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Babbie Ch 4-6 Vocab
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Exploration | a purpose of research which is an attempt to develop and initial, rough understanding of some phenomenon |
| Description | a purpose of research which is the precise measurement and reporting of the characteristics of some population or phenomena under study. |
| Explanation | a purpose of research which is the discovery and reporting of relationships among different aspects of phenomenon under study. Tends to ask the question “why”? |
| Correlation | an empirical relationship between two variables such that (1) changes in one are associated with changes in another or (2) particular attributes of one variable are associated with particular attributes of the other. A criterion of causality. |
| Spurious Relationship | a coincidental statistical correlation between two variables, shown to be caused by some third variable |
| Necessary Cause | A condition that must be present for the effect to follow. |
| Sufficient Cause | a condition that, if present, guarantees the effect in question, but is not necessarily the only possible cause of a particular effect. |
| Units of Analysis | the what or whom is being studied. In social science, the most typical _____ are individual people. |
| Social Artifact | any product of social beings or their behavior. Can be a unit of analysis. |
| Ecological Fallacy | erroneously drawing conclusions about individuals solely from the observation of groups |
| Reductionism | a fault of some researchers: a strict limitation (reducing) of the kinds of concepts to be considered relevant to the phenomenon under study |
| Sociobiology | A paradigm based in the view that social behavior can be explained solely in terms of genetic characteristics and behavior |
| Cross-sectional Study | a study based on observations representing a single point in time |
| Longitudinal Study | a study design involving the collection of data at different points in time |
| Trend Study | a type of longitudinal study in which a given characteristic of some population is monitored over time. An example would be a series of Gallup Polls shwing elecr8 prefs 4 pol cands ovr the course f a campaign, even tho diff samples wer interviewed @ ea pt |
| Cohort Study | a study in which some specific subpopulation, or cohort, is studied over time, although data may be collected from different members in each set of observations. Eg, a study of the occ history of the class of 70, w/ questionnaires sent every 5 yrs |
| Panel Study | a type of longitudinal study, in which data are collected form the same set of people (the sample or panel) at several points in time |
| Measurement | Introduction • The interrelated processes of conceptualization, operationalization, and measurement allow researchers to move from a general idea about what they want to study to effective and well-defined measurements in the real world |
| Conception | a mental image, what one has seen or been told about something plus all the things that one has observed that seem to be examples of it; summarize collections of seemingly related observations and experiences |
| Conceptualization | the mental process where by fuzzy and imprecise notions (concepts) are made more specific and precise. So you want to study prejudice. What do you mean by “prejudice”? Are there different kinds of prejudice? What are they |
| Concept | the product of conceptualization, or the process of coming to an agreement about what terms mean; constructs derived by mutual agreement from mental images (conceptions) [e.g. of others, too]; family of conceptions |
| Direct Observables | one of the three classes of things that scientists measure, according to Abraham Kaplan; those things we can observe rather simply and directly, like the color of an apple or the check mark on a questionnaire. |
| Indirect Observables | one of the three classes of things that scientists measure, according to Abraham Kaplan; things that require relatively more subtle, complex, or indirect observation. |
| Constructs | one of the three classes of things that scientists measure, according to Abraham Kaplan; theoretical creations that are based on observations but that cannot be observed directly or indirectly. |
| Reification | regarding constructs as real |
| Indicator | An observation that we choose to consider as a reflection of a variable we wish to study. Thus, for example, attending religious services might be considered an ___ of religiosity. |
| Dimension | a specifiable aspect of a concept. “Religiosity,” for example, might be specified in terms of a belief ___, a ritual ___, a devotional ___, a knowledge ___, and so forth. |
| Interchangeability of Indicators | if several different indicators all represent, to some degree, the same concept, then all of them will behave the same ay the concept would behave if it were real and could be observed. |
| Real Definition | the “essential nature” or the “essential attributes” of some entity. Can be problematic because it mistakes a construct for a real entity |
| Specification | - the process through which concepts are made more specific. Depend on nominal and operational definitions in science. |
| Nominal Definition | one that is simply assigned to a term without any claim that the definition represents the “real” entity. |
| Operational Definition | specifies precisely how a concept will be measured--the operations we’ll perform. It is a nominal definition, but offers maximum clarify about what a concept means given in the context of a given study. |
| Nominal Measures | A ____ variable has attributes that are merely different, as distinguished from ordinal, interval, or ratio measures. Sex is an example of a ____. All a ___ can tell us about two people is if they are the same or different. |
| Ordinal Measure | A level of measuring describing a variable with attributes we can rank-order along some dimension. An example is socioeconomic status as composed of the attributes high, medium, low. |
| Interval Measure | A level of measurement describing a variable whose attributes are rank-ordered and have equal distances between adjacent attributes. The Fahrenheit temperature scale is an example of this, bc the distance btw 17 and 18 is the same as that btw 89 and 90. |
| Ratio Measure | A level of measurement describing a variable with attributes that have all the qualities of nominal, ordinal, and interval measures and in addition are based on a “true zero” point. Age is an example of a ___. |
| Precision | concerns the fineness of distinctions made between the attributes that compose a variable. |
| Accuracy | a better reflection of the real world |
| Reliability | that quality of measurement method that suggests that the same data would have been collected each time in repeated observations of the same phenomenon. In a srvy, we wuld xpt the Q “u attnd rlgs srvcs last wk?” wuld hv > ___ thn "hw mny Xs in ur life?" |
| Bias | always reliably reporting incorrectly |
| Test-Retest Method | making the same measurement more than once |
| Split-Half Method | measure of reliability where a test is split in two and the scores for each half of the test is compared with one another. |
| Validity | a term describing a measure that accurately reflects the concept it is intended to measure. Eg, IQ > __ # of hrs in lib. Agree to relative ___ on by face ___, criterion-related ___, construct ___, content ___, internal validation, and external validation. |
| Face Validity | that quality of an indicator that makes it seem a reasonable measure of some variable. That the frequency of attendance at religious services is some indication of a person’s religiosity seems to make sense without a lot of explanation. It has ___. |
| Criterion-Related Validity/Predictive Validity | The degree to which a measure relates to some external criterion. For example, the validity of College Board tests is shown in their ability to predict the college success of students |
| Construct Validity | the degree to which a measure relates to other variables as expected within a system of theoretical relationships. |
| Content Validity | the degree to which a measure covers the range of meanings included within a concept. |
| Index | a type of composite measure that summarizes and rank-orders several specific observations and represents some more-general dimension |
| Scale | a type of composite measure composed of several items that have a logical or empirical structure among them. Examples of ___ include Bogardus social distance, Guttman, Likert, and Thurston ___. |
| Unidimensionality | a composite measure should represent only one dimension of a concept. |
| Bivariate Relationship | a relationship between two variables |
| Multivariate Relationship | a relationship between more than two variables |
| Item Analysis | An assessment of whether each of the items included in a composite measure makes an independent contribution or merely duplicates the contribution of other items in the measure; a form of internal validation |
| External Validation | The process of testing the validity of a measure, such as an index or scale, by examining its relationship to other, presumed indicators of the same variable (which are not in the measure). |
| Bogardus Social Distance Scale | A measurement technique for determining the willingness of peope to participate in social relations—of varying degrees of closeness—with other kinds of people. |
| Thurstone Scale | A type of composite measure, constructed in accord with the weights assigned by “judges” to various indicators of some variables. |
| Likert Scale | A type of composite measure developed by Rensis Liekrt, 2 standardize response categories, & 2 determine the relative intensity of different items. Likert items are those using such response categories as strongly agree, agree... etc. |
| Semantic Differential | a question format that asks respondents to make ratings that lie between two extremes/opposite adjectives, such as “very positive” and “very negative” |
| Guttman Scale | a type of composite measure used to summarize several discrete observations and to represent some more-general variable. Probably most popular in social science today. |
| Coefficient of reproducibility | the percentage of correct predictions; the percentage or original responses that could be reproduced by knowing the scale scores used to summarize them. |
| Typology | the classification (typically nominal) of observations in terms of their attributes on two or more variables. The classification of newspapers are liberal-urban, liberal-rural, conservative-urban, or conservative-rural would be an example. |
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adis
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