Soc2206aFinal Exam Information

Date and Time:Friday June 3, 2016, 1-3 PM (tentative)

Place:DL130

Exam Time:2 hours

Format:80-90 multiple choice questions

Study Guide:The exam will cover all lecture, powerpoint, video and text material since the midterm. (Neuman Chapters 8-16 – omit Ch. 11) The concepts listed below are likely to be found on the final and the questions below will help you to study for the exam.

Note: There is a Final Review powerpoint on the lecture webpage at

A. Concepts to study (many of these will be on the exam!):

types of survey questions (contingency, matrix etc.) open vs. closed-ended questions
threatening and non-threatening questions
desirable vs. undesirable behaviours
social desirability and prestige bias
classical experimental design
field experiment
pre-test and post-test
experimental and control group
Solomon four-square design
blind and double-blind experiment
random assignment
matching
volunteer characteristics
threats to internal validity (i.e. maturation, mortality)
selection bias
placebo
focus group
content analysis
manifest and latent coding
erosion and accretion measures
attitude of strangeness
Galton’s problem / equivalence
coding (open, axial, and selective)
sociogram
successive approximation
elite studies
gatekeeper
guilty knowledge
Hawthorne effect
ethnomethodology
ethnography
phenomenology
normalizing research
analytic induction
grounded theory
groupthink
field notes, jotted notes, etc.
primary and secondary sources
running records, recollections
ecological fallacy
nomothetic and idiographic orientations

B. Questions to help you think about the material:

1.What are the decisions that need to be made before a researcher starts collecting and analyzing data in a mixed-method (qualitative and quantitative) research study? What is the difference between sequential and concurrent data analysis in mixed-method research? (Ch. 16)

2.Select a hypothetical topic. Describe how a complete participant and a complete observer might study that subject (i.e Gold's levels.) What are the problems associated with each type of observation? (Ch. 13 and PPT)

3.Describe qualitative interviewing, comparing it to interviewing in survey research. What are the three types of interviews and how do they differ? (Ch. 8 and 12)

4.What are two overall disadvantages of quantitative approaches to doing social research? What are two overall disadvantages of qualitative approaches to doing social research? (Ch. 16)

5.Think of three research questions for which survey research would be an appropriate technique of observation. Describe whether and why these three topics are better suited to an interview survey,an online, survey, a mailed questionnaire, or a telephone interview survey. (Ch. 8)

6.Describe a study for which the secondary analysis of existing statistics is the appropriate research method. What source would you use? What problems might you encounter, and how would you resolve them? (Ch. 10)

7.Describe how coding and memoing are used in qualitative analysis. (Ch. 15)

8.Explain what is meant by internal and external validity. What is the difference? (Ch. 8 and 9)

9.Describe the oral history method and explain when it would be used. (Ch. 14)

10. What is the Hawthorne effect? What is its significance to experimental research? (Ch. 9)