Deck 4: Research Design and Implementation

Question 1

Descriptive research can be used to find out how a company should change its product or what kinds of potential customers it should appeal to.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

In causal research, the research questions and hypotheses are very specific.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

A researcher should only use a secondary source after all primary sources have been exhausted.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

A single research approach is seldom perfectly suited to a research objective, and the best choice is often the approach with the greatest number of strengths and the fewest weaknesses.

Question 5

Without evidence of a relationship or an association between two variables, we would have no basis for even inferring that causality might be present.

Question 6

Tactical research decisions must be made before the research approach has been chosen.

Question 7

Exploratory research is characterized by research methods that are highly structured.

Question 8

Exploratory, descriptive, and causal research approaches differ in how precise their hypotheses are and in their data collection methods.

Question 9

Exploratory research may be useful in finding out what kinds of questions the respondents will be willing or able to answer.

Question 10

Probability sampling should be used whenever it is crucial to have a sample that is representative of the population being studied.

Question 11

In a probability sample, each member of the population has a known probability of being included in the sample.

Question 12

Because different research methods serve different purposes, a researcher can get into difficulty by combining several methods in a single research study.For that reason, it is best to stick with one method.

Question 13

Descriptive research can be thought of as a snapshot of some aspect of the marketing environment at a particular point in time.

Question 14

Descriptive research can isolate the cause in a cause-and-effect relationship.

Question 15

The research objective, approach, and tactics should fit together. A researcher has an indication that the decision process is not going well when earlier decisions have to be modified because of subsequent decisions.

Question 16

The choice of research approach determines how the data will be obtained

Question 17

A research design can be defined as the detailed blueprint used to guide the implementation of a research study towards the realization of its objectives.

Question 18

Asking experts their opinions and doing depth and focus-group interviews are examples of qualitative research.

Question 19

In exploratory research, hypotheses may be very vague or may not exist at all.

Question 20

The three research approaches - exploratory, descriptive, and causal--are often used to complement each other in a research study.

Question 21

PERT is a network approach that divides the marketing research project into multiple components and estimates the time required for each activity.

Question 22

The time involved in doing a research study should be considered when calculating the cost of research.An opportunity may be missed if research delays a management decision.

Question 23

Constraints, budgeting and scheduling activities ensure that the resources are used effectively and efficiently.

Question 24

One useful method to anticipate the results of analysis is to produce dummy or fictional data for survey questions and then to analyze that data.

Question 25

Sampling frame error occurs when an inappropriate population is chosen for the research study.

Question 26

One of the research tactics is to translate the research objectives into questions that can be answered by the respondents and then into information requirements.

Question 27

Error caused by the improper design of an experiment is measurement error.

Question 28

Surrogate information error is the difference or variation between the information required for a marketing research study and the information being sought by a researcher.

Question 29

Design errors are also called research induced errors.

Question 30

The total error in a research study is the difference between the true mean value of the variable being studied and the observed mean value obtained through the research study.

Question 31

Selection error occurs when a sample selected is not representative of the population.

Question 32

A major challenge that is faced by the researcher in designing the sampling plan is how to minimize nonresponse.

Question 33

GANTT charts are activity flowcharts that schematically represent the activity, time, and personnel requirements of a research project.

Question 34

Although research approaches can be classified into one of three general categories of research, there is no significant difference between the categories.

Question 35

Deciding on the sampling plan and anticipating the results of analysis are significant steps in the research process, but at this point it is still too early in the process to allow for a more reliable estimate of the cost of a study.

Question 36

Response errors occur when the respondent provides inaccurate answers to the research questions.

Question 37

When a detailed cost-benefit analysis is done, one decision alternative is to terminate the research study.

Question 38

The absence of structure in an exploratory research permits a thorough pursuit of interesting ideas and clues about the problem situation

Question 39

Graphical evaluation and review techniques are essentially a first-generation PERT approach to scheduling, in which both the completion probabilities and activity costs to be built into a network representation are considered.

Question 40

Because the results of research studies are unpredictable, it is not possible to judge beforehand whether specific cross-tabulations of one question by another will be relevant to the research question.

Question 41

Of the following research questions, which could not be answered by exploratory research?

Question 42

Which research approaches) is/are more often guided by an initial hypothesis?

A)Exploratory research
B)Descriptive research
C)Causal research
D)Exploratory and descriptive research
E)Descriptive and causal research

Question 43

_____ is/are collected especially to address a specific research objective.

A)Causal research
B)Secondary data
C)Primary data
D)PERT data

Question 44

Rainbow Airlines has experienced a continuing and unexplained decline in the number of tickets sold on its major routes from New York to San Francisco.You have been asked to give the Senior Vice- President of the Marketing Division a report on the problem and to Outline alternative courses of action for the airline to take.How would you start?

A)Descriptive research
B)A survey of Rainbow Airlines' passengers
C)A survey of passengers who patronize competing airlines
D)Exploratory research
E)Causal research

Question 45

To find out the effect of price on sales of a particular brand, the most appropriate research design would be

A) exploratory research
B) causal research
C) descriptive research
D) primary research
E) none of the above

Question 46

The sampling plan may describe all of the following except

A)how demographic questions will be cross-tabulated.
B)how a subgroup of the population of interest will be chosen.
C)the size of the sample.
D)how to minimize the effects of nonresponse by sample members.
E)what kind of sample to use, probability or nonprobability.

Question 47

All of the following are sources of secondary data except

A)syndicated data.
B)the existing company information system.
C)a questionnaire designed to address the research objective.
D)government sources, such as the Census Bureau.
E)trade association studies and reports.

Question 48

The difference between primary and secondary data centers on

A) who collected the data
B) the variables the data describe
C) why the data was collected
D) the richness of the data
E) the diversity of the data

Question 49

If brand preference data is collected instead of brand purchase data, the following error is said to be committed.

A) surrogate information error
B) population definition error
C) non-response error
D) measurement error
E) none of the above

Question 50

Which of the following is not a design error?

A)Sampling frame error
B)Recording error
C)Selection error
D)Measurement error
E)Experimental error

Question 51

Descriptive research can be defined as

A)a research approach which is used when a researcher needs general insights into a problem.
B)an approach to determine cause-and-effect relationships.
C)a snapshot of some aspect of the marketing environment at a particular point in time.
D)an approach which isolates all causal factors.
E)none of the above.

Question 52

A research proposal should be viewed as a persuasive device that demonstrates the researcher's grasp of the problem and ability to conduct the research and also highlights the benefits of the study.

Question 53

Which of the following is a type of response error?

A)Sampling frame error
B)Recording error
C)Selection error
D)Interference error
E)Data error

Question 54

Which of the following can be called exploratory research ?

A) experiments
B) observation
C) case studies
D) interviews

Question 55

A causal approach should be used when

Question 56

To "anticipate the analysis of data" means that a researcher should

A)write down all of his or her expectations and report those findings which confirm a priori beliefs.
B)plan how each of the data items is to be analyzed.
C)expect that the data may sometimes be more interesting than useful.
D)expect that occasionally the data will not successfully test the hypotheses.
E)do all of these

Question 57

The detailed blueprint used to guide a research study toward its objectives refers to

A) research design
B) primary data
C) secondary data
D) Sampling error

Question 58

To find out if the automobile purchased is related to the buyer's income, one would use

A) descriptive research
B) exploratory research
C) causal research
D) none of the above

Question 59

Descriptive research is routinely used to discover all of the following except

A)how a product should be distributed.
B)new ideas and hypotheses.
C)how a product should be changed.
D)the target segment for a product.
E)All of these are discovered by descriptive research.

Question 60

A research proposal does not generally contain

A) description of the research design
B) definition of the problem
C) expected results
D) all of the above

Question 61

Global strategic decisions concern

A)issues pertaining to foreign market selection, market and mode of entry
B)micro-level implementation issues in global markets
C)Critical Path Method for global decisions
D)research objective.
E)elimination of error in entering foreign markets

Question 62

Sampling error is

A)the difference between a true measure obtained from the population and a measure obtained from a sample representing the
Population.
B)the difference between the expected measure of the population and a true measure obtained from the population.
C)the difference between the expected measure of the sample and a true measure obtained from the sample in a previous study.
D)a researcher induced error.
E)none of the above.

Question 63

An) ___________ describes a plan for conducting and controlling a research project.

A)action plan
B)research proposal
C)Critical Path Method
D)research objective
E)control plan

Question 64

If an interviewer fabricates the responses to a survey, it induces an) __________ error.

A)recording
B)interference
C)interviewer
D)questioning
E)personnel

Question 65

________ occurs when an inappropriate population is chosen to obtain data for the research study.

A)Selection error
B)Sampling frame error
C)Population specification error
D)Nonprobability error
E)Population error

Question 66

The probability based scheduling approach that recognizes and measures the uncertainty of the project completion times is the

A)GANTT chart.
B)PERT chart.
C)Critical Path Method.
D)GERT chart.
E)none of the above.

Question 67

Sources of secondary data are:

A)the existing company information system
B)databanks of other organizations
C)syndicated data sources
D)all of the above
E)none of the above

Question 68

Tactical decisions concern

A)issues pertaining to foreign market selection, market and mode of entry
B)micro-level implementation issues in global markets
C)Critical Path Method for global decisions
D)research objective.
E)elimination of error in entering foreign markets