1
Q
What is a variable?
A
are things that change over time (they vary)
2
Q
What are datasets?
A
they contain information about a group of individuals; then is organized in variables.
3
Q
What is a constant?
A
things that remain the same.
e.g., people are all humans.
4
Q
What is an attribute?
A
- things that vary or change between individuals
- categories or numerical classifications of what is being studied.
5
Q
What MUST variables be?
A
-Exhaustive
-Mutually exclusive
6
Q
What is exhaustive?
A
every # or category must be included (I must have a category to fit into)
7
Q
What is mutually exclusive?
A
categories must not overlap (I must only fit in one category)
8
Q
What do quantitative researchers do?
A
we look for relationships between variables to assess how a change in one variable impact another. e.g., age and income.
9
Q
What is an Independent variable?
A
- predictor or producer variable
- the variable that is not dependent on other variables
- you manipulate this variable to see what effect it has on the other variables.
- you do not test the impact of other variables on the independent variable
- operates independently
10
Q
What is the dependent variable?
A
-outcome variable
- its value is dependent on the independent variable
- test to see if changes in the independent variable produce changes in our dependent variable
- what outcome does a change in my independent variable produce?
- how likely is it that the observed changes happened by chance?
11
Q
What are the 2 basic main types of variable attributes?
A
- categorical (aka qualitative or discrete)
- continuous (aka quantitive or numerical)
12
Q
What is a categorical data?
A
- places “cases” (‘individual’ data) into categories
- Example: Sex_ Male or Female
- it makes sense to categorize someone as male and female and talk about the proportion of men and women, but it doesn’t make sense to compete an average sex
13
Q
What is a continuous data?
A
- Data that represent a number (e.g., height, weight, grade point average, income)
- we can compute an average grade, height or weight
- sometimes we turn continuous data into categorical data.
14
Q
What is a control variable?
A
- other factors that may influence your relationship between x and y.
- you can have more than one control variable that influences your relationship
- e.g., in a sample of Canadians aged 15 to 35, we found that age is positively associated with being married or common-law.
15
Q
What is a hypothesis?
A
-designed to express relationships between variables
- often exist in addition to research questions
-a hypothesis is a statement of what you expect to find
- it’s not just an educated guess
-often social scientists just use research questions
16
Q
What makes a good hypothesis?
A
- clarify X and Y are clearly identifiable
- directionality: provides you with a direction of the relationship between the variables
a. provides a prediction of how the changes in each variable are related to one another.
b. is usually done by labelling the expected relationship “positive” or “negative.”
c. Negative: the variables change in the opposite direction.
I. As age increases, physical mobility decreases
17
Q
What is falsifiability?
A
- for something to be scientific, it must be able to be proven false
- Anything that cannot be proven false is not appropriate to be explored scientifically.
- e.g., anything imaginary cannot be proven.
18
Q
How can you with certainty know that there is a relationship between 2 variables?
A
- the relationship is significant
- methods coach: “systematic change between the independent and dependent variables”
- We will talk about measuring significance later in the term.
19
Q
How do we look for ‘strangers’ like spurious?
A
when we decide a relationship is not authentic
our control variable is really what’s causing the change in x and y.
20
Q
What is the unit of analysis?
A
- the major object that is being analyzed in your study
- the what or who is being studied (in sociology, most often individuals, groups or social organizations)
21
Q
What is fallacies?
A
- thinking errors = when we make a mistake in our reasoning
- e.g., common fallacies - ecological, and Tautologies.
22
Q
What is ecological fallacy?
A
- when we aggregate (pushes a whole bunch of data together) data, we can no longer draw conclusions about the individual:
- I often say, “statistics do not apply to the individual.”
- mean (average)
- generalization is applied to an individual
23
Q
What are tautologies?
A
- tautologies happen when our reasoning becomes circular.
- e.g., people with lots of social connections know a lot of people
- think of it as unnecessary repetition.
24
Q
What are some tautologies in research?
A
- When you try to justify an occurrence by its very nature
- Hypothesis: mothers who have just given birth are the only people taking the maternal recovery portion of federal parental leave (E.I.)
- the probability of this being true is 100%
- by nature, this is what the policy sets out
- what would be better to study when looking at the E.I. parental leave policy?
25
What is correlation?
- 2 or more variables are related to one another
- statistical measure that describes the size and direction of a relationship between 2 or more variables
- we can say that two things are correlated with (related to) one another (e.g., housing affordability is related to mental health)
- We can also talk about the direction of the relationship.
26
What is causation?
- just because two things are related, does not mean one caused the other
- is housing more affordable for people who have better mental health! or does having more affordable housing improve mental health?
- to get causation, we need more than just the strength of a relationship and its direction
- often use experiments and more sophisticated tests/study designs
- in this class, we will look at relationship/association and its strength
27
Every study should have an objective or aim.:
- appropriateness of the question
- determining a measurable truth
- testing a relationship
- testing a theory
- assessing risk, likelihood or probability
- using quantitative data or describe a population (e.g., mean age, proportions of adults who work, etc.) or phenomenon (e.g., unemployment rates, home ownership, homelessness.)
28
What are quantitative research objectives??
- common objective in research is to identify the extent to which one variable relates to another.
- be specific when constructing your objective
- the objective of this study is to examine the relationship between income and gender in N.B.
- the aim of my study is to investigate the relationship between age and social support in Canada.
- the goal of my study is to determine the extent to which social support and age are related in Canada.
29
How to define your topic?
- if you are finding it a challenge to generate a research topic you can:
- focus on your passions
- use your curiosity
- look for inspiration from the creative arts and news media
- examine current events
- try concept mapping/brainstorming
30
What makes a good research question?
- interesting
- relevant
- feasible - time, topic, place, cost, skills, access, information
- ethical
- concise - well articulated, conceptually clear, theoretically framed, translate abstract ideas into measurable categories.
- original or not previously studied or looked at in a particular way (higher levels of research)
- answerable
31
Is my study feasible?
- are the data available?
- PUMF through stats can
- other secondary data sets
-if the data are available, can I access them?
- data sharing agreements
- proxy measures, etc.
- if the data aren't available, can I collect them (primary data)?
- time and money/resources
- number of and access to participants/sampling
- we will talk about this when we go through survey design
32
What is a deduction?
- based on previous theories/literature
33
What is an inductive?
- based on experience or observation (e.g., connection with knowledge users/community agencies, reflections on personal experience)
34
What is conceptualization???
is the process of defining or specifying concepts.
35
What is operationalization?
is the process by which a researcher precisely specifies how a concept will be measured.
36
What are the levels of measurement?
- categorical = Nominal --> different in name only, cannot rank or order
Ordinal - can be ranked or ordered but still in categories.
-Continuous = interval --> fixed unit of measurement without a meaningful zero
Ratio = fixed unit of measurement with a meaningful zero
37
What is the TCPS 2 ethics of confidentiality?
- the obligation of an individual or organization to safeguard entrusted information. obligation to protect information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, modification, loss or theft.
- it is essential to the trust relationship between researcher and participant, and to the integrity of the research project.
38
what is anonymous information?
- the information never had identifiers associated with it and risks of identification of individuals is low or very low.
39
What is anonymized information?
- the information is irrevocably stripped of direct identifiers; a code is not kept allowing future re-linkage, and risk of re-identification of individuals from remaining indirect identifiers is low or very low.
40
What is the ethics of research?
The policy is based on a proportionate approach to the assessment of the ethical acceptability of research.
REBs (researchers and research ethics boards) are expected to identify and minimize privacy risks, keeping in mind that a matter that is not sensitive or embarrassing for the researcher may be so for the participant.
41
What are the core principles?
the guidelines in this policy are based on the following three core principles:
1. respect for persons
2. concern for welfare
3. justice
42
What are the conditions under which engagement is required include, but are not limited to?
a. research conducted on FN, Inuit, or Metis lands.
b. recruitment criteria that include Indigenous identity as a factor for the entire study or for a subgroup in the study.
c. research that seeks input from participants regarding a community's cultural heritage, artefacts, traditional knowledge or unique characteristics.
d. research in which Indigenous identity or membership in an Indigenous community is used as a variable for the purpose of analysis of the research data; and
e. interpretation of research results that will refer to indigenous communities, peoples, language, history or culture.
43
What is voluntary consent?
circumstances such as coercion or undue influence undermine the voluntariness of consent.
the decision to participate in research must be made voluntarily.
44
What is informed consent?
strict conditions for these departures from the requirements for informed consent, including that this exception is limited to minimal risk research.
45
What is the concept of harm in research?
means an injury to the rights, safety or welfare of a research participant that may include physical, psychological, social, financial or economic factors. it is the responsibility of the researcher to avoid, prevent, or minimize harm to others.
46
Quant. Methods
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Decks in class (3)
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