Exam 1 Review Sheet THINGS TO KNOW Chapter 1 How do people tend to evaluate research i e personal values exceptions etc Based on personal values If it confirms common sense it is a waste of time If it refutes common sense it is wrong People give weight to personal experiences What are some of the basic sources of knowledge Authorities people with special expertise Tradition widely held knowledge things that everyone knows The Media News tv newspaper movies etc Be familiar with experiential and agreement reality Experiential Reality Things we know from direct experience riding a bike Agreement Reality Things we have been told are real and everyone agrees earth rotates around the sun Be familiar with why we can t even trust ourselves to make unscientific observations Inaccurate selective observations inaccurate failing to observe things right in front of us Can be reduced by having specific plan of what to observe Selective only paying attention to observations that we think are important or relate to the data All observations should be recorded Overgeneralization Assuming a small sample is representative of the entire population i e reaching into a skittles bag three times and pulling out three red skittles and then assuming all skittles in bag are red Illogical reasoning incorrect reasoning i e tossing a coin 5 times that lands heads up and then assuming there is a greater chance of it landing on tails the next time because of the heads run There is a 50 50 chance every time Can be reduced by using systems of logic consciously and explicitly Ideology and politics Letting one s personal beliefs and ideologies interfere with objective research and conclusions Be familiar with the term probabilistic outcomes or relationships The presence of x means y is more likely to occur y does not have to occur every time x does however but there is a correlation 1 What is theory An attempt to develop plausible explanations of reality through organizing classifying explanation and prediction Theory helps us interpret facts Theory is a reasonable and informed guess about why things happen Theory needs to be formally testable Chapter 2 What is an ethical dilemma in scientific inquiry Balancing potential benefits against possibility of harm Possible actions that interfere with moral values of one s self or the field in general What does voluntary participation mean Why is this important Participation is up to the free will of the subjects It threatens generalizability because the type of people who willingly participate may not be representative of the entire population scientists wish to study Be familiar with anonymity and confidentiality in scientific inquiry Anonymity when researcher cannot identify a given piece of information with a given person Confidentiality a researcher can link information with a subject but promises not to do so publicly What were the problems with the Tearoom study Researcher did not reveal true identity pretended to be someone else Observed men without their consent Used license plate numbers to track down their identity What were the problems with the Stanford Prison Study Participants were not fully informed of the following procedures Guards were given authority to make up rules and procedure as the study progressed which they did with increasingly authoritarian actions Chapter 3 What is a research design What things influence research designs Why is the research design important 2 Plan or blueprint for the study Research designs are influenced by free will decide not to hang out with delinquent peers decide to do well in school and deterministic constraints parental supervision childhood experience quality of education etc The research design is important because it guides the study s purpose and will maintain the scope and direction of the research throughout the study What is a Probabilistic Causal Model Certain factors make crime more or less likely to occur in certain groups of people i e causes affect the probability of effects occurring Be able to distinguish between idiographic and nomothetic Idiographic lists the many perhaps unique considerations behind an action more time consuming Nomothetic lists the most important and fewest considerations that best explain an action less time consuming What are the criteria for causality in the scientific inquiry Empirical relationship between variables correlation Temporal order cause comes before effect No alternative explanations no other variables affecting initial relationship What are units of analysis what or who is studied Individuals Groups Organizations Social Artifacts stories in newspapers photographs crime reports Be able to distinguish between cross sectional and longitudinal studies Cross sectional observing a single point in time least costly and time consuming Longitudinal observations over an extended period of time What are the different kinds of longitudinal studies Trend those that study changes within some general population over time UCR Cohort examine more specific populations as they change over time Panel similar to trend or cohort but the same set of people is interviewed on two or more occasions NCVS 3 Chapter 4 Be able to define the following terms conceptualization Conceptual definition Operational definition Measurements in the real world Conceptualization specifying precisely what we mean when we use certain terms Conceptual Definition Working definition specifically defined to a term for providing focus to our observations Operational Definition Spells out how the observation will be measured Measurements in the Real World Final step after all these definitions have been identified Be familiar the levels of measurement nominal ordinal interval ratio Nominal offer names or labels for characteristics race gender etc Ordinal Attributes can be logically rank ordered education occupational status etc Interval Meaningful distance between attributes IQ temperature etc Ratio has a true zero point age number of priors sentence length etc 4
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