Chapters 1-4
Mixed methods approach that collects qualitative and quantitative data simultaneously and then compares the results for a more complete understanding.
Convergent Mixed Methods Design
This document outlines the professional values, principles, and standards that guide social workers' conduct and decision-making.
NASW Code of Ethics
The person who provides data for analysis by responding to a survey questionnaire.
Respondent
The confidence that the result of a study depicts whether one variable causes another.
Internal validity
This paradoxical effect describes when people alter their behavior simply because they are being observed.
Hawthorne Effect
5 step process that integrates the best available research with practitioner expertise and client values.
Evidence-based practice
This concept is about whether your measure really captures what you’re trying to study—for example, does your “stress scale” actually measure stress.
Measurement Validity
This type of study checks in with the same people more than once over time to see how things change.
Panel Study
A technique that uses procedures based on probability theory to assign research participants to experimental and control groups.
Randomization
Coined by philosopher Karl Popper, this principle states that a good scientific theory must be capable of being proven wrong.
Falsifiability
A systematic set of interrelated statements intended to explain some aspect of social life.
Theory
This is non-negotiable—only a participant can provide it—and researchers are ethically and legally required to obtain it before involving anyone in a study. To ensure it’s valid, participants must be fully informed about all potential risks and agree voluntarily, without coercion.
Informed Consent
Younger generations might gravitate towards this form of data collection for its convenience and ease, but it may not be accessible to everyone because of socioeconomic barriers.
Online Surveys
This term refers to the extent to which the results of a study can be generalized beyond the specific context in which the study was conducted.
External Validity
Used frequently in survey design, this scale asks respondents to rate agreement on a 5- or 7-point continuum.
Likert Scale
The type of study also known as a snapshot or single point in time.
Cross-sectional study
This type of variable explains the mechanism through which an independent variable influences a dependent variable.
Mediating variable
This method of data collection often involves asking a series of questions to gather opinions, behaviors, or demographic information from a group of people.
Surveys
Measuring more than one indicator of the same target problem to increase validity of the findings.
Triangulation
A researcher using this qualitative method spends extended time in a setting, observing and sometimes participating in daily life.
Ethnography
This group ensures the ethical standards of research proposals involving human participants.
Institutional Review Board
A relationship between two variables that are no longer related when a third variable is controlled.
Spurious relationship
Typically, the 4 types of surveys.
Mail, Online, (in-person) Interview, or Telephone
A type of pre-intervention single-case evaluation design phase that consists of chronologically ordered data points that are reconstructed from past data.
Retrospective baseline
This unethical research practice involves running statistical analyses until something turns out significant—kind of like shaking a Magic 8-Ball until it says what you want.
P-hacking