COMM 211-First Exam

• 1. mutually exclusive
• 2. exhaustive

• 1. You can calculate proportions and ratios.
• 2. You can use more powerful statistics.
• 3. You can change it to any other level of measurement if you want/need; you can’t move up to ratio if you measured at a lower level.

• 1. always choose the highest level of measurement
• 2. Higher level of measurement translates to more precision, but not necessarily more accuracy.

• Ex. Do you root for the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions?
• Choose one or other. Separate.

• 1. Avoid negative items
• 2. Respondent Must be Competent to answer
• 3. respondent must be willing to answer
• 4. avoid biased items and terms
• 5. short items are best

Error would be random error or systematic error

Reliability.

Validity.

• 1. Inter-item reliability test
• 2. Test-retest
• 3. Split half method

• 1. item analysis: assessment of whether each of items included makes its own contribution to the measure
• *throw out items w low correlations
• 2. External validity: include in your survey things that are not part of the index but should correlate with the index.

because answers to different questions are treated as if they indicate different intensities of the variable under study.

• 1. nomothetic
• 2. quantitative
• 3. pure
• 4. deductive

• 1. Scientific
• 2. Administration
• 3. Ethical
• 4. Political

• 1 Voluntary
• 2. No harm
• 3. Anominity and Confedentiality
• 4. Deception-debriefing
• 5. analysis and reporting

Necessary cause: represents a condition that must be present for the effect to follow.

Sufficient cause: represents a condition that, if it present, guarantees the effect in question.

• 1. individuals
• 2. groups
• 3. artifacts
• 4. social interactions
• 5. geographic
• 6. organizations

• Reductionism: A fault of some researchers: a strict limitation (reduction) of the kinds of concepts to be considered relevant to the phenomenon under study.
• Ecological fallacy: The ecological fallacy occurs when you make conclusions about individuals based only on analyses of group data.

trend study tracks a variable across time by looking at surveys from different times.

• a. examines the exact same set of people over time.
• b. panel attrition

cohort study examines specific sub-populations as they change over time

Each of the three groups shown here is a different sample of the same sub-population, being surveyed at three different times.

• 1. Scientists are writing to each other, often using
• specialized language.
• 2. Scientists are not given very much space in which to
• express themselves.

Some of the respondents studied in the first wave of the survey may not participate in later waves.

• to satisfy the researcher's curiosity
• to test the feasibility of undertaking a more extensive study
• to develop the methods to be employed in any sebsequent study.

• Exploration
• Description
• Explanation