Week 2 Quiz

A worker loses a job when a local plant closes, and in the same year millions of people across the economy are out of work. A sociologist wants to study the pattern, not one person's story. Which evidence fits that question best?

Select one.

• A long interview with the one worker about how the job loss felt
• Data gathered from many people, such as a survey or existing unemployment records
• The worker's own guess about why the plant closed
• A personality test that measures how motivated the worker felt before the plant closed

A researcher sits with visitors in a food pantry's waiting line and asks what coming to the pantry means to them. Which pairing describes this study's tradition and level of analysis?

Select one.

• Positivism at the macro level, because it counts visits across a city
• Conflict theory at the macro level, because it ranks groups by income
• Secondary data analysis at the macro level, because it reuses records
• Interpretivism at the micro level, because it seeks meaning in face-to-face talk

In an illustrative study, the hypothesis is that residents who belong to a community garden can name more of their neighbors than residents who do not. Which variable is the independent variable?

Select one.

• Garden membership, the presumed cause
• The number of neighbors a resident can name, the presumed cause
• The number of neighbors a resident can name, the measured effect
• The size of the block, the measured effect

A researcher wants to understand how a late-night diner crew keeps each other going through long shifts, and plans to work alongside the crew for months. Which method is this?

Select one.

• A survey, because it asks many people the same questions
• An experiment, because it compares a treated group with a control group
• Ethnography, a form of field research that buys depth
• Secondary data analysis, because it reuses records someone else collected

A bathroom scale always reads two pounds heavy, no matter how many times you step on it. How would a researcher describe this scale as a measure?

Select one.

• Valid but not reliable, because it is consistent
• Reliable but not valid, because it is consistent but wrong
• Both reliable and valid, because it never changes
• Neither reliable nor valid, because it is two pounds off every single time

A fan page's online poll about a new stadium collects thousands of votes. A research team instead asks a few hundred residents drawn at random from a list of every household. Which result can speak for the city's residents, and why?

Select one.

• The fan-page poll, because more responses always reduce bias
• The fan-page poll, because its voters care most about the stadium
• Neither, because no sample of any size or kind can ever describe a whole population
• The random sample, because every household had a known, equal chance

In a beach town, ice-cream sales and drownings both rise every summer. What is the best explanation of this pattern?

Select one.

• A spurious correlation created by a third variable, the summer heat
• Causation: eating ice cream makes swimmers more likely to drown
• Causation: drownings in the news lead people to buy more ice cream as comfort food
• Random assignment, because summer days are assigned by chance

A student interviews coworkers for a study and writes a report that leaves out names but mentions the one coworker with a rare job title, so readers can tell who said what. Which ethics rule does the report break?

Select one.

• Informed consent, because the report was written after the interviews
• Random assignment, because the coworkers were not chosen by chance
• Confidentiality, because a participant can be identified
• Review-board approval, because a report must stay secret

Pew Research Center reports that smartphone ownership among U.S. adults was 35% in 2011 and 91% in 2025. How should the change be reported in percentage points?

Select one.

• It rose 56 percent
• It rose 56 percentage points
• It rose 160 percentage points
• It rose 91 percentage points

Pew Research Center's 2025 survey of 5,022 U.S. adults found that 91% own a smartphone. Select every statement that reads this figure accurately.

Select every option that applies.

• It measures self-reported smartphone ownership
• Its population is U.S. adults, and its sample is the 5,022 adults surveyed
• It shows that owning a smartphone causes people to change their habits
• It explains why smartphone ownership has risen since 2011
• It is a description, neither a correlation nor a cause