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social research a way of determining whether traditional ideas are valid or invalid and whether ideas from authorities are false or true descriptive research aimed at gathering information to describe a phenomenon exploratory research why or how a social event is happening, designed to test a hypothesis in order to explain a phenomenon operational definition a specification of the action needed to translate what is abstract and unobservable into what is concrete and observable (number) empirical indicator observable representation of an abstract and unobservable concept (number) variable characteristics that vary from person to person within the population being studied independent variable cause dependent variable effect constants characteristics found in all members of a population being studied correlation a consistent association between two or more variables that may or may not be causal positive correlation an increase in one variable is related to an increase in another negative correlation an increase in one variable is related to a decrease in another curvilinear as one variable is changed, another variable changes at first in the same way and then in the opposite way intervening variable a hidden variable is responsible for the occurrence of a relation between two other variables not causally related spurious correlation false correlation causal relationship the independent variable precedes the dependent, no intervening variable survey asking questions about opinions, beliefs, and behaviors population the entire group of people being studied sample a small number of people selected from a larger population that represents the population as a whole random sample representative sample systematic sampling the process of drawing a random sample systematically stratified sampling the process of drawing a random sample in which various categories of people are represented in portions equal to their presence in the population structured interview researcher asks standardized questions and requires respondent to choose from standardized answers unstructured interview open-ended questions detached observation observing outsiders from a distance participant observation taking part in the activities of a group being studied ethnography the study of people's lives from their own perspective experiment a research operation in which the researcher manipulates variables so that their influences can be determined experimental group exposed to the independent variable control group not exposed to the independent variable field experiment subjects can behave naturally experimental effect subjects know they are being watched secondary analysis sociologists search for knowledge in data collected earlier by another researcher using statistics or earlier experiments content analysis searching for specific words or ideas and turning them into numbers validity the characteristic of a study measuring what it is supposed to measure reliabilty the characteristic of a study producing the same finding when repeated, AKA consistency deductive approach deriving specific observations from general ideas inductive approach deriving general ideas from specific observations null hypothesis trying to disprove a hypothesis to show that it is correct demand characteristics the procedures used beg for a certain response double-blind procedure neither the giver nor receiver of the placebo knows which is real placebo effect psychological impact of receiving a medicine, changes behavior randomization mixing people up t-test the average score of the two groups that tells the researcher how many standard deviations apart they are from each other skewed a score that is affected by a few extreme scores that upsets the average X a score is symbolized by this p probability is symbolized by this N number is symbolized by this r correlation is symbolized by this correlation is between -1 and +1