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| A systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular aspect of life: juvenile delinquency, for example, or perhaps social stratification or political revolution |
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| Logical sets of attributes. The variable gender is made up of the attributes male and female |
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| Characteristics of people or things |
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| A variable with values that are not problematic in an analysis but are taken as simply give. An independent variable is presumed to cause or determine a dependent variable |
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| A variable assumed to depend on or be caused by another (independent variable). If you find that income is partly a function of amount of formal education, income is being treated as a dependent variable |
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| An approach to explanation in which we seek to exhaust the idiosyncratic causes of a particular condition or event. |
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An approach to explanation in which we seek to identify a few causal factors that generally impact a class of conditions, or events
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The logical model in which general principles are developed from specific observations.
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| The logical model in which specific expectations of hypotheses are developed on the basis of general principles. |
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| A model or frame of reference through which to observe and understand |
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| A theory aimed at understanding the "big picture" of institutions, whole societies, and the interactions among societies |
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| A theory aimed at understanding social life at the intimate level of individuals and their interactions |
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| Philosophical system that is grounded on the rational proof/disproof of scientific assertions; assumes a knowable, objective reality |
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| A paradigm that views human behavior as attempts to dominate others or avoid being dominated by others |
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| A paradigm that views human behavior as the creation of meaning through social interactions, with those meaning conditioning subsequent interactions |
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| A paradigm that divides social phenomena into parts, each of which serves a function for the operation of the whole |
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| Paradigms that (1) view and understand society through the experiences of women and/or (2) examine the generally deprived status of women in society |
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| A paradigm grounded in race awareness and an intention to achieve racial justice |
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| The thesis that majority group members will only support the interests of minorities when those actions also support the interests of the majority group |
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| A paradigm that questions the assumptions of positivism and theories describing an "objective' reality |
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| A paradigm that holds things are real insofar as they produce effects |
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| A specified testable expectations about empirical reality that follows from a more general proposition; more generally, an expectation about the nature of things derived from a theor. It is a statement of something that ought to be observed in the real world if the theory is correct |
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| One step beyond conceptualization. The process of developing operational definitions, or specifying the exact operations involved in measuring a variable |
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| The concrete and specificdefinition of something in terms of the operations by which observations are to be catergorized |
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| A norm in which subjects base their voluntary participation in research projects on a full understanding of the possible risks involved |
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| Achieved in a research project when neither the researchers nor the readers of the findings can identify a given response with a given respondent |
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| A research project guarantees confidentiality when the researcher can identify a given person's responses but promises not to do so publicly |
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| Interview subjects to learn about their experience of participation in the project. Especially important if there's a possibility that they have been damaged by that participation |
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| An empirical relationship between two variables such that (1) changes in one are associated with changes in the other or (2) particular attributes of one variable are associated with particular attributes of the other. Correlation in and of itself does not constitute a causal relationship between the two variables, but it is one criterion of causality |
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| A coincidental statistical correlation between two variables, shown to be caused by some third variable |
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| The what or whom being studied. In social science research, the most typical units of analysis are individual people |
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| Any product of social beings or their behavior. Can be a unit of analysis |
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| Erroneously drawing conclusions about individuals solely from the observation of groups |
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| A fault of some researchers; a strict limitation (reduction) of the kinds of concepts to be considered relevant to the phenomenon under study |
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| A paradigm based in the view that social behavior can be explained solely in terms of genetic characteristics and behavior |
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| A study based on observations representing a single point in time |
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| A study design involving the collection of data at different points in time |
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| A type of longitudinal study in which a given characteristic of some population is monitored over time |
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| A study in which some specific subpopulation, is studied over time |
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| A type of longitudinal study, in which data is collected from the same set of people at several points in time |
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| The mental process whereby fuzzy and imprecise notions (concepts) are made more specific and precise |
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| An observation that we choose to consider as a reflection of a variable we wish to study |
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| An observation that we choose to consider as a reflection of a variable we wish to study |
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| A specifiable aspect of a concept |
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| A variable whose attributes have only the characteristics of exhaustiveness and mutual exclusiveness, aka a level of measurement describing a variable that has attributes that are merely different, as distinguished from ordinal, interval, or ratio measures |
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| A level of measurement describing a variable with attributes we can rank-order along some dimension |
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| A level of measurement describing a variable whose attributes are rank-ordered and have equal distance between adjacent attributes |
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| A level or measurement describing a variable with attributes that have all the qualities of nominal, ordinal, and interval measure and in addition are based on "true zero" point |
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| That quality of measurement method that suggests that the same data would have been collected each time in repeated observations of the same phenomenon |
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| A term describing a measure that accurately reflects the concept it is intended to measure |
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| That quality of an indicator that makes it seems a reasonable measure of some variable. |
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| Criterion-Related Validity |
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| The degree to which a measure relates to some external criterion |
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| The degree to which a measure relates to other variables as expected within a system of theoretical relationships |
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| The degree to which a measure covers the range of meaning included with a concept |
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| A type of composite measure that summarizes and rank-orders several specific observations and represents some more general dimensions |
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| A type of composite measure composed of several items that have a logical or empirical structure among them |
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| An assessment of whether each of the items included in a composite measure makes an independent contribution or merely duplicates the contributes of other items in the measure |
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| The process of testing the validity of a measure, such as an index or scale, by examining its relationship to other, presumed indicators of the same variable |
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| Bogardus social distance scale |
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| A measurement technique for determining the willingness of people to participate in social relations - of varying degrees of closeness - with other kids of people. It is an especially efficient technique in that one can summarize several discrete answers without losing any of the original details of the data |
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| A type of composite measure, constructed in accord with the weights assigned by "judges" to various indicators of some variables |
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| Items that use response categories as strongly disagree etc |
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| A questionnaire format in which the respondent is asked to rate something in terms of two, opposite adjectives |
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| A type of composite measure used to summarize several discrete observations and to represent some more-general variables |
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| The classification of observations in terms of their attributes on two or more variables. |
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| Any technique in which samples are selected in some way not suggested by probability theory |
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| Purposive (judgmental) sampling |
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| A type of nonprobability sampling in which the units to be observed are selected on the basis of the researchers judgement about which ones will be the most useful or representative |
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| A nonprobability sampling method, often employed in field research, whereby each person interviewed may be asked to suggest additional people for interviewing |
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| A type of nonprobability sampling in which unites are selected into a sample on the basis of prespecified characteristics, so that the total sample will have the same distribution of characteristics assumed to exist in the population being studied |
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| Someone who is well versed in the social phenomenon that you wish to study and who is willing to tell you what he or she knows about it |
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| The general term for samples selected in accord with probability theory, typically involving some random-selection mechansim |
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| The quality of a sample of having the same distribution of characteristics as the population from which it was selected. Enhanced by probability sampling and provides from generalizability and the use of inferential statistics |
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| EPSEM (equal probability of selection method) |
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| A sample design in which each member of a population has the same chance of being selected into the sample |
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| That unit of which a population is composed and which is selected in a sample |
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| The theoretically specified aggregation of the elements in a study |
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| That aggregation of elements from which a sample is actually selected |
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| A sampling method in which each element has an equal chance of selection independent of any other event in the selection process |
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| That element or set of elements considered for selection in some stage of sampling |
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| The summary description of a given variable in a population |
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| The summary description of a variable in a sample, used to estimate a population parameter |
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| The degree of error to be expected by virtue of studying a sample instead of everyone |
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| The estimated probability that a population parameter lies within a given confidence interval |
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| The range of values within which a population parameter is estimated to lie |
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| That lies or quasi list of units composing a population from which a sample is selected. If the sample is to be representative of the population, it is essential that the sampling frame include all (or nearly all) members of the population |
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| A type of probability sampling in which the units composing a population are assigned numbers. A set of random numbers is then generated, and the unites having those numbers are included in the sample |
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| A type of probability sampling in which every kth unit in a list is selected for inclusion in the sample |
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| The standard distance between elements selected from a population for a sample |
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| The proportion of elements in the population that are selected to be in a sample |
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| The grouping of the units composing a population into homogeneous groups (or strata) before sampling. This procedure, which may be used in conjunction with simple random, systematic, or cluster sampling, improves the representativeness of a sample, at least in terms of the stratification variables |
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| A multistage sampling in which natural groups (clusters) are sampled initially, with the members of each selected group being sub-sampled afterward |
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| PPS (probability proportionate to size) |
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| This refers to a type of multistage cluster sample in which clusters are selected, not with equal probabilities but with probabilities proportionate to their sizes - as measured by the number of units to be subsampled |
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| Assigning different weights to cases that were selected into a sample with different probabilities of selection. In the simplest scenario, each case is given a weight equal to inverse of its probability of selection. When all cases have the same chance of selection, no weighting is necessary |
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