Research Methods & Statistical Analysis Flashcards
What are the three approaches to research?
Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods
What is qualitative research?
Understanding the meaning of individuals and groups ascribed to human or social problems.
Which research method would include a flexible written report?
Qualitative
Which research method analysis involves building from particular data to general themes?
Qualitative
What is quantitative research?
Approach for testing objective theories by examining the relationships among variables.
Which research method would have numbered data and a well structured written report?
Quantitative
What is mixed methods research?
A collection of qualitative and quantitative data
Which research method assumes a more complete understanding of a research problem?
Mixed methods research
What research method focuses on the study of a single case?
Case Study Method
Which research method analyzes data from different settings/groups at the same point in time or vice versa to identify similarities and differences?
Comparative Analysis
Which research method studies the way versions of the world, society, events, and psyche are produced in the use of language and context?
Discourse Analysis
What research method involves harnessing any digital technology to undertake and promote social research?
e-Research
A multi-method qualitative approach that studies people in their “naturally occurring settings or fields” by means of methods to capture their social meanings and ordinary activities. Usually the researcher participating directly in that setting.
Ethnography
An example of a _______________ is participant observation, interview, discourse analysis of natural language and personal documents.
Ethnography
When a researcher goes to observe an everyday event in the environment where it occurs?
Field Research
An inductive form of qualitative research where data collection and analysis are conducted together.
Grounded Theory
An approach that develops the theory from the data collection, rather than applying the theory to the data.
Grounded Theory
A study of textual devices at work in the construction process or sequence within a text is what type of analysis?
Narrative Analysis
Where respondents can give a detailed account of themselves and tell their stories rather than answer a predetermined list of questions would by part of what type of analysis?
Narrative Analysis
What are the three important steps in the statistical process?
Collecting data, describing and summarizing the distribution of values in the data set, and interpreting the means of inferential statistics and statistical modeling.
Examples of a zoning classification, social security number, and sex are ____________?
Nominal Data
What kind of data is classified exclusively into groups or categories and lack an intrinsic order?
Nominal data
What kind of data is ordered through categories that imply a ranking?
Ordinal data
What kind of data has an ordered relationship where the difference between the scales has a meaningful interpretation?
Interval data
Which kind of data has an absolute and relative difference in meaning?
Ratio data
Which data is the gold standard of measurement?
Ratio Data
What kind of variable represents an internal or ratio measurement?
Quantitative
What kind of variable corresponds to a nominal or ordinal measurement?
Qualitative
What kind of variable can take on infinite number of values (positive or negative)?
Continuous variable
What kind of variable can only take on a finite number of distinct values?
Discrete variable
Household income, level of pollutant in a river is example of what type of variable?
Quantitative variables
Zoning classification is an example of what type of variable?
Qualitative
Number of accidents per month is an example of what kind of variable?
Discrete variable.
What is a subset of a population?
A sample
A ________________ is the totality of some entity
Population
What kind of statistics describes the character of the distribution of values in a population or in a sample?
Descriptive Statistics
What kind of statistics is the following statement “On average, AICP test takers in 2022 are 30 years old”?
Descriptive statistics
What kind of statistics uses the probability theory to determine characteristics of a population based on observations made on a sample from that population?
Inferential statistics
If you took a sample of 25 test takers and use their average age to say something about the mean age of all test takers, what type of statistics would you be using?
Inferential statistics
A ____________ groups observations into bins that represent what is commonly referred to as a bar chart.
histogram
A ___________ shows a smooth curve.
Density plot
_____________ is the overall shape of all observed data.
Distribution
What is an important characteristic of distribution?
The range of the data
What is the gold standard in many statistical analysis?
Bell curve (gaussian distribution)
What type of distribution is symmetrical?
Bell curve (gaussian distribution)
What kind of distribution is one where an equal number of observation are below and above the mean?
Symmetrical distribution
What kind of distribution is one where there are either more observations below the mean or more above the mean?
asymmetric distribution
A distribution would be skewed in which direction if the bulk of the values are above the mean?
The right
A distribution is skewed in which direction if small values such as zero affect the data.
the left
A ___________ is a typical or representative value for the distribution of observed values.
Central tendency
What are some ways to measure central tendency?
mean, median, and mode
The _______ is the average of distribution.
The mean
The ________ is the middle value of ranked distribution.
median
The ______ is the most frequent number in a distribution set.
Mode
Which of the following would be appropriate for nominal data?
A. mean
B. median
C. mode
mode
Which of the following would be appropriate for interval and ratio scaled data but not for ordinal or nominal data?
A. mean
B. median
C. mode
mean
Which of the following would be appropriate for ordinal data but can be applied to interval and a ratio scale data after it has been converted to a ranked value?
Median
Which is the preferred measurement of central tendency?
A. mean
B. median
C. mode
The median
What are the two most commonly used measurements to assess dispersion?
variance and standard deviation
The ___________ is the square root of the variance?
Standard deviation
The _________ is the average squared deviation from the mean.
variance
Solve the squared standard deviation for (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). What is the variance in this data set, and what is the standard deviation?
A) Find the mean of the data set = 3
B) Use the mean to subtract each number in the data set; 1 - 3 = -2, 2 - 3 = -1, 3 - 3 = 0, 4 - 3 = 1, and 5 - 3 = 2.
Square root the sums (-2)^2, (-1)^2, (0)^2, (1)^2,(2)^2 = 4, 1, 0, 1, 4
Add the sums = 4+1+0+1+4 = 10
The squared deviation of this data set is 10.
The variance is the squared deviation divided by the numbers in the data set; 10/5 = 2
The standard deviation is the square root of the variance = 1.41 (rounded)
When the mean can only be estimated, we must subtract 1 from the number of observations and divided by n-1. What is this method called?
The degree of freedom correction.
The _________________ measures the relative dispersion from the mean by taking the standard deviation and dividing by the mean.
coefficient of variation
The variance, standard deviation, and coefficient of variation are appropriate for what kind of variables?
interval and ratio scaled variables
A ___________ measures exactly how many standard deviations above or below the mean a data point is.
Z-Score
The _____________ is the difference in value between 75th percentile and the 25th percentile.
Interquartile Range (IQR)
What graph is the best way to visualize interquartile data?
Box plot (box & whisker plot)
The process by which we draw conclusions about the characteristics of a distribution from a sample of data.
Statistical inference
The mean wage between male and female workers in the same occupation. We may suspect wage inequality. One population is the male workers, the other the female workers. We take a sample with an equal number of each category and compute the average wage. What would be the null hypothesis, one sided hypothesis, and the two sided hypothesis?
The null hypothesis would be that the mean wages are equal.
A one-sided alternative hypothesis would be that the male wage is higher.
A two-sided alternative hypothesis would simply state that the wages are different, but say nothing about the direction of the difference.
A ___________ usually compares the means of two populations based their sample average.
t- test
___________ tests the equality of means between two groups.
Analysis of variance (ANOVA)
A medical experiment testing a medication between two groups where one has a placebo group would be an example of what kind of test?
ANOVA
A ____________ test is measure of fit
Chi Square
A _______________ measures the strength of linear relationships between two variables
correlation coefficient
Systematic and repeatable errors in a computer system that creates unfair outcomes, typically privileging one group of users over others is _____________?
Algorithmic bias
A digital representation of the built environment or system is a __________?
digital twin
