RESEARCH FINAL Flashcards
When conducting an online survey, you should:
Present the password and link to the survey website early in the e-mail message.
Which of the following is (are) an advantage of the community forum approach to needs assessment?
feasibility
Professionals who are conducting survey interviews in very poor neighborhoods should:
Dress down so as to appear as if they live in that neighborhood.
Read questionnaire items verbatim.
Probe into unclear responses to see if respondents meant what the interviewers think they meant.
Correct
Do all of these.
A major advantage of the key informants and community forum approaches to needs assessment is the representativeness of the opinions expressed.
False
The primary function of the probe is to
get the respondent to answer a question more fully.
When asking questionnaire items, the interviewer should
ask every question even if the respondent has apparently answered it already.
The best time to send an e-mail message inviting people to respond to an online survey is late at night.
False
In general, strengths of survey research include
making large samples feasible.
Which of the following is NOT an advantage of the key informants approach to needs assessment?
representativeness of sample.
Survey research methods and qualitative research methods are incompatible and should never be combined.
False
By definition, the self-administered questionnaire is synonymous with the mail survey.
False
Which of the following is NOT true about follow-up mailings in mailed surveys in which the respondents are not identified on the questionnaire?
It is impossible to re-mail only to nonrespondents.
The online survey website tool should enable respondents to take a break and then reenter the survey if they need to.
True
The interviewer should be a neutral medium through which questions and answers are transmitted.
True
Although online surveys can obtain large samples inexpensively, the respondents may NOT be representative of the rest of the population.
True
A demonstrated lack of response bias is more important than a high response rate.
True
Because the rates under treatment approach to needs assessment looks only at those currently utilizing services, it is vulnerable to underestimating the true extent of need.
True
For any survey to have any value, the response rate must be at least 50 percent.
False
The spread of telephone answering machines has improved the quality of data collected by telephone surveys.
False
Which of the following is (are) an advantage of the social indicators approach to needs assessment?
unobtrusiveness and inexpensiveness
Probes are used more frequently in open-ended questions than in closed-ended ones.
True
When follow-ups are planned with mail surveys,
response rates typically increase.
A type of sampling which new cases are selected that seem to be similar to those that generated previously detected concepts and hypotheses but once the researcher perceives no new insights are being generated from observing similar cases, a different type of case is selected and the same process is repeated until the observation of different types of cases seems to be generating no new insights is called what?
Theoretical Sampling
Quantitative studies and qualitative studies are equally likely to employ probability sampling procedures.
False
The terms population and sampling frame are synonymous.
False
Which of the following statements is true about availability sampling in quantitative studies?
It is very risky but can yield useful results in some instances.
Using probability sampling, each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected for the sample.
True
Which of the following statements is/are true about qualitative sampling methods?
They might involve purposively selecting deviant cases.
If a qualitative researcher wanted to learn a community organization’s pattern of recruitment over time, the researcher might begin by interviewing a fairly recent recruit and asking who introduced that person to the organization. Then the researcher might interview the person named and ask who introduced that person to the community organization. This would be an example of
snowball sampling.
Probability sampling ensures that there will be no sampling error whatsoever.
False
Selecting a sample that the researcher believes will yield the most comprehensive understanding of a subject based on an intuitive “feel” for the subject is employing quota sampling.
False
To obtain samples of the same size from strata of varying sizes, it would be necessary to use
disproportionate stratified sampling.
Probability samples are advantageous to the researcher because
the method by which they are selected limits conscious and unconscious sampling bias, and the accuracy or representativeness of the sample can be estimated.
Quantitative studies should never use availability sampling because it is too risky to ever yield useful results.
False
You want to draw a representative sample of social workers employed in domestic violence programs. You have a list of all such programs, but not of their staff members. Your survey will involve face-to-face interviews, and your travel budget is limited to visiting 10 cities. What kind of sampling design would you use?
multistage cluster sampling.
The unit about which information is collected and which provides the basis of analysis is called the
element
A sampling interval of 5 was used to select a sample from a population of 1,000. How many elements are to be in the sample?
200.
You are doing research on hospital personnelâ “orderlies, technicians, nurses, and doctors. You want to be sure you draw a sample that has cases in each of the personnel categories. You want to use probability sampling. An appropriate strategy would be
stratified sampling.
In qualitative inquiry, purposive sampling can be used to select deviant cases as well as representative cases.
True
Which of the following is a disadvantage of community forum approach to a needs assessment?
Lack of representativeness
Please describe the strengths and weaknesses of survey research. (5 to 10 sentences)
Decreases the number of dont knows and no answers, can provide a guard against confusing questionaires, observe and ask questions.
Costly, time consuming, presence could sway answers.
Quasi-experiments using nonequivalent comparison groups without random assignment can be credible, assuming that the comparability of the experimental and comparison groups is plausible-especially if the researcher provides substantial evidence of that comparability.
True
The design diagrammed in question 8
Correct none of these.
Pre-experimental designs
are the weakest experimental designs.
Assume that you have developed a study technique that you believe will result in students scoring higher on research methods exams. You test your study technique with the design diagrammed below.
R = random assignment
0 = observation
X = stimulus
R 01 X 02
R 03 04
Using the diagrammed design, what predictions will you make?
02 should be greater than 01 and 04
The classic experiment with random assignment of participants controls for:
none of these
Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of a cross-sectional study?
It concentrates on the changes that take place within a specific sample over a period of time.
The one-group pretest-posttest design controls for passage of time.
False
Suppose a new social casework program is offered to students with high levels of truancy. If those students placed in the program by their families have significantly less truancy after participating than the students who did not participate in the program, then we can conclude that
a selection bias might explain away the difference.
Studies that assign subjects to intervention groups on the basis of their extreme scores are vulnerable to regression toward the mean.
True
The Solomon four-group design
combines the classical experimental design with the posttest-only control group design.
The classic experiment with random assignment of participants controls for measurement bias.
False
The problem of an interaction between the testing and the experimental stimulus is handled by
the Solomon four-group design.
Random assignment to experimental and control groups controls for research reactivity.
False
Quasi-experimental designs are often used instead of experimental designs because
agency constraints often make experiments infeasible.
For a causal relationship to exist there must be evidence
of a relationship between variables.
that one variable precedes the other in time.
that a third variable did not cause the changes observed in the first two variables.
Correct all of these.
Time series designs with many measurement points control for maturation.
True
The problem of external validity refers to the generalizability of results.
True
A school social worker administered a self-esteem test to a group of 9th graders in September. During the school year the students received intensive social work intervention designed to improve their self-esteem. In May the self-esteem test was given again and the self-esteem scores improved. A major problem in this research is that the researcher failed to control for
history. maturation. testing. selection biases. Correct all of these.
If we can establish that variable X comes before variable Q in time, then we can say
variable Q is not a cause of variable X.
Case-control designs have more controls for threats to validity than do most other designs for evaluating programs or practice.
False
Which of the following is LEAST suited to providing clear evidence about a causal relationship between the independent and dependent variables?
one-shot case study.
When selecting a comparison group in a quasi-experimental design, one should
select a group as similar as possible to the experimental gro
Attrition effects are automatically controlled when participants are assigned randomly to experimental and control groups.
False
Without using appropriate experimental and control groups, extraneous events in subjects’ lives can make history a threat to internal validity, even if those events are of no historical importance to people in general.
True
Time series designs with many measurement points control for statistical regression.
True
The effectiveness of randomization in experimentation is affected by the number of participants involved.
True
A friend of yours, a senior, took the Graduate Record Exam in September and scored in the 99th percentile. In February your friend took the same exam over again. This time your friend scored in the 84th percentile. As a research methodology student, you told your friend that his/her lowered score was probably due to
statistical regression.
Whenever two variables are correlated, we may assume that one is the cause of the other.
False
An instrumentation effect occurs when
the measurement instrument is changed from the pretest to the posttest.
Which of the following statements is true about case-control designs?
Retrospective data are collected about past differences that might explain differences in outcome.