Measurement
A quality of a measure that gives the same reading each time it is used
What is reliability?
All of the cases you could potentially study
What is a population?
Scholarship that is simply aimed at getting basic information
What is descriptive research?
The subjects in an experiment who receive the experimental manipulation
What is a treatment group?
An outcome that a researcher hopes to explain
What is a dependent variable?
When a measure actually measures the concept it is intended to measure
What is validity?
Selecting cases based on a chance process
What is a probability sample?
Scholarship that is concerned with how things should be
What is normative work?
Data collection where the researcher questions several individuals simultaneously in a guided discussion
What is a focus group?
A pattern that you would expect to see in the real world if your theory is true
What is a hypothesis?
When we ask if a measure is sensible
What is face validation?
Selecting cases by first selecting groups of cases and then selecting cases from the selected groups
What is cluster sampling?
An account that seeks to exhaust the factors that caused a particular event or condition
What is idiographic explanation?
The subjects in an experiment who do not receive the experimental manipulation, but are included for comparison
What is a control group?
The factor that you believe caused the phenomenon that you are trying to explain
What is an independent variable?
The cause of a consistently biased measure
What is systematic error?
A data collection effort that gathers data from all the cases we could study
What is a census?
An approach to research that is good for generating theories
What is inductive research?
Questions that deepen an answer without leading the interviewee
What are probes?
An explanation of how an independent variable might affect the dependent variable
What is a causal mechanism?
When we ask if a measure includes all of the dimensions we are interested in
What is content validation?
A complete list of all the cases we could study
What is a sample frame?
An account that identifies a few causal factors that affect a general class of conditions or events
What is nomothetic explanation?
The underlying meaning of human communication
What is latent content?
When we know that the dependent variable didn't cause the independent variable
What is non-endogeneity?