Multiple Choice Questions: Measurement

1. Which of the following is a nominal variable? (p. 157)

a. education.

b. age.

c. employment status.

d. none of the above.

*e. not enough information to know.

2. Professor Shipley developed a new test to measure IQ. He claimed that using his test, someone with an IQ of 180 would be considered twice as intelligent as someone with an IQ of 90 and that someone with an IQ of 90 was three times as intelligent as someone with an IQ of 30. Professor Shipley’s test treats IQ as (p. 159)

a. a nominal variable.

b. an interval variable.

*c. a ratio variable.

d. an ordinal variable.

e. none of the above.

3. Professor Tilton measured the variable “feelings toward national health care insurance” with the categories strongly agree, agree, indifferent, disagree, and strongly disagree. Professor Tilton was using the ______ level of measurement. (pp. 157–158)

a. nominal.

b. interval.

c. ratio.

*d. ordinal.

e. not enough information to decide.

4. The variable “educational level” was measured as last year in school completed (that is, none, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, grades, and so on). It is, therefore, measured at the ________ level. (p. 159)

a. nominal.

b. interval.

*c. ratio.

d. ordinal.

e. not enough information to decide.

5. What is the lowest level of measurement in which there is an exact difference between attribute values? (pp. 158–159)

a. nominal.

*b. interval.

c. ratio.

d. ordinal.

e. all of the above.

6. When someone who has sexually abused a child consistently denies having done so, it is an example of (pp. 161–167)

*a. systematic measurement error.

b. random measurement en-or.

c. unreliable data.

d. both b and c.

7. The tendency of people to answer questions through a filter that will convey a favorable impression is called (p. 162)

a. the acquiescent response set.

*b. social desirability bias.

c. cultural bias.

d. random error.

8. An interview with someone with a limited vocabulary who therefore does not understand the questions being asked is likely to produce (pp. 161–168)

a. systematic error.

b. random en-or.

c. unreliable data.

*d. both b and c.

9. In order to avoid measurement error, it is a good idea to (p. 171)

a. use unbiased wording.

b. use terms that subjects will understand.

c. test out the instrument in a dry run with a few people in the target population

*d. all of the above.

10. Professor Smith gave an exam on Monday. On Wednesday Smith gave the same class the same exam. Professor Smith was clearly interested in assessing the exam’s (pp. 174–176)

*a. reliability.

b. validity.

c. face validity.

d. conceptualization.

e. precision.

11. Reliability involves (p. 174)

*a. whether a particular technique applied repeatedly to the same object would yield the same results each time.

b. ensuring accuracy.

c. ensuring that your measure measures what you think it should measure.

d. ensuring precision,

e. all of the above.

12. Professor Lum asked respondents, “How old are you?” Later in the interview Lum asked, “What is your date of birth?” This illustrates that Lum was interested in the ________ of the measurement. (pp. 174, 177)

a. face validity.

b. validity.

c. precision.

*d. reliability.

e. a and b only are correct.

13. Most social scientists would not accept the conceptualization of IQ as foot size because such a measurement would lack (pp. 177–178)

a. precision.

b. reliability.

c. accuracy.

*d. validity.

e. all of the above.

14. Professor Myth asked respondents whether or not they had ever been divorced. One year later Professor Myth asked respondents the same question. Myth found that with repeated applications of the measure different responses were obtained for the same subject. This means that the measuring instrument was (pp. 176–177)

a. unreliable.

b. invalid.

*c. unreliable or the value on the variable had changed.

d. lacking in face validity.

e. a and b only are correct.

15. Asking a group of experts whether the items on a scale appear to measure what they intend to measure is a good way to assess the scale’s (p. 179)

a. predictive validity.

b. concurrent validity.

c. construct validity.

d. all of the above.

*e. none of the above.

16. Techniques used to create reliable measures include (pp. 174–176)

a. asking only about things respondents are likely to know the answer to.

b. using measures that have proven their reliability in previous research.

c. asking for the same information more than once.

d. asking about things relevant to respondents.

*e. all of the above.

17. When the variable “religious affiliation” is classified as Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish, this variable has the important quality(ies) of being (p. 192)

*a. mutually exclusive.

b. exhaustive.

c. interchangeable.

d. ratio scale.

e. all of the above.

18. Which of the following statements is(are) INCORRECT? (p. 192)

*a. Closed-ended questions should limit respondents to three or four choices.

b. Closed-ended questions should have response categories that are mutually exclusive and exhaustive.

c. Closed-ended questions should provide uniformity of response.

d. Closed-ended questions should cover the range of likely responses.

e. All of the above are correct.

19. Asking subjects “Did your children go to high school and college?” after they told you that they have no children violates which of the following criteria in question construction? (pp. 192–193)

a. Avoid double-barreled questions.

b. Questions should be relevant.

c. Avoid biased items.

d. All of the above are violated.

*e. a and b only are correct.

20. The questionnaire item “Which is not a serious problem in the U.S. today, anomie or the socialization of the young?” violates which of the following guidelines? (pp. 193–195)

a. Avoid double-barreled questions.

b. Avoid short items.

c. Avoid leading the respondent.

d. Avoid meaningful questions.

*e. Avoid negative items.

21. The questionnaire item “Did you file federal and state income tax reports last year?” with a response set of yes, no, can’t remember, other, is an example of (pp. 192–195)

a. an open-ended question.

b. an ordinal variable.

*c. a double-barreled question.

d. a negative item.

e. b and c only are correct.

22. Contingency questions are used (pp. 199–200)

a. to increase the likelihood of responses from those for whom the questions are relevant.

b. to spare respondents the frustration of reading and puzzling over questions that are irrelevant to them.

c. to enable the researcher to ask several questions that have the same set of answer categories.

d. all of the above.

*e. a and b only are correct.

23. When a researcher is selecting items for a composite index, which of the following should be kept in mind? (pp. 210–211)

a. Each item should have face validity.

b. A composite measure should be unidimensional.

c. There should be concern about the amount of variance provided by the items.

*d. all of the above.

e. a and b only are correct.

24. Professor Duncan administered a questionnaire containing the following items:

Please tell me how you feel about your social worker on the following three items:

valuable ----:----:----:----:---- worthless

clean ----:----:----:----:---- dirty

active ----:----:----:----:---- passive

Duncan was using a (p. 213)

*a. semantic differential scale.

b. Thurstone scale.

c. Bogardus social distance scale.

d. Guttman scale.

e. Likert scale.

25. The following items and Scoring scheme were taken from the Minnesota Survey of Opinions. The four items were part of an index designed to assess attitudes toward education. In the index

SA = strongly agree, A = agree, U = undecided,

D = disagree, and SD = strongly disagree

(1) A man can learn more by working four years than by going to school,

SA (5) A (4) U (3) D (2) SD (1)

(2) The more education a man has the better he is able to enjoy life.

SA (1) A (2) U (3) D (4) SD (5)

(3) Education helps a person to use his leisure time to better advantage.

SA (1) A (2) U (3) D (4) SD (5)

(4) Education is of no help in getting a job today.

SA (5) A (4) U (3) D (2) SD (1)

These items are illustrative of a (p. 212)

*a. Likert scale.

b. Thurstone scale.

c. Guttman scale.

d. semantic differential scale.

e. Bogardus social distance scale.

26. The scoring scheme for the items in question 25 illustrates (p. 212)

a. that item 1 is weighted 5 times items 2 and 3.

b. that item 1 is weighted equally to item 4 only.

c. that item 2 is weighted equally to item 3 only.

d. all of the above.

*e. that all of the items are equally weighted.

27. In looking over the responses given to the items in question 25, you notice that a respondent checked “strongly agree” to all four items. As a methodologist, which of the following statements BEST describes your ideas about the respondent? (p. 212)

a. The respondent is a scale type 12.

*b. The respondent probably fell into a response set.

c. The respondent is probably unsure about his or her feelings toward education.

d. The respondent must strongly agree with all the items.

e. The respondent has a high opinion of education.

28. Using Likert-type scale items, Professor Wong developed an index to assess job morale. Wong administered the index to 2,000 workers and found that 1–4 responses were missing on each of the items. Wong could (pp. 212–213)

a. exclude the cases that contained the missing data from the analysis.

b. assign the middle value to cases with missing data.

c. analyze the cases that had missing data to interpret their meaning.

d. assign values at random.

*e. all of the above.

29. Which of the following is NOT true about cultural bias? (pp. 215–216 )

a. People gathering data should be of the same ethnicity as minority respondents whenever possible.

*b. When minority respondents are interviewed by someone of their own ethnicity, exaggeration and social desirability biases do not occur.

c. It is better to modify and adapt existing instruments that appear to be culturally biased than to assume that their high reliability and validity assessed in a different cultural context will transfer to the culture you are studying.

d. An instrument that is not culturally biased or insensitive for some Mexican Americans may be culturally biased or insensitive for other Mexican Americans.

30. When attempting to construct culturally sensitive instruments when some research subjects don’t speak English well, researchers should (pp. 214–216)

a. use bilingual interviewers.

b. translate measures into the language of respondents.

c. pretest the measures.

d use back-translation.

*e. all of the above.

f. a, b and c only.