Exam 5: Evaluating Research: Reliability and Validity

Which of the following is true of error in social science research?

Critics of the federal poverty line (FPL)point out that it does not take regional variation in cost of living into account and that what constitutes an adequate diet is highly subjective.Because of these and other issues,the FPL leads to which of the following?

A common measure of educational attainment includes categories for less than high-school diploma,high-school diploma,some college,college degree,some postgraduate education,and Postgraduate degree.These categories could be confusing or miss people who went to trade school or who earned any type of nontraditional degree.This measure would have problems with which of the following?

Which of the following is the correct term for a measure that is consistent,dependable,and predictable?

Suppose a researcher wants to measure difficulties for college students whose parents did not attend college.The researcher writes survey questions about grades,quality of support on campus,and financial resources,but does not ask about whether the student has family support or a good adviser.If the researcher has not tapped into all the dimensions of difficulties for first-generation college students,which of the following would be at risk?

Which term refers to how detailed and specific a measure is?

A researcher creates a scale to measure students' satisfaction with their sociology courses.After identifying six key questions and organizing them into a composite measure,the researcher averages the six items into a variable called "sociology satisfaction." The Cronbach's alpha score was 0.8,which means the

Pick a concept for which it would make sense to measure using a composite variable.In no less than three sentences,explain why you would want to use a composite measure for this concept (as opposed to a single measure).

When researchers want to test robustness,or how well an operational protocol is working,they might use which of the following techniques?

The discussion of the difference between the federal poverty line (FPL)and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)poverty line is important because it highlights

Ordinary least squares (OLS)regression is a statistical procedure that does what?

A researcher is getting ready to gather data from a nationally representative sample of 5,000 Americans on their attitudes toward voting in local elections.In order to make sure our measures are reliable,we might gather a random sample of 100 Americans and test the study.What would we call this preliminary study?

For which of the following would it make sense to measure using a composite variable?

There are critiques of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D).Some of those critiques surround its development for use with English-speaking people of European descent.Thus,some of the trouble in assessing reliability for depression scales points to which of the following?

There are approximately equal numbers of men and women in the U.S.population.If a researcher wants to study the impact of gender on whether teenagers decide to apply to college,but only includes women in the study,which of the following would be in jeopardy?

Suppose a researcher wants to measure whether people have experienced racial discrimination in their neighborhood.The researcher might ask questions about whether subjects ever felt they were turned away from renting or buying a home because of their race.The researcher might also ask about whether they have ever been treated unfairly by store clerks or their neighbors.After writing the questions on their survey,the researchers felt they had accurate measures of discrimination because they seemed right.Which kind of validity would they feel they achieved?

A sociologist studying American neighborhoods identifies a causal effect of income on the availability of healthy and nutritious foods.Specifically,people with lower incomes tend to live in neighborhoods where there are more fast food restaurants and less access to fresh fruits and vegetables.Given this finding,the researcher can be confident in concluding that the study has

After conducting a study on happiness,researchers realize that the validity and reliability of the study is not as strong as they had hoped.In essence,they haven't done as good a job of measuring happiness as they had hoped to.This means that

What is the most effective method for increasing the reliability of a research method?

A pilot test involves administering some version of a measurement protocol (a survey,an experiment,an interview)to whom?