Chapter 10 Practice Quiz

. Which of the following would not be considered a source of existing data?

students' class notes from a research methods course

criminal court records of the county court

observations of male-female interactions in the campus cafeteria

graffiti in the bathrooms of the campus library

letters to the editor of the campus newspaper

. Social science data archives are based on data from __________ and __________.

social surveys; ethnographic reports and in-depth interviews

social surveys; experimental replications

official health statistics; the public use microdata sample

the census; other government agencies

. Which of the following sources of existing statistics was used in Kearney and Levine's study of the impact of MTV's 16 and Pregnant?

census data

sales data on condoms

Google Trends

NCES data on high school dropout rates

. (Box 10.1) Which of the following datasets is the best example of big data?

2010 Census of the U.S. population

individual census records for 1920, 1930, and 1940

self-reported political views for active users of Facebook

World Bank vital statistics on births and deaths

. Which of the following statements is true of content analysis?

It generates rich written descriptions of archival records.

It may be applied to both verbal and nonverbal materials.

Its most common units of analysis are individual people.

It seldom involves quantification.

. In a computerized content analysis of sex bias in letters of recommendation, what would be the most likely recording unit?

individual letters of recommendation

the sex of the letter writer

the sex of the person recommended

words or phrases within the letters

. In comparison with manual coding in content analysis, computer coding

is now more frequently used.

is generally limited to transcribed verbal materials.

requires at least two reliability checks.

requires more extensive coder training.

. What does it mean to say that Campbell and Schoenfeld selected cases on the dependent variable?

All the states in their analysis had undergone mass incarceration.

All the states in their analysis had essentially the same penal policies.

They examined changes in penal policy during the same time period.

They restricted their analysis to states with high crime rates.

. How are truth tables used in comparative historical research?

as a method of within-case analysis

to identify intervening variables linking historical events

to develop causal explanations

to test the accuracy or "truth" of historical accounts

. Compared with experimenters, users of existing data tend to give more attention to

formulating an hypothesis.

research design.

pretesting.

data evaluation and analysis.