Methods of Social Research (SOCI-398-OL-31414)

Let’s say I want to study the reasons why students cheat on online exams. To do this, I visit the computer lab in the basement of the library every day during the week when most midterms are happening and again during finals week. I approach students at random to ask them a few open-ended questions (meaning they can answer however they like) about their attitude towards cheating. In addition to probably being really annoying, what standards of scientific knowledge does this study likely fail?

Your initial post should engage at least one of the scientific standards outlined in the lecture/book to describe what could go wrong with this study. When responding to a classmate, offer suggestions for how to change or adapt the study to try and fix those potential problems.