1. What is the purpose of measures of central tendency?
a. to find the most typical value of a distribution of scores
b. to find the most surprising value of a distribution of scores
c. to find the most significant value of a distribution of scores
d. to find the most important valu...
CHAPTER 1 - Introduction
1. Which sentence describes the role of theory in the research process?
a. develops generalizations based on patterns
b. provides a specific, exact relationship among variables
c. attempts to explain the relationship between phenomena
d. measures social reality
ANSWER: c
2. According to the “wheel of science,” which of these factors generates a hypothesis?
a. observation b. statistics
c. empirical generalizations d. theory
ANSWER: d
3. On the “wheel of science,” at what point are statistics central to the research process?
a. only between the hypothesis stage and the observation stage
b. only between the observation stage and the empirical generalization stage
c. only between the empirical generalization stage and the theory stage
d. only between the theory stage and the hypothesis stage
ANSWER: b
4. A theory stipulates that economic recessions produce more crimes in a country. What is the dependent variable in this
explanation?
a. economic recessions b. countries
c. crime d. the observations
ANSWER: c
5. A hypothesis states that being a dog owner makes people empathetic toward animals. What is “dog ownership” in this
statement?
a. the independent variable b. the dependent variable
c. the secondary variable d. the hypothetical variable
ANSWER: a
6. A researcher conducts a survey of 90 men and women aged 65. The purpose of the survey is to determine attitudes
toward work and retirement. Why can “age” not represent a variable in the researcher’s analysis?
a. Age probably has little to do with attitudes about work and retirement.
b. Age does not differ from case to case (person to person).
c. Gender is actually the independent variable in this example, and attitudes are a dependent variable.
d. There are not enough cases to conduct an appropriate survey.
ANSWER: b
7. What is the general symbol used to represent a dependent variable in a theoretical explanation?
a. X b. Y
c. Z d. à
ANSWER: b
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CHAPTER 1 - Introduction
8. Which of these statements is the best example of a hypothesis?
a. Gender is associated with political views.
b. Sex hormones influence political views.
c. Women are more likely than men to favour government policies intended to help the homeless.
d. Men and women likely differ in their attitudes toward housing and homelessness policies.
ANSWER: d
9. Which of these statements illustrates the limitations of statistics in social scientific inquiry?
a. Statistical analysis cannot help generate empirical generalizations.
b. Theories can be developed only prior to statistical analysis.
c. Sophisticated statistical analyses cannot fix poorly conceived study designs.
d. Statistical analysis is useless if we want to summarize ordinal-level variables.
ANSWER: c
10. Which of these statements applies to statistics?
a. If sophisticated, they can make up for poor conceptualization.
b. The use of such analyses negates the need for theory.
c. Such procedures take place at all stages of the research process.
d. They make quantitative research possible.
ANSWER: d
11. “Among employees at a software company, having a post-graduate degree was associated with level of seniority.”
Which of the following is this statement an example of?
a. inductive statistics b. inferential statistics
c. bivariate descriptive statistics d. univariate descriptive statistics
ANSWER: c
12. A researcher produces a graph that summarizes the scores of a single variable. What type of statistical analysis is the
researcher conducting?
a. bivariate inferential statistics b. univariate inferential statistics
c. univariate descriptive statistics d. multivariate descriptive statistics
ANSWER: c
13. Why is data reduction an important part of descriptive statistics?
a. It helps us make generalizations about a population.
b. It allows us to develop a sample or subset of a larger population.
c. It tells us the strength of the relationship between two variables.
d. It can help us quickly make sense of many data points gained from a given population.
ANSWER: d
14. Which of the following is an example of data reduction?
a. a graph representing the musical preferences of 500 university students
b. a list of students’ grade levels from a 100-student university class
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CHAPTER 1 - Introduction
c. a sample of 50 residents drawn from a 250-resident neighbourhood
d. a decision to reduce the size of a study from a 100-person sample to a 25-person sample
ANSWER: a
15. What are measures of association used for?
a. They provide clues as to whether one variable causes another.
b. They allow us to predict with perfect accuracy how one variable causes another.
c. They tell us whether we can generalize from our sample to the larger population.
d. They tell us which variable should be the dependent variable in our theory.
ANSWER: a
16. Suppose a researcher wants to understand public attitudes about drug legalization in Canada, but it is not feasible for
her to interview every person living in the country. Which of the following should she do?
a. find and interview a large number of drug users
b. use discrete measurement techniques to find the ideal number of Canadians to interview
c. carefully employ bivariate descriptive statistics to show how drug users’ attitudes differ from those of non-
users
d. devise a representative sample from the population and use inferential statistics to make generalizations about
the Canadian public
ANSWER: d
17. Which of these factors is a discrete variable?
a. cars owned b. blood pressure
c. home square footage d. currency exchange rate
ANSWER: a
18. Which of these factors is a continuous variable?
a. number of children
b. time spent watching TV
c. number of meals you consumed yesterday
d. number of times you have changed residences within the past five years
ANSWER: b
19. Which of these factors is NOT a nominal-level variable?
a. religious denomination b. political affiliation
c. frequency of yoga or mediation practice d. sexual preference
ANSWER: c
20. What do interval-ratio and ordinal variables have in common?
a. Scores can be ranked from least to greatest.
b. They have the ability to precisely quantify the difference between two scores.
c. They cannot be used for descriptive statistics.
d. They do not use discrete forms of measurement.
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