Exam 2: How Sociologists Do Research

Jonah is studying student life on campus. He moves into a dorm, joins pick-up football games on campus, and helps tutor first-year students. He tells everyone he meets that he is a researcher. Which of the following roles is Jonah taking?

Many organizations are now using the Internet and creating pools of respondents who are willing to answer polls and surveys online. Quite often, these people are rewarded with cash or gifts for their participation. Does this make you wonder about bias in polling and survey research? Why or why not?

A sociologist organizes a focus group about plagiarism at university. He knows that this topic may be stressful and embarrassing to student participants, so he tells them that study strategies will be discussed. Which requirement of research ethics is the sociologist violating?

During a research study on people's views toward crime, a sociologist was careful to make up false names for the research subjects rather than use their real names in the research. Why is this important?

At which level of experience do seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, and hearing occur?

A sociologist believes that high levels of education create the opportunity for higher-paying work after graduation. What type of variable is "level of education"?

Explain the role of subjectivity in research.

Suppose people are asked questions about their knowledge, attitudes, or behaviour in a face-to-face or telephone interview or using a "paper-and-pencil" format. What are they doing?

If the association between two variables is accidental and not causal, what do we call the relationship between the two variables?

Tanya, a chemistry major, and Elise, a sociology major, are roommates. One evening when studying for their midterms, Tanya asserted that sociologists don't "do" science. Elise disagreed, saying that sociologists do science, but with one major difference. What is the primary difference that Elise would cite?

Rather than asking a few questions about family life from a large number of respondents, qualitative researchers observe and describe a few families in detail. What process do they use to formulate general, abstract insights from their observations?

If you used random-digit dialling of listed and unlisted residential numbers in your research, what part of the Canadian population would your sampling frame exclude?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of survey research as compared with the experimental method? Which is better suited to what purposes and why?

Why did the 1960s feminists argue that most sociological research was gender-biased? Has this changed since?

A researcher believes that colder temperatures lead to more snowfall. Which of the following terms refers to the amount of snowfall?

In research on mass media, several researchers watch the same content independently and then compare their interpretations of it. What aspect of research does this procedure improve?

A testable hypothesis is a product of the process of induction.

What steps should sociologists take to ensure a representative sample for their research?

In an experiment, how do the experimental and control groups differ?

At what level of experience do patterns occur?