Exam 3: Doing Sociological Research

A sociological study explores whether there is any truth to the stereotype that women are bad drivers. Which of the following types of reasoning would be used in this type of study?

A low return rate for a survey is likely to result in findings that are not generalizable to the entire population.

Professor Conway is reading published research papers related to his research question. Professor Conway is best described as

Explain sampling and why it is used in data gathering. Explain how one can use a sample for research and still be able to generalize the findings to a larger population; what factors determine if the results from a sample may be generalized to the population?

Which of these is not a type of survey?

If research clearly established that "study time determines the grades that a student earns," grades are the _____ variable.

Dr. Gore believes that people who live in regions that have been impacted by multiple, severe storms or related natural disasters like flooding are more likely to report that climate change is serious concern to them than are people who live in regions that have not been impacted. Using National Weather Service data on storm severity, she categorizes people as living in regions impacted by at least one such storm in the five years or no such storms and then looks at the percentage of people who rate climate change as a serious concern based on where they live. Dr. Gore has most likely arranged the data in a(n)  

A sociologist wants to find out what the attitudes toward drinking are among the students at the university where she works. What would be the population for this study?

If sociology is an empirical science and thus based on observation, how can sociologists study concepts that cannot be observed? Provide a specific example of a concept and discuss how it could be studied.

Describe how a researcher might develop a research question.

Sociologists avoid reading other studies about the same topic they are studying in order to prevent bias in their own research.

To study the difference in academic achievement between male and female athletes, one might look at rates of graduation among university students involved in sports. This is an example of _____ research.

Which of the following is an example of a concept?

How is doing a replication study useful?

When used as data for sociological analysis by a researcher not involved in the original data collection, national opinion polls and Census data are considered

Dr. Gore believes that people who live in regions that have been impacted by multiple, severe storms or related natural disasters like flooding are more likely to report that climate change is serious concern to them than are people who live in regions that have not been impacted. Using National Weather Service data on storm severity, she categorizes people as living in regions impacted by at least one such storm in the five years or no such storms and then looks at the percentage of people who rate climate change as a serious concern based on where they live. In this example, what is the independent variable?

Explain what a concept is and describe the relationship between concepts and indicator variables.

Which of these is not one of the disadvantages of using participant observation for sociological study?

In a controlled experiment, the group that is exposed to the variable being studied is called the _____, and the group not being exposed is called the _____.

Why does covert participant observation help eliminate the Hawthorne effect?