Term | Definition |
---|---|
What is statistics? | A set of procedures used by social scientists to organize, summarize, and communicate information. |
What is data? | Information represented by numbers, which can be the subject of statistical analysis. |
What are the steps 5 in the Research Process? | Formulate a Hypothesis, Collect data, Analyze the Data, Evaluate the Hypothesis, and Ask the Research Question. |
What is the research process? | It is a set of activities in which social scientists engage to answer questions, examine ideas, or test theories. |
What is empirical Research? | Research is based on evidence that can be verified by using our direct experience. |
What can we not rely on when conducting empirical research? | Reasoning, speculation, moral judgment, or subjective preference. |
What is a theory? | An explanation of the relationship between two or more observable attributes of individual or groups. |
What is a Hypotheses? | A tentative answer to a research problem. |
What are the building blocks that make up a hypothesis? | Variables. |
What are variables? | The property of people or objects that takes on two or more values. |
What does it mean when a variable has been exhaustive? | It means that there should be enough categories composing the variables to classify every observation. |
What does it mean when a variable is mutually exclusive? | Refers to the need to classify every observation into one and only one category. |
What are the two types of variables? | Dependent and independent. |
What is a dependent variable? | The variable to be explained (the "effect") |
What is an independent variable? | The variable expected to account for (the "cause" of) the dependent variable. |
Which variable comes first? | The independent is followed by the dependent, the "cause" has an "effect." |
What are three conditions which a cause and effect relationship must meet? | The cause has to precede the effect in time; there has to be an empirical relationship between the cause and effect; and the relationship cannot be explained by other factors. |
What are the four levels of measurement? | Nominal, Ordinal, and Interval-Ratio (which is typically combined, but are actually two separate levels of measurement) |
What is a nominal variable? | Numbers or other symbols that are assigned to a set of categories for the purpose of naming, labeling, or classifying observations (i.e. colors, sex). There is no quantitative difference between the variables. These are simply names. |
What is a ordinal variable? | A level of measurement that ranks the categories from high to low (i.e. education level, social class). You can rank order and you can distinguish between them. |
What is an Interval-Ratio variable? | A level of measurement is used when the categories are rank ordered and we can measure the difference between each category. There is a natural zero in interval-ratio level. (ex. SAT scores, sales, and other test scores). |
What is a discrete variable? | They have a minimum sized unit of measurement, which cannot be subdivided (ex. the number of children a person has. One cannot have 2.5 children) |
What is a Continuous variable? | They do not have a minimum sized unit of measurement; their range of values can be subdivided into increasingly smaller fractional values. (ex. weight, height, and age) |
What is the mode? | It is the category/number used most frequently. |
What is the median? | It is the middle. |
Which variables utilize a mean, median and/or mode? | Interval-Ratio: Mean, median and mode Ordinal: Median and mode Nominal: Mode |
Which variables are considered discrete variables? | All nominal and ordinal variables are discrete. |
What are descriptive statistics? | Describes the type of the statistics that were found. They are procedures that help us organize and describe data collected. (sample or population) |
What are inferential statistics? | Involves the logic and procedures concerned with making predictions or inferences about a population from observations and analyses of a sample. |
What is a population? | The total set of individuals, objects, groups, or events in which the researcher is interested. |
What is a sample? | A relatively small subset selected from a population to study. |
What is the GSS? | The General Social Survey |