A family preservation program director helps design a study that evaluates the
effectiveness of her program to keep children living with their abusive parents by
providing the families with daily home visits by social workers. She expects the
evaluation to show a dramatic reduction in reported child abuse incidents. Instead, the
results show an increase in reported child abuse incidents. The director then concludes
that the program was undoubtedly effective, reasoning that there really could not
possibly have been an increase in actual abuse due to her program, just an increase in
reportage of abuse due to closer monitoring in the daily home visits. The director is
committing the error of
a. illogical reasoning.
b. ex post facto hypothesizing.
c. premature closure of inquiry.
d. selective observation.
e. mystification.
Explanatory studies:
a. can employ qualitative, quantitative, and/or mixed methods.
b. always use qualitative methods.
c. always use quantitative methods.
d. none of these.
Concepts are:
a. empirical measurements.
b. variables.
c. mental images.
d. hypotheses.
e. definitions.
An example of the participant-as-observer includes
a. joining a sorority or fraternity to study initiation rituals without revealing your
identity as a researcher.
b. telling people you’re a spy to find out how they react.
c. telling a motorcycle gang that you are a researcher and would like to ride with them
for a year to understand their interaction patterns.
d. being a newspaper reporter who interviews union workers to learn about recent strike
efforts.
Suppose our research methods cause the client to improve. This would be termed
a. unobtrusive observation.
b. reactivity.
c. social-desirability bias.
d. generalization of effects.
Which of the following statements is true about the phases of the research process in
mixed methods studies?
a. The problem formulation phase comes first.
b. The problem formulation phase comes third.
c. The first phase is designing the study.
d. None of these.
An evidence-based practice question should
a. incorporate client characteristics.
b. always inquire about only one specific intervention.
c. never be altered in light of the evidence emerging in one’s literature search.
d. always specify at least two alternative interventions in advance.
In comparison to coding the manifest content of communication, coding the latent
content
a. has a disadvantage in terms of validity.
b. has an advantage in terms of reliability.
c. is better designed for tapping the underlying meaning of communications.
d. has an advantage in terms of specificity.
Professor Lum asked respondents, “How old are you?” Later in the interview Lum
asked, “What is your date of birth?” This illustrates that Lum was interested in the
________ of the measurement.
a. face validity.
b. content validity.
c. criterion validity.
d. reliability.
A study that begins with observations and then looks for patterns, themes, or common
categories is using what method?
a. being a complete participant
b. participatory action research.
c. grounded theory.
d. client logs.
Ethical considerations are invoked by
a. the kinds of individuals serving as participants.
b. the setting in which the research is to take place.
c. the analysis of the data.
d. the reporting of the data.
e. All of these may invoke ethical considerations.
If a qualitative researcher wanted to learn a community organization’s pattern of
recruitment over time, the researcher might begin by interviewing a fairly recent recruit
and asking who introduced that person to the organization. Then the researcher might
interview the person named and ask who introduced that person to the community
organization. This would be an example of
a. snowball sampling.
b. systematic sampling.
c. deviant cases sampling.
d. accidental sampling.
e. quota sampling.
You are doing research on hospital personnelorderlies, technicians, nurses, and doctors.
You want to be sure you draw a sample that has cases in each of the personnel
categories. You want to use probability sampling. An appropriate strategy would be
a. simple random sampling.
b. quota sampling.
c. cluster sampling.
d. stratified sampling.
e. accidental sampling.
Whenever the interview contains open-ended questions, it is important that the
interviewer summarize and paraphrase what has been said so that a more meaningful
interpretation can be given to the data.
An ideal type is a conceptual model composed of the essential characteristics of social
phenomena.
A study tests the hypothesis that the provision of social work intervention will reduce
the school dropout rate. It finds that social work intervention reduces the dropout rate
only of children whose families are experiencing high levels of family stress. In this
study, what type of variable is “level of family stress”?
a. independent variable.
b. dependent variable.
c. moderating variable.
d. mediating variable.
Which of the following statements is(are) INCORRECT?
a. Closed-ended questions should limit respondents to three or four choices.
b. Closed-ended questions should have response categories that are mutually exclusive
and exhaustive.
c. Closed-ended questions should cover the range of likely responses.
d. None of these; they are all correct.
Assume that you have developed a study technique that you believe will result in
students scoring higher on research methods exams. You test your study technique with
the design diagrammed below.
R = random assignment
0 = observation
X = stimulus
Using the diagrammed design, what predictions will you make?
a. 02 should be greater than 01.
b. 02 should be greater than 04.
c. 04 should be greater than 03.
d. 02 should be greater than 01 and 04
At what level of measurement is the variable number of future incidents of child
neglect?
a. Nominal.
b. Ordinal.
c. Ratio.
d. Interval.
The qualitative researcher
a. seldom approaches the task with precisely defined hypotheses to be tested.
b. attempts to make sense out of an ongoing process that cannot always be predicted in
advance.
c. alternates between induction and deduction.
d. makes initial observations, develops tentative conclusions that suggest further
observation, and revises the conclusions.
e. all of these.
A social worker invents a new therapy that brings her fame, fortune, and a large
following of professional disciples. Two studies evaluate her new therapy. One is
scientifically weak in its design, and concludes that her therapy is extremely effective.
The other is scientifically very strong in its design, but concludes that her therapy is not
effective at all. She writes a letter to the journal publishing both studies. In her letter she
severely criticizes the design of the strong study (and therefore also criticizes the
credibility of its findings), and she praises the design and findings of the weak study.
a. overgeneralization.
b. ego-involvement in understanding.
c. premature closure of inquiry.
d. made-up information.
e. mystification.
An online search for evidence
a. should be restricted to one search term.
b. should be restricted to articles published in refereed journals, only.
c. can, for feasibility reasons, be limited to looking for systematic reviews emanating
from searches already completed by others.
d. never be limited to looking for systematic reviews emanating from searches already
completed by others.
Which of the following statements best typifies a mixed methods study?
a. A study that begins with a qualitative method but emphasizes a quantitative method.
b. A study that emphasizes a qualitative method but begins with a quantitative method.
c. A study that has an equal emphasis on a qualitative and a quantitative method and
implements them concurrently.
d. All of these are equally likely to be called a mixed methods study.
.
Agency administrators who ask in-house program evaluators to assess their program’s
effectiveness are likely to
a. promote an atmosphere in which the paramount priority is on free, scientific inquiry.
b. give the evaluator complete autonomy in designing the research and interpreting its
findings.
c. desire a study that is methodologically as rigorous as possible.
d. none of these.
Which of the following statements is (are) TRUE about writing the literature review in
reports of social work research studies?
a. It should bring the reader up to data on the previous research in the area.
b. It should point out any general agreements or disagreements among previous
researchers.
c. It should show how the reported study relates to, yet goes beyond, the previous
studies.
d. All of these.
Which of the following statements is/are true about reliability and validity in qualitative
research?
a. Standardized scales whose reliability and validity are known to be high would NOT
be relied upon as the prime measures.
b. Akin to inter-observer reliability in quantitative studies, one might assess whether
two independent raters arrive at the same interpretation from the same mass of written
qualitative field notes.
c. Reliability might be assessed by asking subjects whether the researcher’s
interpretations ring true and are meaningful to them.
d. All of these are true about reliability and validity in qualitative research.
e. None of these is true about reliability and validity in qualitative research.
Evidence about practice effectiveness will
a. always be conclusive.
b. sometimes indicate what actions NOT to take.
c. usually indicate what is effective with every client or situation.
d. will point toward taking an action that the client is certain to want.
A friend of yours, a senior, took the Graduate Record Exam in September and scored in
the 99th percentile. In February your friend took the same exam over again. This time
your friend scored in the 84th percentile. As a research methodology student, you told
your friend that his/her lowered score was probably due to
a. testing.
b. history.
c. statistical regression.
d. demoralization.
e. compensation rivalry.
The PRIMARY ethical research issue raised by the Milgram study was
a. the willingness of people to harm others when “following orders” required it.
b. the administering of electrical shocks.
c. the effects of the methods on the experimental subjects.
d. the effects of the methods on the learner.
e. the examination of obedience as a topic for study.
Ethical issues are distinguished from political issues in research in that
a. ethics deals more with the substance of research.
b. politics deals more with the methods of research.
c. formal codes of accepted political conduct are not comparable to the codes of ethical
conduct.
d. ethics deals more with theuse of research.
To obtain approximate, tentative answers about how widespread an outbreak of welfare
rights protests is, a researcher would conduct
a. a trend study.
b. an explanatory study.
c. an exploratory study.
d. a longitudinal study.
e. a descriptive study.
Compensation for participants in research should
a. be as large as your budget permits.
b. be large enough to provide an incentive yet not so large that it becomes coercive.
c. always be in the form of money.
d. never be in the form of money.
Agency member resistances to research often result in the need for much more time
than anticipated to complete the research.
The variable number of children is at the nominal level of measurement
If a research study gets published practitioners can be guided by just reading its
conclusions; there is no need to read the technical aspects of the study’s research
methods.
Selecting a sample that the researcher believes will yield the most comprehensive
understanding of a subject based on an intuitive “feel” for the subject is employing
quota sampling.
The substantive significance of a relationship is always automatically indicated by the
strength of the relationship.
Qualitative analysis is primarily numerical.
Attrition effects are automatically controlled when participants are assigned randomly
to experimental and control groups.
The terms population and sampling frame are synonymous.
Snowball sampling is used when the members of a population are difficult to locate.
Descriptive research answers the question “what’s so” and explanatory research answers
the question “why.”
External evaluators are always objective and independent of stakeholder influences in
the way they design, carry out, and report their evaluations.
The complete participant role prevents researchers from having an effect on what they
are observing.
Using anonymous enrollment procedures can enhance efforts to recruit research
participants from stigmatized populations.
For any survey to have any value, the response rate must be at least 50 percent.
Open-ended qualitative interviews never use standardized interview schedules.
Prolonged engagement is used to reduce the impact of reactivity and respondent bias.
The use of several different research methods to test the same finding is called
triangulation.
Social workers commonly work in settings where superiors do not understand or
appreciate evidence-based practice and do not give practitioners enough time or other
resources to carry out the evidence-based practice process.
Conversation analysts look only at the structure of communication.