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

Something that points to, provides evidence of, or otherwise measures a concept is called a

A measure is __________________ when the categories represent all the possible responses and allow every case to be categorized.

The process of defining, observing, and recording ideas, experiences, and outcomes of interest is known as what

Imagine you want to study the factors that impact a student's decision to transfer to a different university. Think of a criterion related to this decision and then construct a hypothesis. How would you know if you achieved concurrent validity with this measure?

Explain the importance of theory in the way Wingfield conceptualized and operationalized the variables in her study.

If you were operationalizing political attitude, a person's political affiliation could be used as an indicator.

Measurement allows researchers to describe the relationship between concepts.

How did Martinez, Lorvick, and Kral (2014) conceptualize the term "activity space" in their research of injection drug users' (IDUs') access to overdose prevention services?

Martinez, Lorvick, and Kral (2014) conceptualized the term "activity spaces" in order to understand how much access intravenous drug users have to health care.

In your own words, explain the difference between mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories. Create an example of a variable and its categories that meet both of these criteria.

The level of measurement in which the categories are only names without any rank ordering or numerical value is called _____________.

Social researchers cannot clearly measure abstract concepts.

What is the level of measurement for the following variable: Education level measured degree earned with the categories: less than high school, high school diploma/GED, some college, associate's degree, bachelor's degree, graduate degree.

Describe the ways that researchers can test the internal and external validity of their research.

How do researchers contend with ambiguity and complexity in the social world? Why is this important?

Dr. McIntosh develops a new measure to study discrimination in the COVID-19 era. To ensure that the measure is an effective indicator, he asks several colleagues with expertise to review the measure. What sort of validity has he established?

The level of measurement in which named categories can be rank ordered is known as

A general or abstract idea that describes observations and ideas about some aspect of the social world is known as a concept.

When a researcher codes survey data using a numeric scheme, what helps us make sense of what those numbers mean?

You are responding to a survey and see the following question. What is problematic about the categories of the question? How many years have you worked in a full-time positiona. (a) 0 (b) 2-4 (c) 4-6 (d) 6-8 (e) 8-10 (f) Over 10