Exam 4: From Concepts to Models: Hypotheses, Operationalization, and Measurement

Anurak is designing a study on the importance of parent-child relationship quality for children's social adjustment in school.For parent-child relationship quality,he has decided to focus on the children's perceptions of how much their parents love them,respect them,and make them feel important.In making this choice,Anurak is creating ________ that represent the level of parents' love and respect and children's importance.

The key difference between an interval and a ratio variable is that only

A key difference between ordinal variables and interval variables is that the values

A variable that represents identification with different racial-ethnic groups is a nominal variable because the

Farhad is deciding between studying the importance of cultural sexual norms of religious denominations versus those same norms of different countries.His is a choice between a ________ level of analysis and a ________ level of analysis.

In the quantitative social science research process,moving from a concrete definition of a concept to an actual measure of the defined concept involves

Affonso plans to study the effect of degree type on the income of college graduates.He chooses to represent degree type with college major and to represent income with individual annual income (in dollars).In this study,college major is a(n)________ variable and individual annual income is a(n)________ variable.

When we consider a concept,such as marital quality,there is not universal agreement about what that concept means.This lack of clear agreement is because of the ________ quality of concepts.

Anh plans to study the effect of age on standardized test performance,and chooses to represent age with number of years of age and to represent standardized test performance with Graduate Record Examination (GRE)scores.In this study,age is a(n)________ variable and GRE scores are a(n)________ variable.

If a variable has an infinite set of possible values from low to high,it is a(n)________ variable.

If a researcher were interested in the general attitude trends of a society over time,he or she would probably use a ________ design.

Start with two concepts whose relationship has been demonstrated in past research: socioeconomic status and health.Write three or four sentences shifting these concepts into operational definitions that can be used as measures.Then write a sentence or two discussing the potential problems with your measure of socioeconomic status in terms of reliability;then write another sentence or two discussing the potential validity issues of your socioeconomic status measure.Finally,write another one to two sentences each about the potential reliability and validity issues that could come up for your measure of health.

Gregory has designed a study of how health differs by level of educational attainment among adults.He decides to focus on degenerative diseases,such as heart disease,diabetes,and cancer.From there,he chooses simple representations about whether the respondents have ever had these conditions,and then constructs a series of yes/no questions.In this study,________ is most closely connected to the importance of dimensions.

Studies that focus on such countable aspects of social life as texts,news stories,or paintings dealing with a particular subject matter are relying on ________ as their unit of analysis.

If a researcher wanted to see how spouses' marital quality changed over time if and when children were born,he or she would probably use a ________ design.