Introduction

Exam Three covers materials presented in the class lectures and chapters 4-7 of the Babbie textbook. It contains two sections. In the first section, students will be asked to answer fifteen multiple-choice questions worth 2 points each. In the second section students will be asked to answer two short-answer questions worth 15 points each.

Dr. Sapp's Office Hours are MWF, 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., or by appointment. Students are invited to come to the office at any time and I will be happy to discuss the class materials with you.

Readings:

Babbie Textbook: Chapters 4-7.
Hypothesis Construction.
Class Notes.

Key Terms

Chapter 4: exploratory research, descriptive research, nomothetic research, explanatory research, necessary and sufficient causes, unit of analysis, cross-sectional study, longitudinal study, panel study, trend study, cohort study.

Chapter 5: operationalization, realism, nominal, ordinal, and interval levels of measurement.

Chapter 6: index, scale, weighting (of scales or indexes), index validation, Thurstone, Likert, and Guttman scales, semantic differentials.

Chapter 7: random sampling, purposive sampling, snoball sampling, quota sampling, probability sampling, variance, confidence level.

Discussion Topics

1. Be prepared to describe the advantages and disadvantages of these types of research designs: cross-sectional study, longitudinal study, panel study, trend study, cohort study.
2. Be prepared to describe the advantages and disadvantages of these types of indexes and scales: Thurstone, Likert, Guttman.
3. Be prepared to describe the advantages and disadvantages of these types of sampling: random, purposive, snoball, quota.
4. Be prepared to write hypotheses when given the level of measurement for the independent and dependent variables.

Help Session

Wednesday, October 29th, 5:00pm to 6:00pm, First Floor, East Hall.