Discussion board 1: A team of researchers is interested in the group of people who tend to eat home cooked meals rather than meals purchased outside of the home. Team members need to decide which particular group they might focus on such as the cooks, meal prepares, and/or grocery shoppers, etc. Once they determine their group of interest, they need to decide which people they might include in their study. They need your input and help! There are a lot of methodological research decisions to consider prior to designing a survey. Please respond to the following questions and post your responses. Who is your population group? Why did you choose this group? (Your response to this question is shaped by your research question. The same person may or may not complete all of the tasks involved with making a meal (planning, purchasing, preparation, cooking, baking etc.). What kind of sample strategy will you use? Why? What size sample will you choose? What factors affect your sample size? Look at the concepts of homogeneous and heterogeneous populations in your chapter to respond to this question. Look across the responses of your classmates. Choose 2 classmates and compare your population, sample, and sampling strategy. How does their sample and sampling strategy differ from yours? Why? Discussion board 2: A team of researchers wants to study the high incidence of juvenile delinquency among youth aged 8-17. Their research question is what factors influence juvenile delinquency in large metropolitan cities? They created an indices for juvenile delinquency which includes minor crimes to more serious crimes. The results of their study show the following: Families with single heads of household are more likely to have children involved in higher and more serious levels of delinquency. Low self-esteem, low poor academic performance, numerous out of school suspensions, delinquency among their peer group, and high drop-out rates all predict higher and more serious levels of delinquency. They need the expert advice of a social scientist to help them with their analysis and results. In your Discussion Post 7 respond to the following questions. Do you note any “time order” problems? List two. Is there a spurious relationship? What do you believe is an important indicator of juvenile delinquency that has not been considered by this model? (Ask yourself the question, "Is there something else that is really going on here?" What do you see as the mechanism (causal process) between the independent variables and juvenile delinquency? Is there a larger sociological context for understanding the relationship between juvenile delinquency and the independent variables (or other independent variables that were not considered) used in this model? Remember, that you are social scientists! Respond to two posts from different classmates. How do your responses to the questions differ? What did this person discuss that you didn’t? What have you learned from the responses of two of your classmates?I will post the questions to edit soon  Choose 2 classmates and compare your population, sample, and sampling strategy. How does their sample and sampling strategy differ from yours? Why? Classmates' posts: Farah Elfayez: 1. Who is your population group? Why did you choose this group? There are nearly 20 million college students In the United States and around 50% live alone (on campus, apartments, etc.). However, 20 million is a big number, we will look at 10,000 independent students in this research. Becoming a college student (graduate or undergraduate) is a whole new different lifestyle to for an independent person. So, if a student lives alone and is capable of paying their own bills, how likely is it for them to cook for themselves, if so, how often? 2. What kind of sample strategy will you use? Why? The probability of selecting each of these individuals based on their demographic characteristics, which are high if we conduct a stratified random sampling. Our surveys will determine which student has a healthy diet from home cooked meals. 3. What size sample will you choose? What factors affect your sample size? The size sample will be 10,000, because it is a homogeneous population. We will be selecting students based on their income and diet. Every independent college student has a job that pays well or not enough, therefore, we determine on their groceries list how healthy their meals are. Students diets will most likely change when independent (either home cooked or purchased meals). Due to students statuses 40% have good income due working as Teacher's Assistance and 60% work at retail on campus and off campus with a fair amount of income (depending on whether they have roommates or not). Nataki Close: I chose the category of grocery shoppers for this study because this can contain a variety of different demographics. Also, there are many different reasons and purposes for people to grocery shop instead of eating out, which would provide many variables to look into. Most individuals in this group are likely to be equipped with the skills of cooking and preparing a simple meal at the least because they are buying ingredients instead of prepared meals. The sampling style I would use would be random sampling in an average convenient store setting. This would be a good style for this research because it allows all demographics of the population an equal chance of being selected and can allow a more even sample set. Also, this rejects the possibility of bias when choosing a sample set because it is not up to the researcher to handpick who gets chosen but it is by pure chance. With this style of sampling, it would also be important to pick an area and store that has a diverse array of customers and to possibly chose participants at different times of the day so that we can ensure the study covers the widest population possible. I would conduct research with a sample size of 50 people. This would help ensure the population is heterogeneous so that you will get a better representation of an even larger group and how eating at home has different effects on different kinds of people. Some factors affecting sample size are the shopper’s willingness to engage in the study. This may be difficult since they are most likely in a hurry to shop and may not be willing to take time to participate. Also, we would have to define what degree of eating at home and cooking is appropriate for a participant to be portioned in this category. There are many people who still eat out for convenience but may prefer to eat at home. This would impact how many people are viable for the study. 2 students to respond from discussion 2. Instructions: How do your responses to the questions differ? What did this person discuss that you didn’t? What have you learned from the responses of two of your classmates? Alexandra Perri: Do you note any “time order” problems? List two. I noted that higher rates and more serious levels of delinquency cause two problems. Firstly, low self-esteem and secondly, poor academic performance. Is there a spurious relationship? What do you believe is an important indicator of juvenile delinquency that has not been considered by this model? (Ask yourself the question, "Is there something else that is really going on here?" There is a spurious relationship revealed in the findings above. I believe an important indicator of juvenile delinquency not considered is ones’ social class status. Families social class would help understand how children are at home to then understand their school environment as well. What do you see as the mechanism (causal process) between the independent variables and juvenile delinquency? The mechanism I see between the single-family households and juvenile delinquency is that the parent does not seem to be at home watching after the children. Children need attention and need to be aware of others supporting them. Without a guardian home to tell them to do their homework and eat something healthy they then think on their own which can lead to bad behavior. Is there a larger sociological context for understanding the relationship between juvenile delinquency and the independent variables (or other independent variables that were not considered) used in this model? The larger sociological context for understanding the relationship between juvenile delinquency and single households is the measurement of metropolitan cities. There could be more data if we look outside the U.S as well. Alyssa Cole: 1.) There are "time order" problems found within the results of the study. Both low self-esteem and poor academic performance could easily be the result of the youth being involved in delinquent acts, as opposed to being the cause. It's important to determine when these two factors presented themselves in order to establish a causal relationship. 2.) I think there is a spurious relationship. While the factors already listed may play a role in juvenile delinquency, I don't believe they individually provide a direct connection. Rather, I think that a child is the product of their environment. There are many protective factors that may counteract the risk factors. An example of this would be the presence of a role model. It's important to understand if a child has a role model that they can look up to and potentially divert their attention away from delinquency. 3.) There is a combination of things that may explain the relationship between the independent variables and juvenile delinquency. As I previously mentioned, there are certain protective factors that may decrease the likelihood of involvement in juvenile delinquency. Not every child have these factors readily available. That being said, understanding the roles of lacking parental or adult supervision and a lacking after-school and/or community activities might be a mechanism that would help explain the connection between the independent variables and juvenile delinquency. 4.) There is a larger sociological context for understanding the relationship between juvenile delinquency and the independent variables used in this model. Considering that the researchers are specifically looking at the juvenile delinquency in large, metropolitan areas, I think it's important to look at the interaction between class. There tends to be a lot of disparity in many metropolitan areas that can be attributed to class differences. Even more so, there are many factors that also help explain why certain groups of people may or may not be economically advantaged. This ultimately plays a major role in neighborhood dynamics, such as the presence and seriousness of juvenile delinquency.