Deck 2: Measuring People Variables, Samples and the Qualitative Critique

Question 1

1) Which of the following is a simple random sample:

A) Selection of students by asking for volunteers
B) Selection of students haphazardly from the refectory
C) Selection of students using a shuffled raffle ticket system
D) Selecting every 10^th student where the starting point in the first ten of a list is a randomly selected position

Answer 1

C

Question 2

2) Which of the following procedures would produce a systematic random sample:

A) Selection of students by asking for volunteers
B) Selection of students using a shuffled raffle ticket system
C) Selecting every 10^th student after selecting a random starting point among the first ten students in a list
D) Selecting randomly from within population sub-groups so that each sub-group is proportionally represented in the final sample

Answer 2

C

Question 3

3) Which of the following would be a self-selecting sample:

A) Participants who notice and complete an online survey
B) Participants recruited by a direct approach from the researcher in the college canteen
C) Students in a class who are asked to participate in an experiment
D) Participants selected from a student list at random and who are then asked to participate in a research study

Answer 3

A

Question 4

4) A researcher contacts and interviews key members of a minority ethnic community and then asks these interviewees to suggest other members who might be able to contribute significantly to the interview based research project. The sample contacted would be an example of a:

A) Self-selecting sample
B) Haphazard sample
C) Stratified sample
D) Snowball sample

Question 5

5) The reliability of a psychological measure refers to:

A) Its accuracy in predicting individuals' behaviour or characteristics
B) The degree to which it measures what it was intended to measure
C) Its consistency of measurement
D) The degree to which the intention of the measure is obvious to the person being measured

Question 6

6) The validity of a psychological measure refers to:

A) The degree to which it measures what it was intended to measure
B) The degree to which the intention of the measure is obvious to the person being measured
C) Its consistency of measurement
D) Its accuracy in predicting individuals' behaviour or characteristics

Question 7

7) An operational definition of a psychological variable is one which:

A) Gives a definition of a variable in terms of its rough measurement
B) Gives a precise definition of a variable in terms of the procedures taken to measure it
C) Gives a definition of a variable in terms of practical ways in which it might be observed
D) Gives a precise definition of a variable in qualitative terms

Question 8

8) Larger randomly selected samples (compared with smaller) will:

A) Be more representative of the target population
B) Be less representative of the target population
C) Be likely to contain far more of one sex than the other
D) Be likely to produce greater sampling error

Question 9

9) A qualitative study is one in which:

A) Data gathered are used to assess the quality of theories
B) Data gathered are largely non-numerical
C) Data gathered are largely statistical
D) Data gathered are used to create equality

Question 10

10) An advantage of qualitative over quantitative studies is that they tend to:

A) Produce highly reliable and replicable data
B) Produce data that are easy to present numerically
C) Produce data that are hard to misinterpret
D) Produce rich data with an emphasis on meaning