Exam 3: Section 1: General Issues in Research Design

A major Midwestern university does annual surveys of its alumni. These surveys are designed to gauge the attitudes that alumni hold about the university, its academic programs, and the major team sports. These surveys have been an annual event for the last two decades and represent which type of study?

What unit of analysis is being used in the following statement? "An enormous variation of deviant activities was represented in a sample of 1,485 news items. We categorized these deviant activities into five general types of analysis: violence, economic, political, ideological/cultural and diversionary."

When someone tries to come to conclusions about an individual based on group-level data, the _______________ is being committed.

A scientific realist approach to examining mechanisms in context bridges ____.

Theories describe _______________ that might logically be expected among variables.

The pillars of science are logic and rationality.

A researcher studying rates of psychiatric disorders among inmates as a function of institutional security level finds that the highest-security prisons have the highest rates of psychiatric disorders. The unit of analysis is ____.

Types of longitudinal studies include trend, panel, and _______________ studies.

A researcher studies community-level arson rates in relation to economic indicators such as household income, poverty, and unemployment. The researcher finds that communities with higher arson rates have higher poverty and unemployment rates and lower household income. The researcher concluded that unemployed people are more likely to commit arson than are those who are employed. What error was just committed?

The ____ is a panel study.

Which study design would allow a researcher to measure change in a general population over time?

According to your text, causation, units of analysis, and _______________ are key considerations in planning a research study.

Give a hypothetical situation that would lend itself to a cross-sectional study. What would be the research purpose in your hypothetical? Why would your example not lend itself to a longitudinal approach?

Cross-sectional studies are those based on observations made at one time.

Units of analysis are typically also the units of ____.

An _______________ is a structure that is intended to represent or model something about the world.

_______________ reasoning moves from the specific to the general, from a set of particular observations to the discovery of a pattern that represents some degree of order among the varied events under examination.

In _______________ studies, data are gathered at a single point in time.

Longitudinal studies are designed to permit intensive observations over a short period of time.

What type of research is characterized by the direct observation of events as they actually occur?