Chapter One: Introduction - Key Terms Flashcards
Adolescence
A period of life course between the time puberty begins and the time adult status is approached, when young people are in the process of preparing to take on the roles and responsibilities of adulthood in their culture.
Life-cycle service
A period in their late teens and 20s in which young people from the 16th to the 19th century engaged in domestic service farm service or apprenticeships in various trades and crafts.
Culture
The total pattern of a group’s distinctive way of life including customs, art, technologies, and beliefs.
The West
Cultural group of countries that includes the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Distinctive characteristics include stable democracies secularism, consumerism, and individualism.
Developed countries
Economic classification that includes the wealthy countries of the world, comprising about 18% of the total world population.
American majority culture
Cultural sector of American society, mostly white, that has the most economic and political power and sets most of the norms in standards
Society
A group of people who interact in the course of sharing a common geographical area. A single society may include a variety of cultures with different customs, religions, family traditions, and economic practises.
Traditional culture
Culture that adheres to long-established beliefs and practises. Usually not economically developed.
Developing countries
Economic classification that includes the less wealthy countries of the world, in the process of economic development, comprising about 82% of the world population.
Socioeconomic status (SES)
Classification of social class in economic status, including educational attainment and occupational status.
Young people
Term that includes adolescence as well as emerging adults, across a broad age range of 10 to 25.
Lamarckian
Reference to Lamarck’s ideas, popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that evolution takes place as a result of accumulated experience such that organisms pass on their characteristics from one generation to the next in the form of memories in acquired characteristics.
Recapitulation
Now-discredited theory that held that the development of each individual recapitulates the evolutionary development of the human species as a hole.
Storm and stress
Siri promoted by G. Stanley Hall asserting that adolescence is inevitably a time of mood disruptions, conflict with parents, and antisocial behaviour.
Survey
A questionnaire study that involves asking a large number of people questions about their opinions, beliefs, or behaviour.
Random sample
Sampling technique in which the people selected for participation in a study are chosen randomly, meaning that no one in the population has a better or worse chance of being selected than anyone else.
Stratified sampling
Sampling technique in which researchers select participants so that various categories of people are represented in proportions equal to their presence in the population
Menarche
A girls first menstrual period.
Emerging adulthood
Roughly ages 18 to 25 in industrialized countries during which young people become more independent from parents and explore various life possibilities before making enduring commitments.
Early adolescence
period of human development lasting from about age 10 to 14.
Late adolescence
Period of human development lasting from about age 15 to about age 18
Individualism
Cultural belief system that emphasizes the desirability of independence, self-sufficiency, and self expression.
Collectivism
A set of beliefs asserting that it is important for people to mute their individual desires to contribute to well-being and success of the group. Includes values of duty and obligations to others.
Interdependence
The web of commitments, attachments, and obligations that exist in some human groups.
Scientific method
A systematic way of finding the answers to questions or problems that include standards of sampling, procedure, and measures.
Hypothesis
Ideas, based on theory or previous research, that a researcher wishes to test in a scientific study.
Research design
The plan for when and how to collect the data for the study, for example the decision of whether to collect data at one time point or at more than one point.
Sample
The people include and then given study, who are intended to represent the population of interest.
Population
Entire group of people of interest in a study.
Generalizable
Characteristic of a sample that refers to the degree to which findings based on sample can be used to make accurate statements about the population of interest.
Representative
Characteristic of a sample that refers to the degree to which it accurately represents the population of interest.
Procedure
Standards for the way a study is conducted. Includes informed consent in certain rules for avoiding biases in the data collection.
Method
A scientific strategy for collecting data.
Peer review
When a scholarly article or book is evaluated by scholars peers for scientific credibility and importance.
Theory
A framework that presents a set of interconnected ideas in an original way and inspires further research.
Informed consent
Standard procedure in social scientific studies that entails informing potential participants of what their participation would involve, including any possible risks.
Consent form
Written statement provided by a researcher to potential participants in a study, informing them of who is conducting the study, the purposes of the study, and what their participation would involve, including potential risks.
Close question
Questionnaire format that entails choosing from specific responses provided for each question.
Open-ended question
Questionnaire format that involves writing in response to each question.
Interview
Research method that involves asking people questions in a conversational format, such that peoples answers are in their own words.
Qualitative
Data that is collected in non-numerical form, usually in the interviews or observations
Quantitative
Data that is collected in numerical form, usually on questionnaires.
Ethnographic research
Research in which scholar spend a considerable amount of time among the people they wish to study, usually living among them.
Ethnography
A book that represents an anthropologist observations of what life is like in a particular culture.
Case study
Research method that entails the detailed examination of the life of one or a small number of persons.
Experimental research method
Research method that entails assigning participants randomly to an experimental group that received a treatment and a control group that did not receive the treatment, then comparing the two groups in a post test.
Experimental group
In experimental research, the group that receives the treatment.
Control group
In experimental research, the group that does not receive the treatment
Independent variable
The variable that is different for the experimental group than for the control group.
Dependent variable
The outcome of that is measured to evaluate the results of the experiment.
Intervention
Program intended to change the attitudes or behaviour of the participants.
Natural experiment
A situation that occurs naturally but that provides interesting scientific information to the perspective observer.
Monozygotic (MZ) twins
Twins with exactly the same genotype. Also known as identical twins.
Dizygotic (DZ) twins
Twins with about half their genotype in common, the same as further siblings. Also known as fraternal twins.
Reliability
Characteristic of a measure that refers to the extent to which results of the measure on one occasion or similar to results of the measure on a separate occasion.
Validity
The truthfulness of a measure, that is, the extent to which it measures what it claims to measure.
Cross-sectional research
A research method in which data is collected on a sample of people on a Single occasion than examined for potential relations between variables in the data, based on the hypothesis of the study.
Correlation
A statistical relationship between two variables, such that knowing one of the variables makes it possible to predict the other.
Correlation versus causation
A correlation is a predictable relationship between two variables, such that knowing one of the variables makes it possible to predict the other. However, just because two variables are correlated does not mean that one causes the other
Longitudinal study
A study in which data is collected from the participants on more than one occasion.
Patriarchal authority
Cultural believe in the absolute authority for the father over his wife and children.
Filial piety
Confucian belief, common in many Asian societies, that children are obligated to respect, obey, and revere their parents, especially the father.
Caste system
Hindu belief that people are born into a particular caste based on their moral and spiritual conduct in their past life. A persons caste then determines their status in Indian society.
Globalization
Increase in worldwide technological and economic integration, which is making different parts of the world increasingly connected and increasingly similar culturally.
Bicultural
Having an identity that includes aspects of two different cultures.
Resilience
Overcoming adverse environmental circumstances to achieve healthy development
