Exam 3: How Do Researchers Identify and Evaluate Social Concepts Measurement

An independent variable is a behaviour, characteristic, or condition that is affected by other aspects of the social world.

One way to test if a measure's stability is to use the ____________ method.

In your own words, explain the difference between and the importance of reliability and validity.

What is the level of measurement for the following variable: Educational aptitude measured with a respondent's IQ score

The variable that a researcher considers likely to affect another variable is the __________.

Cronbach's alpha and the split-half method are common tests of what?

What are the three main reasons that measurement is needed and important?

California's Proposition 45 was criticized by the American Sociological Association primarily because it _____________________.

An operationalized definition of advancement and upward mobility in career could be "entry into better-paying, higher status positions."

Which of the following would be the best indirect indicator of academic success?

Dr. Merchant wants to know if college students who are more connected to peers are more likely to stay at the institution. He believes that students who are more connected to their peers will stay on campus more often on weekends than those who are less connected. If he finds that students who stay on campus on weekends have more friends and stay in college, it is likely that his measure has _____________ validity.

Why does Sumerau advocate that social scientist rethink the way that they measure gender and sexuality? What suggestions do they make for researchers to accomplish this? Are there other demographic variables that you think could be more exhaustive on forms that you've seen? Explain.

Measurements should be mutually exclusive and exhaustive in quantitative research.

When a single indicator does not capture the complexity of a concept, the researcher might have to

The concepts in Wingfield's study about the racialized aspects of the glass escalator effect fell all the following categories EXCEPT

The Proposition 54 ballot initiative in California was problematic because it favored explicitly asking about race in matters related to education and employment.

What is the difference between internal and external validity?

Researchers have to specify the process through which they will observe the presence, absence, or degree of a concept's existence. This is known as

An example of concurrent validity is comparing the results of crime surveys over the same period of time to see if they find the same trends.

Choose an abstract social variable that is interesting to you (for example, life satisfaction.) Then conceptualize and operationalize the variable using the steps in Figure 3.1. Be specific about how you would measure the absence or presence of the variable in a research study.