Which of the following statements is/are true about questionnaires?
a. Researchers can avoid the need for pretesting if they are very careful in the way they
word questions.
b. Because it is virtually impossible to avoid some mistakes in wording, questionnaires
should be pretested in a dry run.
c. When pretesting, the pretest sample should be very large.
d. When pretesting your questionnaire, it’s better to ask people to read through it
looking for errors rather than to complete the questionnaire.
Respondents would not be competent to answer a question if they:
a. did not remember the relevant information.
b. did not know about the relevant information in the first place.
c. have psychological or biological impairments
d. all of these.
If social workers wanted to find out how satisfied clients are, on the average, with the
services they received, they would undertake
a. a descriptive study.
b. a trend study
c. a cohort study.
d an exploratory study.
e. an explanatory study.
Reliability involves
a. whether a particular technique applied repeatedly to the same object would yield the
same results each time.
b. ensuring accuracy.
c. ensuring that your measure measures what you think it should measure.
d. ensuring precision,
e. all of the above.
Which of the following statements is true about sampling with populations that are
oppressed, hidden and/or stigmatized?
a. Assuring prospective participants anonymity may help to secure their willingness to
engage in a study.
b. Snowball sampling or purposive sampling may be necessary.
c. Disproportionate stratified sampling may be necessary to ensure that enough cases of
certain minority groups are selected to allow for subgroup comparisons.
d. All of these.
Acculturation occurs when a group or individual changes after coming into contact with
a majority culture by taking on the _____ of the majority:
a. language.
b. values.
c. lifestyle preferences.
d. all of these.
The adage that you must walk a mile in another person’s shoes before judging the
person is similar to which of the following concepts?
a. verstehen.
b. foot sense.
c. ideal types.
d. all of these.
Among the advantages of qualitative research is that it
a. yields precise descriptive statements about a large population.
b. involves the uniform application of precise operational definitions.
c. allows for the modification of research design,
d. produces definitive conclusions.
e. is an extremely reliable technique.
What would you infer from the following graph of the number of temper tantrums in an
AB design?
a. The intervention appears to be effective.
b. Maturation appears to be the most plausible explanation.
c. History appears to be the most plausible explanation.
d. Regression toward the mean appears to be the most plausible explanation.
The lack of intrusion of the researcher’s own political position on research is called
a. value-free research.
b. anonymity.
c. confidentiality.
d. the identity of the researcher.
e. deception.
Which of the following is POOR advice about recording observations in the field?
a. Don’t trust your memory any more than you have to.
b. Always constantly take notes while you are observing.
c. Make at least two copies of your notes.
d. Advance preparation on recording anticipated observations better enables you to
record unanticipated observations.
The length of the baseline in single-case designs should be
a. as long as is practically and ethically possible.
b. longer with a low frequency behavior than with a high frequency behavior.
c. extended until a stable trend appears.
d. all of these.
The most frequent attribute, in either grouped or ungrouped data, is the
a. mean.
b. median.
c. mode.
d. range.
e. marginal.
A research article reports that clients who received Intervention A had a 30% recidivism
rate, while clients who received Intervention B had a 40% recidivism rate. What can be
inferred from these statistics?
a. Intervention A is more effective than Intervention B.
b. The difference in recidivism rates was due to chance.
c. The difference in recidivism rates was NOT due to chance.
d. None of these.
Which of the following approaches would be least obtrusive in regard to measuring the
impact of the above groupwork intervention on school performance?
a. Obtain grade, attendance, and conduct data from school records.
b. Observe the student’s in-class behavior yourself.
c. With the client’s permission, obtain videotapes of the child’s in-class behavior.
d. Interview the child.
Which of the following statements is true about quantitative and qualitative methods?
a. Quantitative studies are more likely than qualitative studies to be more generalizable.
b. Qualitative studies are more likely than quantitative studies to be more generalizable.
c. Qualitative studies tend to have less contextual detail than quantitative studies.
d. Quantitative studies are more likely than qualitative studies to use grounded theory.
Pre-experimental designs
a. are the weakest experimental designs.
b. control for most sources of internal invalidity.
c. control for most sources of external invalidity.
d. are excellent for drawing causal inferences.
Suppose a case management program is established to reduce rehospitalization rates in
a hospital and that those rates drop dramatically once the new program is established.
We can conclude that
a. research has demonstrated an effective approach to practice.
b. causality cannot be inferred because time order was not established.
c. another event occurring during the time of the study might explain away the change.
d. the absence of covariation threatens the internal validity of any causal inferences.
Professor Myth asked respondents whether or not they had ever been divorced. One
year later Professor Myth asked respondents the same question. Myth found that with
repeated applications of the measure different responses were obtained for the same
subject. This means that the measuring instrument was
a. unreliable.
b. invalid.
c. unreliable or the value on the variable had changed.
d. lacking in face validity.
Exploratory studies:
a. can employ qualitative, quantitative, and/or mixed methods.
b. always use qualitative methods.
c. always use quantitative methods.
d. usually use quantitative methods.
Which of the following statements is true about quantitative and qualitative methods?
a. Quantitative studies are more likely than qualitative studies to be done early in order
to gain familiarity with a phenomenon.
b. Qualitative studies are more likely than quantitative studies to be done early in order
to gain familiarity with a phenomenon.
c. Qualitative studies are more likely than quantitative studies to be initiated after
familiarity with a phenomenon has been established.
d. Quantitative studies are more likely than qualitative studies to be done in the natural
environment of the research participants .
Which of the following is NOT true about follow-up mailings in mailed surveys in
which the respondents are not identified on the questionnaire?
a. It is impossible to re-mail only to nonrespondents.
b. The follow-up mailing could go to respondents and nonrespondents.
c. Including a stamped, self-addressed postcard in the original mailing can make it
possible to re-mail only to nonrespondents.
d. Two follow-up mailings are the norm.
You want to examine the relationship between family size and family cohesion. You use
as your sample all the students in this research methods class. What kind of sampling
design are you using?
a. simple random sampling.
b. quota sampling.
c. cluster sampling.
d. stratified sampling.
e. available sampling.
In deciding what to measure in a single-case experiment, it is usually best to
a. pick something implied by how the clinical goal was operationally defined.
b. measure more than one thing.
c. choose a behavior that is more frequent over one that occurs very rarely.
d. all of these.
In general, strengths of survey research include
a. making large samples feasible.
b. showing causality.
c. flexible uncovering of deeper meanings for each respondent .
d. directly measuring what people actually do, not just what they say.
Which of the following statements is (are) TRUE about the literature review in social
work research?
a. It should start after the study is designed.
b. It should start early in planning a study.
c. It is necessary to formulate the research question before starting the literature review.
d. All of these.
Which of the following statements is true about case-control designs?
a. They rarely are feasible.
b. Data must be collected at multiple points in time.
c. Retrospective data are collected about past differences that might explain differences
in outcome.
d. We usually can be highly confident about their internal and external validity.
e. We usually can be highly confident about the direction of causal influence.
A nominal definition:
a. Tells us what indicators to use in observing a concept.
b. Is a statement detailing what will be involved in measuring some entity.
c. Is like a dictionary definition.
d. All of these.
Qualitative researchers do NOT use the computer to:
a. Record and store data
b. “Find” or ‘search” text for passages containing key words
c. Type code words alongside passages in their notes so that they can later search for
those keywords.
d. Analyze data
e. Qualitative researchers use the computer to do all of these.
Which of the following is true about negative case testing in qualitative content
analysis?
a. It does NOT apply to hypothesis testing.
b. The data should be searched to find all cases that would contradict the original
hypothesis.
c. It is a deductive process.
d. None of these.
One operational definition is usually as good as any other operational definition.
The length of a question has no bearing on how effectively the respondent will answer.
The positivist paradigm rejects the pursuit of objectivity in our quest to observe and
understand reality.
Refusing to examine research on the services we deliver has no bearing on how
professionally ethical we are.
Quantitative research methods are more likely than qualitative methods to begin with a
flexible plan.
The mean is almost always sufficient in portraying the typical case in a distribution.
In single-case experiments, direct observation is always better than using self-report
scales or available records.
Regardless of whether you use your computer or the card catalogues in your library,
you may find additional useful references by using the library stacks.
Without using appropriate experimental and control groups, extraneous events in
subjects’ lives can make history a threat to internal validity, even if those events are of
no historical importance to people in general.
The terms attributes and categories mean the same thing when researchers are
mentioning them in reference to their variables.
Cultural competence should NOT affect how research findings are interpreted.
The best time to send an e-mail message inviting people to respond to an online survey
is late at night.
The social constructivism paradigm emphasizes the pursuit of objectivity.
Probability sampling ensures that there will be no sampling error whatsoever.
Theory plays an important role in seeking to discover patterns in qualitative analysis.
Using probability sampling, each member of the population has an equal chance of
being selected for the sample.
The search for the intentional or unintentional meanings attached to signs is called
semiotics.
Survey research methods and qualitative research methods are incompatible and should
never be combined.