Which of the following statements is/are true about historical/comparative analysis?
a. It is comparative in that it seeks to discover common patterns that recur in different
times and places.
b. Primary sources for raw data might include old letters, diaries, or lectures.
c. Flaws might exist in both primary as well as secondary sources.
d. Even official government records might be biased.
e. All of these.
Which of the following is NOT a limitation of secondary analysis?
a. Large chunks of data might be missing.
b. There might be no variation in a variable that you want to analyze.
c. Trends over time cannot be assessed.
d. The variable might have been defined in a way that does not match your definition of
that variable.
Evidence-base practice:
a. Is a list of empirically supported interventions that practitioners should employ
regardless of their practice judgment.
b. Is a process for making practice decisions based on integrating the best research
evidence with practice expertise and knowledge of client attributes.
c. Is a process for making practice decisions based solely on research evidence.
d. Assures practice effectiveness.
Our attempts to learn about the world we live in come from
a. direct experience.
b. tradition.
c. direct, personal inquiry.
d. authority.
e. All of these.
In social work studies testing hypotheses involving the variable “level of social
functioning” that variable is:
a. always the dependent variable.
b. always either the dependent or control variable.
c. always the independent variable.
d. an independent, dependent, or control variable, depending on what is being
conceptualized and postulated in any given study.
The NASW Code of Ethics stipulates that social workers should:
a. use research to guide their practice.
b. critically examine and keep current with emerging knowledge relevant to social
work.
c. base practice on empirically based knowledge.
d. All of these.
e. None of these.
Which of the following statements is true about quantitative and qualitative methods?
a. Qualitative research can sometimes pave the way for quantitative studies on the same
subject.
b. Quantitative research generally should come before qualitative studies on the same
subject.
c. Qualitative studies need to be followed by quantitative studies before the results can
be sufficient.
d. Quantitative studies need to be followed by qualitative studies before the results can
be sufficient.
An instrument is developed with the intent to measure whether the parenting skills of
parents referred for child abuse or neglect improve after participation in a parenting
education treatment program. The instrument is found to be valid when untreated
parents referred for child abuse or neglect score much worse on it than model parents
who are child therapists. Which of the following statements is/are true about the
instrument?
a. It appears to have known groups validity.
b. Because it is valid, it can be relied upon to detect whether small, subtle
improvements occur in the parenting skills of the parents who participate in the
program.
c. It appears to have predictive validity.
d. All of these.
e. None of these.
Most social scientists would not accept the conceptualization of IQ as foot size because
such a measurement would lack
a. precision.
b. reliability.
c. accuracy.
d. validity.
Critical thinkers will:
a. Be willing to question and alter their own beliefs based on new experiences.
b. Be willing to question what those in authority assert as fact.
c. Question unstated assumptions underlying accepted practice wisdom.
d. All of these.
Given the following age distribution, the range is
12, 15, 8, 17, 34, 43, 2, 16, 43, 3
a. 12, 3
b. 17
c. 2,17
d. 2,43
Recommendations to maximize compliance with the case assignment protocol in
experiments or quasi-experiments include
a. having agency staff implement the case assignment decisions.
b. NOT explaining to agency staff the purpose and nature of the case assignment
protocol.
c. pilot testing the randomization procedure in the agency.
d. assigning control of the case assignment protocol to multiple agency staff members.
Professor Perlman from question 4 found that textbook A contained the word “he” 80
times, whereas textbook B contained it 20 times. In addition, textbook A used the word
“chairman” 16 times, whereas textbook B used it only 4 times. Perlman was correct in
concluding that
a. textbook A was four times as sexist as textbook B.
b. textbook B was one-fourth as sexist as textbook A.
c. the words “he” and “chairman” appeared four times more in textbook A than in
textbook B.
d. all of these.
At what level of measurement is the variable ethnicity?
a. Nominal.
b. Ordinal.
c. Ratio.
d. Interval.
Asking a group of experts whether the items on a scale appear to measure what they
intend to measure is a way to assess the scale’s:
a. predictive validity.
b. concurrent validity.
c. construct validity.
d. content validity.
A frame of reference for interpreting the world is referred to as a
a. paradigm.
b. theory.
c. hypothesis.
d. law.
e. concept.
Which of the following statements is true about research findings on the effectiveness
of social work services?
a. They have often found the services to be ineffective.
b. No interventions have been identified as effective.
c. We can assume that if social workers are well trained, then they will be effective
d. Social work practice consists primarily of interventions that have been well tested.
Which of the following statements is true about the dilemma involving the right to
receive services versus the responsibility to evaluate service effectiveness?
a. This is not really a dilemma, since no conflict in values is involved.
b. All professionals agree that services should never be delayed, even if their effects
have not yet been verified.
c. No professionals question the ethics of providing untested services, as long as we
have good intentions.
d. None of these.
Suppose you obtained the following results in a multiple baseline design assessing
theimpact of family therapy on tantrums, chores, and truancy in treating one child and
his parents. Which interpretation(s) is(are) plausible?
a. History could have caused the change.
b. The intervention may have had generalizable effects.
c. History could have caused the change or the intervention may have been effective,
with generalizable effects.
d. none of these.
Which of the following can harm subjects?
a. having them face aspects of themselves that they do not normally consider.
b. asking them to reveal their unpopular attitudes.
c. asking them to identify their deviant behavior.
d. allowing them to easily identify themselves in the final report.
e. All of these.
An interview with someone with a limited vocabulary who therefore does not
understand the questions being asked is likely to produce
a. systematic error.
b. random error.
c. unreliable data.
d. both random error and unreliable data
When recruiting minority and oppressed populations in research studies, you should
a. use exactly the same informed consent procedures as with the majority population.
b. use the same types of advertisements or referral sources as with the majority
population.
c. obtain endorsement for your study from community leaders.
d. avoid the use of community members as research staff.
An advantage of qualitative research is that
a. it enables the researcher to draw conclusions about the population.
b. the researcher can control the variables under study.
c. phenomena can be studied in a natural setting.
d. hypotheses can be rigorously tested.
A measure has discriminant validity when:
a. it discriminates between groups.
b. its results do not correspond as highly with measures of other constructs as they do
with other measures of the same construct.
c. its results correspond to the results of other methods of measuring the same construct.
d. its content validity is less than its criterion validity.
The Solomon four-group design
a. combines the classical experimental design with the posttest-only control group
design.
b. combines the classical experimental design with the pretest-only control group
design.
c. combines the classical experimental design with the static-group comparison design.
d. combines the static-group comparison design with the one-group pretest-posttest
design.
Which of the following statements is/are true about evidence-based practice
a. The studies at the top of the research hierarchy usually involve clients who are very
much like those typically encountered in everyday social work practice.
b. Its proponents agree with its critics that it denigrates professional expertise and
ignores client values and preferences.
c. Real-world obstacles often prevent implementing it thoroughly in everyday social
work practice.
d. All of these.
e. None of these.
Which of the following designs can be used in program evaluation?
a. Pre-experimental designs.
b. Group experiments.
c. Surveys.
d. Qualitative designs
e. All of these.
Evidence-based practitioners will
a. assume that evidence on practice effectiveness will find its way to them.
b. assume that the published studies they find are scientifically valid.
c. use research methods to evaluate whether the evidence-based actions they take are
resulting in the outcomes they seek to achieve.
d. All of these.
e. None of these.
A study that attempts to develop an in-depth subjective understanding of a unique cult
is being guided by what paradigm?
a. positivism.
b. feminist research.
c. interpretivism.
d. critical social science.
Which of the following statements is true about quantitative and qualitative methods?
a. Quantitative studies are always deductive.
b. Quantitative studies always involve large samples.
c. Some quantitative studies are inductive and involve small samples.
d. Qualitative studies are usually deductive.
The effectiveness of randomization in experimentation is affected by the number of
participants involved.
Cluster sampling techniques should NOT be used in content analysis.
Secondary analysis refers to the analysis of data collected by another researcher for a
purpose similar to your research interests.
Evidence-based practice implies career-long learning.
If a measure has face validity, we can be quite confident that it really measures what it
intends to measure.
A paradigm is a fundamental model or scheme that organizes our view of something.
Latinos who recently immigrated to the United States are likely to have the same level
of acculturation as Latinos whose parents or grandparents have lived in the United
States for several decades or longer
Cluster sampling is a useful sampling procedure for large populations that are
geographically scattered.
An experiment evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention for improving attitudes
about something finds that the mean posttest score of the experimental group is 70,
which is better than the control group’s mean posttest score of 65. The significance level
is .05, and the p value is .01. The standard deviation is 5.
The results are statistically significant.
Predictive validity is one form of criterion-related validity.
Memoing is appropriate at several stages of data processing.
Studies that do NOT include adequate representation from specific minority and
oppressed populations in their samples are NOT generalizable to those populations.
Qualitative researchers should wait to record observations until enough time has passed
to put the events in a proper perspective.
The top-down and bottom-up approaches to searching for evidence are mutually
exclusive.
Evidence-based practice applies to decisions made at all levels of practice, even at the
policy level.