COMM 101 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Criterion Validity, Face Validity, Dependent And Independent Variables

• School: U of M
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMM 101
• Professor: Julia Lippman

Document Summary

Mediation: the independent variable in uences the dependent variable by in uencing something else along the way: watching tv ads > pessimism > depression (pessimism is a mediator) Unit of analysis: the actual what that we are comparing: comparing apples and oranges is fundamentally about comparing fruit < unit of analysis, most of the time in social science, these are people/individuals. Units of observation: the things we gather data from: ex: when we are talking about comparing households, we might talk to individuals to collect data about households. Households are the unit of analysis, individuals are the unit of observation. Yes: nominal: there are response options/attributes (yes and no) Examples: gender - male, female // race - black, white, asian, other. Any variable with only two options is nominal, only nominal if it doesn"t t any other categories: ordinal: response options, in a meaningful order (yearly, monthly, weekly, daily)