Soc 2155 (Summer, 2006)



Soc 2155 (Summer, 2006)

Midterm exam study guide

In general: there will be 50-60 multiple choice questions, several short answer questions, and some SPSS output that you must interpret. Although I have listed the most important concepts, there may be things on the exam that are not represented here.

1. Introduction to Inquiry

• Ways of “knowing things” (upside/downside of each)

• What happens when direct experience clashes with “what we know”

• How is science different from other ways of knowing?

o The causal, probabilistic nature of science

o Common errors in observation and how science helps avoid them

• Philosophy vs. science (premodern, modern, postmodern)

• Doing science

o Normative or philosophical questions versus empirical questions

o A scientific understanding must…

o Variables (language of science) and attributes

▪ Independent vs. dependent variables

• Dialects in social science--Idiographic versus Nomothetic, Induction and Deduction, Qualitative and Quantitative, Pure versus Applied

• Guidelines for evaluating research (e.g., accuracy, authority…)

o Be able to apply to discussion of scholarly journals, books, internet sites

2. Paradigms, theory, and research

• Paradigms (what are they, why important)

o In social science

▪ Early positivism

▪ Conflict

▪ Symbolic interactionism

▪ Structural functionalism

• Can we study society in a “rational and objective manner?”

o Ash experiments, The Sherif “flashlight” study

3. Ethics and Politics

• Define ethics and differentiate from politics

o Milgram experiments, Laud Humphreys study, Tuskegee

o Pillars of the ethics code in social science (voluntary, no harm)

▪ Informed consent

▪ Anonymity and confidentiality

▪ Deception/debriefing

▪ Ethics for analysis and reporting

o Institutional review board (what are they, what do they do, does UMD have one…).

• Politics

o What is ideology?

▪ American political ideologies

o Terms/concepts in ideology

▪ Intersubjectivity

▪ Knowledge destruction

4. Research design

• Three purposes of research (e.g., define, example…)

• Criteria for establishing causation in social science (and how to demonstrate each)

o Common mistakes for interpreting causal relationships

o Necessary and sufficient

• Units of analysis (be able to find this critter in an example)

o Individual vs. group/aggregates

o Mistakes relating to unit of analysis (ecological fallacy/reductionism)

• Time in research

o Cross-sectional vs. longitudinal

▪ Advantages (downsides) of longitudinal research

▪ Types of longitudinal studies

o Ways to get around doing longitudinal research (and problems with these)

5. Conceptualization, Operationalization

• Concepts that social scientists study as “made up”

o But—can still measure (agreement)

• The process of conceptualization

• The danger of “reification”

• Kaplan’s 3 classes of things that scientists measure (observables)

• Indicators (define, example)

o Dimensions (example)

• Real, nominal, operational definitions

• Why definitions (operational) are more problematic for descriptive than for explanatory studies

• Operationalization (decision making)

o Range of variation

o Qualities of variables (mutually exclusive, exhaustive)

o Levels of measurement (nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio)

o Multiple indicators

• Reliability and validity (define, explain, examples)

o Tension between these two concepts

o How to check/demonstrate reliability and validity

6. Indexes and Scales

• Why use a composite measure?

• Similarity and differences between an index/scale

• Constructing a scale

o Items should be empirically related (but not measure exactly the same thing)

o Unidimensionality

o Variance

o Missing data (and solutions)

• Scaling

o Bogardus scale

• Be able to interpret SPSS output regarding an index

7. Sampling

• Why sample?

• Probability vs. non-probability samples

o Advantage and disadvantage of each

o Types of each

• Sampling terminology

o Element, population, sample, sampling frame

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download