Chapter 15: Research Using Historical and Comparative Data and Content Analysis

Test Bank

Multiple Choice

1. What sampling method is used in content analyses?

A. simple random sample

B. stratified sample

C. nonrandom sampling techniques

D. all of these

Difficulty Level: Hard

2. What kind of data sources do demographers use?

A. birth and death records

B. marriage and divorce records

C. migration records

D. all of these

Difficulty Level: Medium

3. A study of romance novels found four different types of heroines predominated: the cold professional, the emotionally scarred, the romantic dreamer, and the self-sacrificing martyr. This study is most likely ______.

A. an oral history

B. a textual experiment

C. a content analysis

D. a narrative analysis

Difficulty Level: Hard

4. The final step in a content analysis is to ______.

A. perform statistical analysis

B. determine the units of analysis

C. design coding procedures for the variables to be measured

D. test and refine coding procedures

Difficulty Level: Hard

5. Max Weber’s (Bendix 1962:268) comparative sociology of religions contrasted which religions?

A. Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism

B. Protestantism and Ancient Judaism

C. Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Ancient Judaism.

D. Protestantism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Ancient Judaism.

Difficulty Level: Easy

6. What is the first stage in a systematic, qualitative, comparative historical study?

A. select cases (such as nations) that vary in terms of the key concepts or events

B. specify a theoretical framework and identify key concepts or events that should be examined to explain a phenomenon

C. propose a causal explanation for the historical outcome and check it against the features of each case

D. identify similarities and differences between the cases in these key concepts or events and the outcome to be explained

Difficulty Level: Hard

7. What is the third step in an event structure analysis?

A. ordering events into a temporal sequence

B. identifying prior steps that are prerequisites for subsequent events

C. representing connections between events in a diagram

D. eliminating from the diagram connections that are not necessary to explain the focal event

Difficulty Level: Hard

8. Historical and comparative methods seek to answer questions about economic development, stratification, and other social processes by ______.

A. balancing research method and design

B. providing clear answers based on observational science

C. research conducted with experimental groups

D. drawing comparisons between other times and places

Difficulty Level: Easy

9. Research that involves studying a single case in a long period of time is known as ______.

A. comparative historical research

B. cross-sectional comparative research

C. historical process research

D. historical events research

Difficulty Level: Easy

10. Research that involves studying multiple cases (usually nations) throughout a long period of time is known as ______.

A. comparative historical research

B. cross-sectional comparative research

C. demography

D. historical events research

Difficulty Level: Easy

11. Qualitative historical research often follows a story involving specific actors and other events occurring at the same time or takes account of the position of actors and events in time. In other words, qualitative historical research is usually ______.

A. holistic

B. conjunctural

C. temporal

D. narrative

Difficulty Level: Medium

12. Narrative historical explanations tend to be ______.

A. idiographic

B. inconclusive

C. variable oriented

D. nomothetic

Difficulty Level: Easy

13. Event history analysis requires a researcher to do all of the following except:

A. classify historical information into discrete events

B. corroborate evidence with oral histories

C. identify prior steps that are prerequisites for subsequent events

D. diagram connections between events

Difficulty Level: Medium

14. When Frank, Hironaka, and Schofer (2000) studied the historical development of environmental protection around the world from 1900 to the late 1900s, they were conducting what kind of research?

A. oral history analysis

B. cross-sectional comparative research

C. historical process research

D. historical events research

Difficulty Level: Hard

15. Cross-sectional comparative research tends to be all of the following except ______.

A. variable oriented

B. nomothetic

C. deductive

D. longitudinal

Difficulty Level: Easy

16. If the applicability of general theoretical propositions is limited to particular historical circumstances, then the theory is ______.

A. analytic

B. interpretive

C. historically conditional

D. variable oriented

Difficulty Level: Medium

17. In case-oriented historical research, the sample is ______.

A. multiple nations at a single point in time

B. multiple nations at multiple points in time

C. one nation or other geographic unit

D. individuals within a single nation

Difficulty Level: Easy

18. Narrative historical explanations involve what type of causal reasoning?

A. variable oriented

B. idiographic

C. quantitative

D. nomothetic

Difficulty Level: Medium

19. To identify the underlying structure in a chronology of events, historical social researchers use ______.

A. event history analysis

B. event process analysis

C. event structure analysis

D. event narrative analysis

Difficulty Level: Medium

20. To understand historical events that occurred within the lifetime of living individuals, social researchers use which of the following methods?

A. event history analysis

B. event structure analysis

C. narrative historical evaluation

D. oral history

Difficulty Level: Medium

21. Which of the following is not necessary to compute the demographic bookkeeping equation?

A. births during the time interval

B. deaths during the time interval

C. fertility rate during the time interval

D. in-migration during the time interval

Difficulty Level: Medium

22. Why do demographers seek to standardize population numbers (such that demographic reports tend to feature rates instead of raw numbers)?

A. to allow statistical analysis

B. to facilitate comparisons between nations and over time

C. Data must be standardized to be included in the demographic bookkeeping equation.

D. They work with data with dubious origins.

Difficulty Level: Hard

23. John Stuart Mill's method of agreement helps to establish causality in which type of research ______.

A. content analysis

B. comparative historical

C. quantitative

D. experimental

Difficulty Level: Easy

24. If there is no deviance from a causal explanation proposed by a historical comparative researcher, their causal approach is ______.

A. nomothetic

B. reliable

C. valid

D. deterministic

Difficulty Level: Medium

25. Which law gives individuals the right to access all federal agency records, unless the records are specifically exempted?

A. The Archival and Historical Access Act

B. The Freedom of Information Act

C. The Academic Freedom and Integrity Act

D. The Federal Public Records Act

Difficulty Level: Easy

26. Which of the following is not one of the four basic types of historical and/or comparative research methods?

A. historical events research

B. historical process research

C. historical policy research

D. cross-sectional comparative research

Difficulty Level: Hard

27. Which of the following is a good example of an historical events design?

A. examining the process of civil rights exclusion of blacks beginning in the 1870s

B. analyzing the right to petition the English Parliament circa 1640

C. exploring public school enrollments between the 1890s and 1990s

D. describing contemporary individualism and moral commitment

Difficulty Level: Hard

28. To increase the credibility of oral histories, a researcher should ______.

A. consider counterfactuals

B. diagram the event structure

C. corroborate with other sources

D. develop a chronology of events

Difficulty Level: Medium

29. Historical research that uses national statistics or cross-national surveys is most likely ______.

A. variable oriented

B. case oriented

C. qualitative

D. interpretive

Difficulty Level: Medium

30. Which of the following techniques involves studying interviews about the lives of individuals, either collected by the researcher or obtained from an earlier study?

A. demographic analysis

B. content analysis

C. aggregate matching

D. oral history

Difficulty Level: Medium

31. An example of a cross-national qualitative database is the ______.

A. cross-national survey

B. Human Relations Area File

C. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series

D. United Nations Statistical Office

Difficulty Level: Hard

32. Demographers report population characteristics as rates, percents, or per capita to allow ______.

A. comparisons across units of different size

B. variable-oriented research

C. case-oriented research

D. narrative analysis

Difficulty Level: Medium

33. What is the name of John Stuart Mill's method in which the values of cases that differ on an outcome also differ on the value of the variable hypothesized to have a causal effect, while they agree in terms of other variables?

A. method of agreement

B. method of disagreement

C. method of difference

D. method of indifference

Difficulty Level: Easy

34. A researcher is examining the historical events of a nuclear disaster. In order to investigate thoroughly, she first classifies historical information into discrete events and then orders them into a temporal sequence. After identifying prior events that occurred leading up to the disaster, she creates an event’s diagram and then eliminates connections from the diagram that are not necessary to explain the disaster. This process is an example of ______.

A. a narrative explanation

B. variable-oriented research

C. an event structure analysis

D. oral history

Difficulty Level: Hard

35. Which of the following is not a stage for a systematic qualitative comparative historical study stated in Chapter 15?

A. identify similarities and differences between the cases in terms of key concepts or events and the outcome to be explained

B. select cases that vary in terms of key concepts or events

C. propose a causal explanation for the historical outcome and check it against the features of each case

D. draw a diagram outlining the major events from each case

Difficulty Level: Hard

36. What method of research compares data from one time period between two or more nations?

A. cross-sectional comparative research

B. historical process research

C. historical events research

D. comparative historical research

Difficulty Level: Easy

37. Why should researchers corroborate oral histories with documents and other more reliable sources?

A. Oral histories may be exaggerated.

B. Oral histories given by different individuals may not match up.

C. Some may withhold information.

D. Individuals often cannot recall all the details of a single event, especially when a lot of time has passed.

Difficulty Level: Hard

38. One of the main problems with content analysis is ______.

A. developing sociological hypotheses

B. lack of corroborating evidence

C. developing reliable coding procedures

D. gaps in the material

Difficulty Level: Hard

39. How is reliability of coding assessed in content analysis?

A. comparing different coders' codes for the same variables

B. scontrols

C. testing the same codes on a new sample

D. split-ballot design

Difficulty Level: Hard

True/False

1. The central insight behind unobtrusive measures in historical and comparative investigations is that we can improve our understanding of social processes when we make comparisons to other times and places.

Difficulty Level: Easy

2. Research in which social events of one past time period are studied is known as historical process research.

Difficulty Level: Medium

3. Qualitative historical research tends to be historically specific and narrative.

Difficulty Level: Easy

4. Event structure analysis seeks to identify the underlying structure of an action in a chronology of events.

Difficulty Level: Easy

5. Historical process research can use qualitative or quantitative techniques.

Difficulty Level: Easy

6. Cross-sectional comparative research tends to be case-oriented research.

Difficulty Level: Easy

7. According to Skocpol (1984), analytic historical sociology collects quantitative longitudinal data about a number of nations and then uses these data to test hypotheses about influences on national characteristics.

Difficulty Level: Easy

8. According to Skocpol (1984), interpretive historical sociology compares the histories or particular historical experiences of nations in narrative form, noting similarities and differences and inferring explanations for key national events.

Difficulty Level: Easy

9. Event history analysis considers historical events across different geographic units, usually nations.

Difficulty Level: Medium

10. Event history analysis can use the counterfactual to identify key events and figures.

Difficulty Level: Easy

11. Variable-oriented historical research is nomothetic and deductive.

Difficulty Level: Easy

12. Demographic standardization involves computing comparable measures across units of different population sizes, such as death rates per 1000 in different countries.

Difficulty Level: Easy

13. Qualitative comparative historical studies are likely to rely on availability or purposive samples of cases.

Difficulty Level: Easy

14. In demographic research, the emphasis is on characteristics of the population, not the sample.

Difficulty Level: Easy

15. It is not methodologically acceptable to turn qualitative historical characteristics into dichotomies to facilitate comparisons.

Difficulty Level: Medium

Essay

1. Describe the difference between historical events and historical process research.

Difficulty Level: Hard

2. What is demography? What sorts of statistics do demographers collect?

Difficulty Level: Medium

3. What is an oral history? Why should a researcher be skeptical while collecting data through the use of oral histories?

Difficulty Level: Hard

4. Why is it important to understand local or historical norms when doing comparative or historical research?

Difficulty Level: Hard

5. Why are ethical concerns multiplied when surveys are conducted in other countries?

Difficulty Level: Hard

6. What makes historical social research a type of social science research and not just simply history?

Difficulty Level: Hard

7. Describe the process of creating an event structure analysis. Design an event structure analysis of your decision to attend this college or university.

Difficulty Level: Hard

8. How is demography different from other forms of comparative and historical research? What type of research does it most resemble? Explain your answer.

Difficulty Level: Hard

9. What is the relationship between comparative and historical research and the use of secondary data sources?

Difficulty Level: Hard

10. What are some cautions for comparative analysis?

Difficulty Level: Medium

11. Describe Schutt's content analysis of schizophrenia to illustrate the process of creating coding categories.

Difficulty Level: Medium

12. What types of data are appropriate for content analysis?

Difficulty Level: Hard