Question 1

Raw data are data that ______.

Accepted Answer

A)   don't yet have any variables that have been collapsed
B)   haven't been cleaned
C)   Haven't been statistically calculated yet
D)   didn't come from a data repositoryAnswer Location: Introduction C

Question 2

Why will you likely have to recode in secondary data analysis?

Accepted Answer

In secondary data analysis, you often have to recode data for several reasons:

1. **Different Research Objectives**: Secondary data is collected by someone else for their own research purposes. When you use this data for your own analysis, your research questions or hypotheses may differ from the original study. Recoding allows you to adjust the data to fit your specific research needs.

2. **Incompatible Formats**: The format of the data may not be suitable for your analysis. For example, the data might be categorized in a way that is too broad or too narrow for your research questions. Recoding can help you to reclassify the data into categories that are more relevant to your study.

3. **Data Cleaning**: Secondary data may contain errors, inconsistencies, or missing values. Recoding can be part of the data cleaning process, where you correct errors, deal with missing values, or standardize data entries to ensure consistency across the dataset.

4. **Combining Data Sources**: If you are using multiple sources of secondary data, you may need to recode to ensure that the categories or scales are consistent across the different datasets. This is crucial for accurate comparison and analysis.

5. **Scale Transformation**: Sometimes, the scale used in the original data collection may not be appropriate for your analysis. For instance, you might need to convert a continuous variable into a categorical variable or vice versa, depending on the statistical methods you plan to use.

6. **Privacy and Confidentiality**: The original data may contain sensitive or identifiable information that needs to be recoded to protect privacy. This could involve removing or masking identifiers or collapsing detailed categories into broader ones to prevent the identification of individuals.

7. **Compliance with New Standards or Regulations**: Over time, standards or regulations may change, and you might need to recode the data to ensure compliance with current practices or legal requirements.

8. **Enhancing Comparability**: To compare your findings with other studies or to conduct meta-analyses, you may need to recode your variables to match the definitions and categories used in other research.

9. **Addressing Limitations**: The original data collection may have limitations that you want to address in your analysis. Recoding can help you to refine the variables to better measure the constructs of interest.

10. **Analytical Techniques**: Different analytical techniques may require data in different forms. For example, some multivariate techniques require data to be in a certain format, and recoding is necessary to meet these prerequisites.

In summary, recoding in secondary data analysis is often necessary to tailor the data to fit new research questions, ensure compatibility and comparability across datasets, clean and standardize the data, protect privacy, comply with regulations, and facilitate the use of specific analytical techniques.

Question 3

Based on your research question, describe a variable you would be looking for in choosing a secondary data set, and describe how it would ideally be operationalized.

Accepted Answer

See pages 158-160. This question is asking you to identify an important variable you would look for in choosing the secondary data set you would use. Although you will not get to operationalize the variable yourself, here you want to describe how you would like it to be operationalized in order for you to best be able to answer your research question.

Question 4

Secondary data analysis is considered research because ______.

Accepted Answer

A)   you analyze the data
B)   it is statistical
C)   you summarize the original researcher's findings
D)   you do a literature review before you start your study

Question 5

Where would you search data sets to use for this research?

Accepted Answer

The answer of Where would you search data sets to...

Question 6

Research questions for secondary data analysis are most likely to be ______.

Accepted Answer

A)   descriptive
B)   explanatory
C)   applied
D)   interpretive

Question 7

You would like to study how demographic characteristics affect likelihood of owning a home. You find data sets at both nationwide data and community data. You should ______.

Accepted Answer

A)   use both sets to get the exact information you are looking for
B)   conduct your own survey
C)   change your topic
D)   choose only one of the data sets to use

Question 8

Write a research question appropriate for secondary data analysis related to job satisfaction.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Write a research question appropriate for secondary...

Question 9

Which of the following is an example of collapsing a variable?

Accepted Answer

A)   reassigning an answer to a different response category by hand
B)   you decide to put those who said their race was "the human race" as missing values
C)   you put someone who says they are "Polish" into the "White" category
D)   you collapse six categories of race into two: Whites and people of color

Question 10

Recoding a variable is part of the process of ______ in secondary data analysis.

Accepted Answer

A)   sampling
B)   operationalizing
C)   increasing reliability
D)   data collection

Question 11

What do you have to do to protect your research participants if you are using secondary data?

Accepted Answer

The answer of What do you have to do to...

Question 12

Why is secondary data analysis good for testing theories of middle range?

Accepted Answer

A)   It offers good alternatives if the hypotheses are disproven.
B)   It allows you to work inductively and build theory.
C)   It can be used to understand people's experiences in a deep way.
D)   It usually uses large samples that are generalizable.

Question 13

Secondary data are usually based on ______.

Accepted Answer

A)   content analysis
B)   interviews
C)   existing statistics
D)   survey research

Question 14

You are interested in doing a study regarding views on immigration. Specifically, you would like to know how a person's income level affects the likelihood that they support open immigration into the United States. Which of the following is a necessary criterion for choosing a data set?

Accepted Answer

A)   The sample is of people in the upper and upper-middle class.
B)   It contains variables including support for a range of different immigration laws.
C)   The variables race, social class, education, and age have already been collapsed for you.
D)   The data repository contains multiple surveys that each have different variables you can use.

Question 15

Based on your research question, describe a variable you would be looking for in choosing a secondary data set, and describe how it would ideally be operationalized.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Based on your research question, describe a...

Question 16

You are using a secondary data set about addiction. Your primary responsibility to protect the research participants is to ______.

Accepted Answer

A)   have them sign informed consent statements
B)   report only in the aggregate
C)   delete their names from the files
D)   find out their names and e-mail addresses to make sure the data originally collected were correct

Question 17

How do economic downturns affect rates of suicide? Which of the following is a problem with this research question?

Accepted Answer

A)   The question is too narrow.
B)   You are unlikely to find relevant variables in available data sets.
C)   It is more appropriate for existing statistics.
D)   It is a descriptive question.

Question 18

Where would you search data sets to use for this research?

Accepted Answer

The answer of Where would you search data sets to...

Question 19

If you wish to do applied research, you should ______.

Accepted Answer

A)   conduct your own survey
B)   find a data set that has most or all of your variables
C)   recode variables to make the data you choose work better for your research
D)   analyze the data using crosstabs rather than frequencies

Question 20

You can recode a variable to change it from the ______ to the ______ level of measurement.

Accepted Answer

A)   nominal; ratio
B)   ordinal; nominal
C)   interval; ordinal
D)   ratio; interval

Exam 5: Secondary Data Analysis

Raw data are data that ______.

Why will you likely have to recode in secondary data analysis?

Based on your research question, describe a variable you would be looking for in choosing a secondary data set, and describe how it would ideally be operationalized.

Secondary data analysis is considered research because ______.

Where would you search data sets to use for this research?

Research questions for secondary data analysis are most likely to be ______.

You would like to study how demographic characteristics affect likelihood of owning a home. You find data sets at both nationwide data and community data. You should ______.

Write a research question appropriate for secondary data analysis related to job satisfaction.

Which of the following is an example of collapsing a variable?

Recoding a variable is part of the process of ______ in secondary data analysis.

What do you have to do to protect your research participants if you are using secondary data?

Why is secondary data analysis good for testing theories of middle range?

Secondary data are usually based on ______.

You are interested in doing a study regarding views on immigration. Specifically, you would like to know how a person's income level affects the likelihood that they support open immigration into the United States. Which of the following is a necessary criterion for choosing a data set?

Based on your research question, describe a variable you would be looking for in choosing a secondary data set, and describe how it would ideally be operationalized.

You are using a secondary data set about addiction. Your primary responsibility to protect the research participants is to ______.

How do economic downturns affect rates of suicide? Which of the following is a problem with this research question?

Where would you search data sets to use for this research?

If you wish to do applied research, you should ______.

You can recode a variable to change it from the to the level of measurement.