Chapter 2: The Process and Problems of Social Research

Test Bank

Multiple Choice

1. A social research question can emerge from ______.

A. a researcher's own experience

B. other research

C. social theory

D. all of these

Difficulty Level: Medium

2. The scientific relevance of a research question refers to its ______.

A. ability to start and finish within a time limit

B. ability to generate specific suggestions for social policy

C. ability to resolve contradictions in or advance social theory

D. ability to make a difference in the social world

Difficulty Level: Easy

3. The results of Sherman and Berk's (1984) study of the impact of arrest on repeat calls to the police department for domestic violence supported ______.

A. symbolic interactionism

B. deterrence theory

C. labeling theory

D. conflict theory

Difficulty Level: Easy

4. Deductive theory begins with which element?

A. social theory

B. hypothesis testing

C. empirical generalization

D. descriptive research

Difficulty Level: Easy

5. What is not one of the stages of developing a good research question?

A. identifying one or more questions for study

B. refining the questions

C. refining the questions

D. pretesting the questions

Difficulty Level: Medium

6. A variable that is hypothesized to vary depending on the influence of another variable is called a(n) ______.

A. control variable

B. sependent variable

C. independent variable

D. dichotomous variable

Difficulty Level: Easy

7. ______ is an example of an electronic bibliographic database that is appropriate for searching the scholarly literature.

A. Sociological Abstracts

B. Lexis Nexis

C. Google

D. Yahoo

Difficulty Level: Medium

8. Which of the following is an example of a positive direction of association in a hypothesis?

A. As an individual's level of education increases, prejudice decreases.

B. The more sexual partners a person has, the more likely he or she is to be exposed to sexually transmitted diseases.

C. As computer literacy increases, amount of social interaction declines.

D. As household income decreases, percentage of income devoted to housing increases.

Difficulty Level: Medium

9. Which of the following is an example of a negative direction of association.

A. As number of hours of TV watched per week increases, number of hours spent reading per week decreases.

B. The more extracurricular activities in which a student participates, the more likely the student will describe his or her school experience as positive.

C. As an individual's income decreases, so does the likelihood that he or she will vote.

D. The higher an individual's score on a depression index, the more likely that he or she will attempt suicide.

Difficulty Level: Medium

10. After data have been collected, researchers sometimes find patterns that are unexpected, but nonetheless surprising and exciting. These types of patterns are known as ______.

A. empirical

B. generalizable

C. descriptive

D. serendipitous

Difficulty Level: Easy

11. Kai Erikson went to Buffalo Creek, West Virginia in 1972 following a highly destructive flood. Based on his interviews with residents and after spending considerable time in Buffalo Creek, Erikson theorized that the damage to the social ties in the community caused by natural disasters were just as destructive as the physical damage to the affected community. Erikson's study is a good example of what kind of research?

A. descriptive

B. exploratory

C. inductive

D. deductive

Difficulty Level: Hard

12. Examples of Boolean connectors in electronic bibliographic searches are ______.

A. AND and OR

B. date and journal title

C. key word and author

D. quotation marks and semicolons

Difficulty Level: Medium

13. The primary reason that articles published in social science journals are superior to information found on the Internet is ______.

A. Social science journals are more recent.

B. Articles in social science journals are subject to a review process.

C. Social science reports are not available on the Internet.

D. Articles in social science journals contain more accurate bibliographies.

Difficulty Level: Easy

14. The primary focus of a search for social science literature should be ______.

A. relevant books

B. government documents

C. social science journals

D. the Internet

Difficulty Level: Easy

15. In the process of creating a literature review, a researcher should check for relevance after locating journal articles through an index search by ______.

A. consulting online databases

B. checking Internet-based sources for similar results

C. locating the articles in the social science citation index

D. reading the articles' abstracts

Difficulty Level: Easy

16. Inductive explanations are more trustworthy if they are subsequently tested ______.

A. with a research circle

B. using an online database

C. by reviewing the literature

D. with deductive research

Difficulty Level: Easy

17. The most popular Internet search engine at the time that the Schutt text was published is ______.

A. Yahoo!

B. Sociological Abstracts

C. Lexis Nexis

D. Google

Difficulty Level: Easy

18. When citing a website, which of the following is NOT necessary?

A. web address

B. the name of the information provider

C. the copyright date

D. the date on which you obtain material from the cite

Difficulty Level: Easy

19. Which of the following is not a question to consider when assessing the relative credibility of a social science journal article.

A. How was the report reviewed prior to its publication or release?

B. What is the author's reputation?

C. Who funded the research?

D. How many researchers were involved in the research?

Difficulty Level: Medium

20. Which of the following exists when a measure measures what we think it measures?

A. causal validity

B. generalizability

C. measurement validity

D. authenticity

Difficulty Level: Easy

21. When a conclusion that A leads to or results in B is correct, it's called ______.

A. causal validity

B. measurement validity

C. sample generalizability

D. authenticity

Difficulty Level: Easy

22. Another name for causal validity is ______.

A. external validity

B. international validity

C. sample validity

D. internal validity

Difficulty Level: Easy

23. External validity can also be called ______.

A. internal validity

B. sample generalizability

C. cross-population generalizability

D. measurement validity

Difficulty Level: Easy

24. What should provide "a valid mirror on reality"?

A. external validity

B. internal validity

C. authenticity

D. causal validity

Difficulty Level: Medium

25. The Metro-Dade Spouse Assault Experiment (Pate & Hamilton 1992) replicated Sherman and Berk's (1984) Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment but added what variable to the investigation?

A. informal social control

B. race

C. income

D. recidivism

Difficulty Level: Easy

26. The Latin phrase that the author believes best should guide a researcher's reliance on information gleaned from the Internet is ______.

A. nulle poene signe lege

B. e pluribus unum

C. carpe diem

D. caveat emptor

Difficulty Level: Medium

27. In order to write up an effective literature review, researchers should use reports that have been ______.

A. proved wrong

B. found in newspapers and magazines

C. screened for quality and critiqued by other social scientists

D. all of these

Difficulty Level: Easy

28. Scholarly journals that are made up of peer-reviewed articles that are critiqued before publication are called ______.

A. refereed journals

B. professional journals

C. journals of social science

D. respected journals

Difficulty Level: Easy

29. Which of the following is NOT a step when searching the literature?

A. specify your research question

B. use any article pertaining to your research question no matter how vague

C. identify appropriate bibliographic databases to search

D. create a tentative list of search items

Difficulty Level: Easy

30. According to Schutt, when is the appropriate time during the study to locate relevant research literature?

A. at the beginning so that the researcher can construct a research question

B. at the end of the study to back up findings

C. only when someone asks for a literature review

D. throughout the study since literature is constantly growing

Difficulty Level: Easy

True/False

1. Social research questions may emerge from your own experience.

Difficulty Level: Easy

2. A good social research question should not have to be refined or revised.

Difficulty Level: Easy

3. Social importance is a relative concept when deciding on a research question.

Difficulty Level: Medium

4. Measurement validity exists when a measure measures what we think it measures.

Difficulty Level: Easy

5. Because of the more rigorous review process, research published in social science journals must be consulted for a literature review.

Difficulty Level: Easy

6. Every research question should be grounded in the social science research literature.

Difficulty Level: Easy

7. If you read an article, you should cite it in your literature review even if it is not directly relevant to your study.

Difficulty Level: Easy

8. The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment was a replication of the Metro-Dade Spouse Assault Experiment.

Difficulty Level: Easy

9. Deductive research involves deriving specific expectations from general theoretical premises.

Difficulty Level: Easy

10. Causal validity exists when a conclusion holds true for the population or group that we think it does.

Difficulty Level: Easy

11. The independent variable is the effect or consequence of the dependent variable.

Difficulty Level: Easy

12. Papers presented at professional conferences are subject to the same rigorous peer review as refereed journals.

Difficulty Level: Easy

13. A negative direction of association occurs when as the independent variable decreases, so does the dependent variable.

Difficulty Level: Easy

14. Generalizability is when a conclusion that A leads to or results in B is correct.

Difficulty Level: Easy

15. Empirical generalizations are patterns found in existing data.

Difficulty Level: Easy

16. Descriptive research does not involve connecting theory and data.

Difficulty Level: Easy

17. When an independent variable decreases, and the dependent variable also decreases, the direction of association is negative.

Difficulty Level: Easy

18. Authenticity is when the understanding of a social process is one that reflects fairly on various participants in that setting.

Difficulty Level: Easy

19. Inductive explanations are more trustworthy if they are tested subsequently with deductive research.

Difficulty Level: Medium

20. Sample generalizability exists when a conclusion based on a sample of a larger population holds true for that population.

Difficulty Level: Easy

Essay Questions

1. Define validity and authenticity as goals of social research. Explain why both are important for generating social science.

Difficulty Level: Hard

2. In which circumstances are descriptive, exploratory, explanatory, and evaluation research appropriate? Give an example for each.

Difficulty Level: Hard

3. A researcher asks five questions of a sample of community residents to find out how much they fear crime and whether their level of fear was influenced by a recent well-publicized murder in the community. Explain what the three dimensions of validity would refer to in this study and why they are important.

Difficulty Level: Hard

4. Outline the procedure for conducting a literature review of social scientific literature. Describe how articles are assessed for credibility. Describe how articles are coordinated to create an integrated literature review.

Difficulty Level: Hard

5. How does descriptive research differ from inductive and deductive research? In what circumstances is descriptive research commonly found?

Difficulty Level: Hard

6. What is the difference between exploratory and explanatory research?

Difficulty Level: Medium

7. Describe in detail the process of searching for information on the web and in the social science literature. How might you assess the credibility of sources from the web and from the literature? List and explain at least four reasons why articles in social science journals are preferable in social research to most web pages.

Difficulty Level: Hard

8. Describe the research circle that connects social theory to data collection. What are the principle components of this research circle? Using an example of your own choosing, describe two research designs based on this circle: one using inductive logic and one using deductive logic. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each of these designs?

Difficulty Level: Hard

9. Schutt states “the adequacy of an explanation formulated after the fact is necessarily less certain than an explanation presented prior to the collection of data” (p. 44). Explain in your own words what this statement means for students who will be conducting research of their own.

Difficulty Level: Medium

10. Discuss the research of Sherman and Berk (1984) on the effect of arrest on domestic abuse. What was their research hypothesis? What were their independent and dependent variables? Describe how their hypothesis was designed to test deterrence theory and labeling theory. For which theory did their hypothesis provide support? How did later studies improve on this initial research?

Difficulty Level: Hard

11. Write a brief explanation of the concept of validity and its three dimensions. To illustrate your explanations, describe what they would refer to in a hypothetical study of drug abuse in American suburbs.

Difficulty Level: Hard