Research 101
In the population of New Town, 30 percent of the people work for Bigg Corporation, 30 percent work in the public sector (including education), and 40 percent are self-employed. In a survey of 100 randomly selected residents of New Town, 50 people worked for Bigg Corporation, 30 people worked in the public sector, and 20 people were self-employed. This sample was:
Nonprobabilistic
Too small
Unrepresentative
Representative
Unrepresentative
In a study of different organizations’ boards of directors and their role in setting policy, the board chairs were interviewed. The unit of analysis in this study was:
Boards of Directors
Board members
Board chairs
Organizations
Boards of Directors
Julie studies an Overeaters Anonymous group for several years. In her book on the subject, she mentions the location of the meetings. This violates which one of the main ethical issues in field research?
Subjects’ well being
Subjects' confidentiality
Voluntary participation of subjects
Informed consent of participants
Subjects' confidentiality
An after school program at the local Boys and Girls Club wanted to see if the program improved behavior. A social worker administered a behavior assessment to the group in September. The children then attended the program during the school year. At the end of the school year, the behavior assessment was given again and they found that behavior scores improved. While the intervention may have been effective, the best other explanation may be:
Testing
Instrumentation
Mortality
Maturation
Maturation
A procedure that requires some prior knowledge of characteristics in the population.
Snowball Sampling
Available Sampling
Purposive Sampling
Quota Sampling
Quota Sampling
A researcher gets a list of all 500 members of the National Association of Social Work in Yourtown that she wants to include in her study. She only has the funding and time to survey 50 members. She takes her list of members, randomly selects a starting point, and then selects every tenth name from the list to be included in her sample. In this example, the sampling interval is:
10
50
500
Cannot be determined with the information given
10
Examining relationships between concepts is important in qualitative analysis because it allows the researcher to:
Generalize findings
Validate findings
Identify key variables for future research
Move from description to explanation
Move from description to explanation
A qualitative researcher seeking input from participants about the findings and interpretations is a form of:
Tacit knowledge
Peer debriefing
Processing information
Member checking
Member checking
The “centerpiece” of the qualitative analysis process is:
Reflexivity
Documentation
Examining relationships
Holism
Examining relationships
Elements are selected by use of a random number table.
Simple Random Sampling
Stratified Random Sampling
Systematic Random Sampling
Cluster Sampling
Simple Random Sampling
A researcher conducts a survey of students randomly selected from Introduction to Social Work classes at State University. The researcher then attempts to generalize these findings to all college students. In this example, the target population is:
All college students
All social work students
All college students at State University
Cannot be determined with the information given
All college students
A social work researcher has decided to do a study of people who have adopted children from outside of the United States. He asks a friend, whom he knows to have recently adopted, if he would consent to an interview. He interviews his friend, and then asks his friend if he could name other people who have recently adopted children from outside of the United States. His friend provides him with five names. The researcher contacts those five people, interviews them, and asks each of those people for names of other families. This sampling technique is known as:
Convenience sampling
Qualitative sampling
Snowball sampling
Purposive sampling
Snowball sampling
In a study of gang behavior, Jankowski (1991) included several different ethnic gangs, as well as large and small gangs, and gangs from different cities and regions of the country. This process of selecting different types of gangs represents what kind of sampling procedure?
Quota sampling
Simple random sampling
Stratified sampling
Theoretical sampling
Theoretical sampling
A procedure that relies on getting information from respondents to find others.
Snowball Sampling
Available Sampling
Purposive Sampling
Quota Sampling
Snowball Sampling
Sub-groups within the population are identified as sharing some characteristic, and elements are randomly selected from within those sub-groups.
Simple Random Sampling
Stratified Random Sampling
Systematic Random Sampling
Cluster Sampling
Stratified Random Sampling
Emile Durkheim compared suicide rates across different nations to determine the effects of social change on the strength of social bonds. For example, he found that predominantly Protestant European countries had higher suicide rates than predominantly Catholic European countries. What was the unit of analysis in his study?
Countries
Individuals
Suicide rates
Religions
Countries
As part of his research, Ralph arranges with the manager of a fantasy baseball league to observe and interview members. At the baseball “draft,” Ralph introduces himself to other members of the fantasy league and they agree to let him observe the draft and allow themselves to be interviewed, although they do not allow him to join the league (as his knowledge of other members' strategies may affect how he manages his fantasy team). His role as a field researcher is that of a:
Covert participant
Complete participant
Overt observer
Participant observer
Overt observer
To conduct a survey on current undergraduate social work majors, a researcher gets a list of all students who have declared a social work major from the registrar from which a sample will be drawn. This list is known as what?
Sampling frame
Sample
Population
Aggregation
Sampling frame
A procedure that uses accidental or convenience selection techniques.
Snowball Sampling
Available Sampling
Purposive Sampling
Quota Sampling
Available Sampling
Elements are selected by choosing every nth element on the sampling frame after a random starting point.
Simple Random Sampling
Stratified Random Sampling
Systematic Random Sampling
Cluster Sampling
Systematic Random Sampling
Changes that may occur in individual or group behavior due to being observed or studied are called:
Reactive effects
Nonspuriousness
Sample effects
Random effects
Reactive effects
A third variable that interacts with the independent variable is known as a:
Mediating variable
Spurious variable
Moderator variable
Dependent variable
Moderator variable
A social work researcher attends several different meetings of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center, in which she listens to speakers and introduces herself as a researcher. She identifies several people who seem to know a lot about the gay and lesbian community in Yourtown, including people from two apparently different “factions” within the group, and she asks them for interviews. This sampling procedure is associated with:
Convenience sampling
Purposive sampling
Probability sampling
Availability sampling
Purposive sampling
A procedure that considers the knowledge of the informant in the selection process.
Snowball Sampling
Available Sampling
Purposive Sampling
Quota Sampling
Purposive Sampling
Groups are randomly selected, and then elements are randomly selected from those groups.
Simple Random Sampling
Stratified Random Sampling
Systematic Random Sampling
Cluster Sampling
Cluster Sampling