Exam 2: Studying Social Life: Sociology Research Methods

A pilot study is

The primary goal of comparative and historical research methods is to

What does philosopher Thomas Kuhn argue about the truth?

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz coined the term "thick description" to describe well-written field notes. What does he mean by this term?

A professor receives a grant to study local employment conditions and files the required paperwork with their university's Institutional Review Board (IRB). Several graduate students who were not around when the project started are later hired to take over the day-to-day management of the project. The IRB promptly cuts off the project's funding. Explain what an IRB does and why it might revoke funding for a research project.

Which of the following is a disadvantage of using existing sources of data for research?

Sociologists always try to incorporate some leading questions and double-barreled questions in order to vary the types of questions they ask in interviews.

You are doing a research project on the effects of contemporary media. What are your variables if your hypothesis is "watching violence on television causes an increase in violent behavior"?

What are researchers doing when they use a social networking site like Facebook to obtain data?

Ethnographers are overt about their roles if

Operationalizing, or providing operational definitions for variables, is associated with the same step that involves forming a hypothesis.

________ is the research method that might involve shifting between participating in a social situation and being an observer.

Which of the following is a disadvantage of using ethnography as a method of social research?

In physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that to measure something is also to change it. Sociologists have observed a similar phenomenon-reactivity. Describe the classic example of reactivity, which was observed and explained by Elton Mayo at the Western Electric Hawthorne Plant between 1927 and 1932.

Which of these uses an inductive method that involves collecting data and then generating a theory by looking for relationships among categories?

Each method of social research comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. This means that there is not necessarily a "right" answer to the question of which method should be used for a project. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using ethnographic research.

In her research for The Second Shift, Arlie Hochschild interviewed married couples to find out how they dealt with changing family roles as more women entered the workforce. What advantages came from her decision to use interviews as a research method?

A sociologist performs an experiment designed to investigate the effect of marriage counseling on divorce. They divide research participants into two similar groups of troubled couples, provides only one group with counseling, and observes whether or not, over time, the two groups eventually divorce at different rates. What is the independent variable in this experiment?

How do interviews give "voice" to people who may never have been heard before and offer privileged access to authentic experience, private worlds, and true selves?

Survey researchers often use Likert scales to construct the possible answers when they write closed-ended questions. How do Likert scales allow respondents to answer?