Just as recipes tell us the exact ingredients and steps that go into producing an entree or a dessert, the operational definition tells us the ingredients and steps required to successfully measure a concept. (Numerical prefixes enable us to "pre-code" response alternatives and thereby facilitate data entry.) In the scatterplot we use dots (aka data points) to simultaneously convey information about the two variables. The insight generated by focus groups makes them rather valuable tools for a variety of research purposes: market research, political analysis, and evaluation research. 1959. 6 One Thing Leads to Another: Causal Analysis Advertisers have known it for a long time (and freeinternet.com put it to good use in a wildly successful campaign): Babies make good ad copy. The researchers thought they had adequately addressed the participants' privacy concerns with promises of anonymity and confidentiality. Some would also argue that any kind of hidden or disguised observation raises ethical dilemmas since research subjects are denied the chance to give their informed consent to the research project. Recall the point made earlier that questionnaires must function as "stand-alone" tools - they must contain everything needed to get respondents to answer the questions posed. With the practice of mental notes, the field observer tries to mentally capture or "freeze" a moment or event. Norris, Floyd, and Amanda Hesser. At the minimum, researchers should judge their planned research activity in terms of its potential benefits, the amount of risk it poses to participants, whether potential benefits outweigh the risks and whether or not adequate safeguards have been adopted to minimize any risks. In order to maintain the ethical high ground, however, they should make their allegiances known to their audience. How is it different from authoritarian parenting? Having great respect for authority, they interpret authoritative behaviors as more favorable than passive behaviors, and prefer superiors who exhibit authoritarianism (Hofstede, 1980). (Participants were told to administer shocks to those who had failed at a learning task.) authoritarian leadership, learning goal orientation, power distance, employee performance, goal setting theory. Two of the premier authorities on field research, John and Lyn Lofland (1995), recommend that field researchers master two techniques that will make note-taking as unobtrusive yet as accurate as possible: the taking of mental notes and jotted notes. Click on the "Subject area" and then click the time link to find an array of interesting articles/sites: http://www.pscw.uva.nl/sociosite/. Accessibility Understanding what one has seen in the field requires the researcher to engage the data in this way. Exercises 1 Visit Gallup's Web page (http://www.gallup.com/) and find their latest featured report. These observations are then used to inductively arrive at theoretical propositions that are informed by the field observations. A Guide to Field Research. If you rely on forms of If there is one thing researchers have learned while surveying the nation's gastronomic habits, it is that, whether from modesty or sheer denial, Americans are prodigious liars about how much they really eat. A good interviewer will learn to respect silences. The sampling frame is an essential ingredient for probability sampling. Training should always involve some practice sessions. CAUSAL ANALYSIS 91 Expanding the Essentials A thorough discussion of causality and an extensive review of internal validity threats can also be found at Bill Trochim's web page. in order to keep the list of options to a manageable size. Therefore, the results are consistent with Hypothesis 3. For an interesting review on why some people resist science and are instead attracted to extra-scientific explanations of reality, see Erich Goode's Paranormal Beliefs (2000). image of mother talking to girl near bicycle by Dishant_S / istock. To illustrate how measurement entails attaching numbers to the values of a variable, consider the variable "yearly salary." Gaining a clear understanding of the primary research questions behind a study should help you correctly identify the corresponding unit of analysis. Gallup and other major survey groups are able to obtain accurate information about our national population by using sample sizes of between 1,000 and 1,500 (Newport et al. What's the best layout for the response alternatives? While small samples can adequately represent homogeneous populations (remember, a sample of one is all that's needed to perfectly represent a totally homogeneous population), diverse populations require larger samples. ), Readings in Deviant Behavior (2nd edition). Berkeley: University of California Press. The experiment sets the standard for assessing all causal analysis. The second one shows a positive relationship (Pearson r = 0.607) between educational levels for parents. Sampling with regard to the blood running through our veins is nonproblematic because the blood in our body illustrates a homogeneous population. Does regular mean that someone exercises daily or simply that they exercise several times a week? A more formal strategy might be to develop two forms of the final questionnaire with different question ordering adopted in each form. Suddenly the old man drew out his hand and threw a pistol to the ground. Newbury Park: Sage. Hypothesis 2: Learning goal orientation will mediate the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee performance. WHY R E S E A R C H METHODS? The X bar in the formula indicates that our best starting place for estimating a population value is the corresponding sample value. Standing in food checkout lines gives us just enough time to catch up on the latest celebrity scoop. For nominal level measures, the number of categories should be exhaustive and they should be mutually exclusive. Here certain small but important subgroups might be "oversampled" in order to ensure sufficient numbers of subjects for any planned statistical analysis.) The essay portion of an exam illustrates the open-ended style of questions. The first statement about children can be seen as making a negative assertion about children. We can elect to study smaller subsets of our research population - i.e., we can study samples. He stopped his car and rolled down the window to look at the elderly Negro man. Getting Organized Summarizing Descriptions VJi 104 106 109 116 118 120 123 126 130 134 141 141 143 143 146 147 151 154 155 155 157 159 161 162 164 165 167 169 169 172 174 177 177 179 179 viii CONTENTS Picture This SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) 13 Beyond Description: Inferential Statistics The Normal Curve Repeat After Me The Sampling Distribution Putting It Together Some Concrete Examples Bringing It Home References Web Resources Index 187 194 198 198 202 203 204 207 208 211 219 231 Figures and Tables Figures 3.1 3.2 3.3 6.la 6.1b 7.1 7.2 8.1 12.1 12.2 12.3a 12.3b 12.4 12.5 12.6 12.7 13.1 13.2 Measurement validity Internal validity External validity Spurious relationship Spurious relationship when C is "controlled" Fixed-sample design Repeated cross-sectional design Conventional sampling ratios Basic line graph Bar chart, marital status of class of students Histogram of methods grades from Table 12.1 Histogram of student ages Polygon of student ages Pictures of variation Scatterplot of a perfect (hypothetical) correlation Less than perfect correlations Area under the normal curve Area under the normal curve: set proportions 189 190 191 191 192 193 199 200 Ungrouped test scores Frequency distribution, grouped scores Gender composition of US Senate, 2003-5 180 180 182 37 38 41 81 81 95 96 109 188 188 Tables 12.1 12.2 12.3 Preface Those who teach research methods often face a common dilemma methods is frequently a required course and therefore filled with students who would rather be anywhere else. Consider the following doublenegative question that was used in a recent Roper survey of Americans' beliefs about the Holocaust: Does it seem possible or does it seem impossible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened? Given all the ways of knowing that are available to us, and given our growing ability to get exactly the information that we want, students of research methods may wonder why we need to learn the methodical and labor-intensive procedures of research methods? Rothrauff TC, Cooney TM, and An JS. (If the observed relationship between A and B maintains itself, we can eliminate the C variable as a rival explanation of the dependent variable.) 1992 Technology and Social Interaction: Notes on the Achievement of Authoritative Knowledge in Complex Settings. An undercount of population can have very serious ramifications, costing states seats in Congress and monies for social programs, schools, hospitals, roadways, etc. Only geographical locations have "area" or population density. Still, questionnaires are not foolproof. Reconsider the examples offered in the previous paragraph and you should immediately appreciate how difficult communication would be if we couldn't express ourselves via the mental shorthand of concepts. Is there any truth to the claim that cell phones cause brain cancer (Grandell 2002; Ranade 2002) or that the measles vaccine causes autism (Allen 2002; Community Pharmacy 2003)? Higher levels of involvement are called for when seeking answers to specific questions or when testing specific research hypotheses. Why People Believe Weird Things. The Lewis N. Cotlow Field Research Fund is a GW Anthropology Department fund, established in 1990 as a bequest by the explorer Lewis N. Cotlow to further field work and exploration .All With this simple step, we return the variance to the original units of our original data. Authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting practices: Development of a new measure for parents of preschool-age children. Since the special contribution of focus groups is attributed to the dynamics of the group, the moderator has a special burden to facilitate group interaction. In effect, then, field notes depend on our ability to "pay attention" - on our ability to watch, listen, smell, feel, and sense what's going on around us. But findings, no matter how they are generated, can also be ammunition in political conflicts. Such tables are usually part of appendices of statistics books.) Ideally, we would want a measure that takes every score into account when 184 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS calculating a summary description of variability. Once we have pretested our randomly assigned groups, we can then impose the experimental condition: the experimental group will receive or be exposed to the independent variable; the control group will not receive or be exposed to the independent variable. A concentrated effort is made to identify the subjective meanings people attribute to events. In 1959, a Senate subcommittee investigated routine practices by pharmaceutical companies in their testing of new drugs. Analysis occurs at all points of the field study. Why is it that some samples do a better job than others at representing their populations and minimizing sampling error? asu.edu/%7Epythagor/onlinetextbook.htm. "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?" 34, 46, 50, 52, 65 Odd: median = middle value = 50 When we are working with an even number of values, we calculate the median by taking an arithmetic average of the two middle values (i.e., we add the two middle values together and divide them by 2: the resulting number is the median). There are only two values that make up the gender variable: male and female. The control inherent in the experiment also enables the researcher to clearly document any association or correlation between the independent and dependent variables. If so, see what you can leam about the board's procedures; e.g., who sits on the board; what is the time frame for the review process; does the board exempt any categories of research, etc. How do experts decide if youre an authoritative parent, or practicing someother parenting style? 2. Such designs, however, can be quite complex and expensive. In painting a descriptive picture, this kind of research strives to be as accurate as possible. Think of the power of this tool! With this application, they establish a pathway for moving from samples to populations. (See Chapter 12 for full discussion of each.) In light of the importance of logging field notes, you might now be thinking that researchers must enter the field with recording equipment in hand. In Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, Final Report, http://tis.eh. The numbers in the frequency column of Table 12.2 tell us just how many scores fall within each range. The standard deviation is also like the mean in that it is sensitive to extreme scores. Previous studies of authoritarian leadership have primarily emphasized and highlighted its negative features (Chan et al., 2013; Chen X.P. This field is broadly taken to include all inquiries into health, disease, illness, and sickness in human individuals and populations that are undertaken from the holistic and cross-cultural perspective distinctive of anthropology as a discipline--that is, with an awareness of species' biological, cultural, linguistic, and historical uniformity and variation. The values of the salary variable can range from no salary at all (if one is unemployed) to a million dollars (or more) of yearly salary (if one is a CEO of a major corporation). The bootstrapping results further suggest that the indirect effect between authoritarian leadership and employee performance via learning goal orientation is significant (indirect effect = 0.05, SE = 0.03, 95% CI = [0.007, 0.131], excluding zero). Census data in turn is used to determine congressional, state, and local voting districts as well as to determine the yearly distribution of billions of federal funding to the states. In doubting that measurement is perfect, we are better prepared to catch errors. Seeing the world in the language of variables requires some practice - after all we are "wired" to be conceptual. Dimensions of national culture and effective leadership in patterns. "Modeling Durkheim on the Micro Level: A Study of Youth Suicidality." If all the members of a research population are identical to each other, then a sample of one would be sufficient to tell us about the entire population! Drug companies test new drugs not on all targeted patients, but rather on a much smaller group - a sample - of willing volunteers. 112 SAMPLING Box 8.1 US Supreme Court Justices-alphabetical by last name Henry Baldwin (Associate: 1830-1844) Salmon P. Chase (Chief: 1864-1873) Horace Gray (Associate: 1882-1902) Philip P. Harbour (Associate: 1836-1841) Robert C.Grier (Associate: 1846-1870) Hugo L. Black (Associate: 1937-1971) Samuel Chase (Associate: 1796-1811) Tom C. Clark (Associate: 1949-1967) Harry A. Blackmun (Associate: 1970-1994) John H. Clarke (Associate: 1916-1922) John Blair (Associate: 1790-1795) Nathan Clifford (Associate: 1858-1881) Samuel Blatchford (Associate: 1882-1893) Benjamin R. Curtis (Associate: 1851-1857) Joseph P. Bradley (Associate: 1870-1892) William Cushing (Associate: 1790-1810) Louis D. Brandeis (Associate: 1916-1939) Peter V. Daniel (Associate: 1842-1860) William J. Brennan, Jr (Associate: 1956-1990) David Davis (Associate: 1862-1877) David J. Now imagine we repeat our study in 2007. Devising good measures is not easy work. Each of these standards is elaborated below. Consider the following questions: Do you rent videos? 2002. In both instances, natural age differences precluded the researchers from adopting a decidedly participatory stance. Our earliest training teaches us how to move from the concrete (seeing a creature with four legs and a tail) to the abstract (invoking the word "dog" as a name or label for the four-legged, tail-wagging creature). The experimental design is strong on internal validity because it is able to eliminate many standing rival explanations of outcomes. Pictures, after all, are said to be worth a thousand words. Reconsider for a moment those movie trailers that precede the feature film. This insistence on repetition of studies and findings reveals a fundamentally conservative side to science. Handbook of Research Design and Social Measurement (6th edition). You might also think of the independent variable as a "predictor" variable. Consumer Reports can be seen as offering a crash course in measurement validity and reliability. While phones may make it easier for us to "reach out and touch" someone, contact is not as easy as it seems. (2004). More than $90,000. As indicated in the previous section on field notes, ideas for analysis should be recorded for each observation period. Be sure to pay attention to all the pertinent categories that go into good field notes (description of physical layout, descriptions of major players and their interactions, etc.). A. Testing, Testing, Testing for Reliability Both the scale and tire pressure gauge examples illustrate the simplest test we have for determining the reliability of a measure: the test-retest strategy. 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