Deck 11: Nonreactive Research and Secondary Analysis

Question 1

The trash left in the theater after a movie is over and items in a garbage dump are examples of

A) vital statistics.
B) accretion measures.
C) erosion measures.
D) traces.

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Professor Hague counts the total number of people and the percentage who are Hispanic in a sample of 400 TV commercials shown during a one month period on two Miami stations. She wants to see whether the percentage of Hispanic people in commercials equals, is greater than, or is less than, the percentage of Hispanic people in the area population. She is using

A) generic content coding.
B) latent content coding.
C) manifest content coding.
D) corroborative coding.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Are there any ethical concerns with the use of nonreactive research? How are ethical concerns different for nonreactive research than other types of research?

Answer 3

not answered

Question 4

Professor Huang codes the number of times the word "sex" is used in commercials. She is examining

A) manifest content.
B) ecological content.
C) latent content.
D) corroboration.

Question 5

Refer to the following paragraph to answer the questions below.
Dr. Simpson conducted a content analysis of The New York Times between 1980 and 2000. She first identified relevant articles involving government regulation of business. After finding 2,000 such articles, she systematically sampled articles with a sampling interval of 5. She then coded each sampled article based on the subjective meaning it expressed, as pro- or anti-government regulation, using a 1 to 10 scale 1 = very anti-regulation, 10 = very pro-regulation).
In this study, Dr. Simpson used to identify articles as pro- or anti-government regulation.

A) manifest coding
B) intervention strategy coding
C) latent coding
D) generic coding

Question 6

Below is a list of measures of the French influence in New Orleans. Which of the measures is NOT an unobtrusive measure?

A) the wear on novels in the New Orleans Public Library written in French
B) a survey using a three-page questionnaire partly written in French that was distributed to residents of a neighborhood
C) walking down a street in New Orleans and noticing that most of the signs in stores in a neighborhood are in French or French-Cajun
D) a box of 300 letters written by people living in New Orleans to relatives living in French speaking areas outside the state e.g., Quebec) between 1980 and 1985

Question 7

Fallacy of misplaced concreteness is

A) using smaller units of analysis to make inferences about larger units of analysis.
B) using too many digits in a quantitative measure in an attempt to create the impression that data are accurate.
C) using secondary data that is inappropriate for the research question.
D) misusing data due to the researcher's lack of knowledge concerning the secondary data source.

Question 8

It is often recommended that when using content analysis as a method of research, a research team use multiple coders. What is the purpose of multiple coders in content analysis? What problem could be created when using multiple coders? How might one deal with the problem?

Question 9

Compared to latent coding in content analysis, manifest coding seems to have

A) greater validity.
B) no differences in validity or reliability.
C) greater reliability.
D) lower reliability.

Question 10

Which is a major advantage of content analysis?

A) It cannot be used to study materials which are not written or recorded.
B) It is time consuming and requires a large staff with specialized equipment.
C) It is unobtrusive.
D) It cannot measure how people experience the "text" or how the text affects them.

Question 11

While using existing statistics can bring a wealth of quality research, one has to be mindful of reliability issues. Discuss some of the issues of reliability when using existing statistics.

Question 12

Dr. Armstrong compared two textbooks. He counted the word "he" 80 times in Book A and 20 times in Book B. He also found Book A contained the word "chairman" 40 times while it only appeared 10 times in Book
B) He can conclude

A) students using Book A will become more sexist than those using Book B.
B) the words "he" and "chairman" appeared four times more often in Book A than in Book B.
C) a teacher who chooses Book A is more sexist than one who chooses Book B.
D) Book A is four-times more sexist than Book B.

Question 13

Dr. Chandresh wants to study the U.S. media coverage of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak which left 8,000 Indians dead and 50,000 injured. Which non-reactive research method would be ideal?

A) the number of hits to an Internet site dedicated to the 1984 Bhopal gas leak
B) a content analysis of The New York Times and The Washington Post from 1984-1985
C) a content analysis of CNN's coverage from 1984-1985
D) measuring the number of American reporters that entered India and the duration of their stay) after the gas leak

Question 14

What is secondary data analysis? What are its advantages and disadvantages?

Question 15

Professor Gowda used the Statistics Canada data set to examine the trend in Canadian unemployment rates over the last forty years. Unfortunately, how unemployment was measured changed several times during this time period. This is an issue of

A) ecological fallacy.
B) reliability.
C) validity.
D) reductionism.

Question 16

Validity is a major concern for researchers when using existing statistics and secondary data analysis. Explain three problems with validity when conducting existing statistics research.

Question 17

Any measure of social well-being that can inform policy decisions is called

A) policy driver.
B) inequality observation.
C) social indicator.
D) content analysis report.

Question 18

While using existing statistics can bring a wealth of quality research, one has to be mindful of some of the limitations. Describe some of the limitations of existing statistics.

Question 19

How many articles did Dr. Simpson code?

A) 200
B) 4,000
C) 1,000
D) 400

Question 20

Researchers primarily use which of the following types of sampling in content analysis?

A) judgmental
B) random
C) quota
D) snowball

Question 21

What is secondary data analysis? What are existing statistics? How is secondary data analysis different for the use of existing statistics? Give an example of each method not discussed in class or in the text.

Question 22

Many lobbying groups use the findings from content analysis of television programs to make inferences about the state of American culture the degradation of American values, etc.). Given what you have learned about content analysis, is this an inappropriate use of content analysis findings? Why or why not?

Question 23

What are four characteristics of content that are described in coding systems? How are they recorded accurately?

Question 24

How variables will be coded is a primary concern when a researcher utilizes content analysis as a research method. Discuss coding in content analysis. What is the difference between manifest and latent coding?

Question 25

Why do social scientists use nonreactive methods to conduct social research? What is the logic behind using these research methods? What are some of the benefits of using nonreactive methods over reactive methods?

Question 26

What is Krippendorff's Alpha? When and why is it used in non-reactive research?