
4. Briefly outline the study completed by Jack Haas and William Shaffir as it relates to examining a generic social process.
5. Ashley Austin’s 2016 research on young people negotiating a transgender or gender nonconforming (TGNC) identity identified the process of “navigating a TGNC identity in the dark.” What does Austin mean by this and what does this process of identity negotiation involve?
6. Summarize the difference in asking a why versus a how question in qualitative research.
7. Pick either the example of “waitressing and women tippers” or “Icelandic baby talk” and briefly outline what critical concept the example demonstrates.

Essay Questions

1. Distinguish between the objectives of quantitative and qualitative approaches to research.
2. What evidence does the author offer to support her claim that “in adopting a research perspective, a researcher will necessarily be influenced by the assumptions associated with that perspective”?
3. On 17 October 2018, recreational marijuana use will officially become legal in Canada. Describe how research questions, researcher assumptions, and research design might differ for researchers studying recreational marijuana users in late 2018 versus 10–15 years ago. How might they be similar?