Qualitative Research Methods
Practice Questions
Course Introduction
Qualitative Research Methods introduces students to the principles and practices of conducting research aimed at understanding human behavior, experiences, and social phenomena through non-numerical data. The course explores key qualitative approaches such as ethnography, grounded theory, case study, phenomenology, and narrative analysis. Students learn techniques for data collection including interviews, focus groups, observations, and document analysis as well as strategies for coding and interpreting qualitative data. Emphasis is placed on ethical considerations, reflexivity, and reporting findings, equipping students with practical skills to design, conduct, and evaluate qualitative research in diverse academic and professional contexts.
Recommended Textbook
Basics of Social Research 3rd Canadian Edition by W. Lawrence Neuman
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Chapter 1: Doing Social Research
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Q1) exploratory research
Answer: Research in which a researcher examines a new area to formulate precise questions that future research can address.
Q2) All of the following characterize academic research,EXCEPT which one?
A) The main concern is with the internal logic and rigour of research design.
B) The objective is to contribute to policy and/or program change.
C) Success comes when results appear in a scholarly journal.
D) Research problems and participants are selected with a great deal of freedom.
E) The highest standards of scholarship are sought.
Answer: B
Q3) selective observation
Answer: Selective observation is an error people often make when using personal experience,rather than science,to acquire knowledge.It occurs when a person takes special notice of some people or events and tends to seek out evidence that confirms what already is believed and ignores contradictory information.
Q4) scientific method
Answer: The ideas,rules,techniques,and approaches that the scientific community uses.
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Chapter 2: Theory and Social Research
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Q1) macrosocial theory
Answer: Social theories and explanations about more abstract,large-scale,and broad-scope aspects of social reality,such as social change in major institutions in a whole nation across decades.
Q2) Which of the two major paradigms of social science holds that human life is based less on objective reality than on the ideas,beliefs,and perceptions people hold about reality?
A) Positivism
B) Interpretative social science
C) Critical social science
D) All of the above
E) None of the above
Answer: B
Q3) structure
Answer: Refers to aspects of the social landscape that appear to limit or influence the choices made by individuals.
Q4) concept cluster
Answer: A collection of interrelated ideas that share common assumptions,belong to the same larger social theory,and refer to one another.
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Chapter 3: Ethics in Social Research
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Q1) What is informed consent? Why was it developed? How does it protect research subjects?
Answer: -Informed consent is an agreement by participants stating they are willing to be in a study after they learn something about what the research procedure will involve. -It was developed so that research participants would be aware of their rights and what they are getting involved in.
-Full disclosure with the researcher's identification helps to protect research participants against fraudulent research and to protect legitimate researchers.Informed consent lessens the chance that a con artist in the guise of a researcher will defraud or abuse subjects.It also reduces the chance that someone will use a bogus identity to market products or obtain personal information about people for unethical purposes.
Q2) principle of voluntary consent
Answer: The idea that researchers must never force anyone to participate in research,and do not lie to participants unless it is necessary to accomplish a legitimate research purpose.
Q3) anonymity
Answer: Research participants remain anonymous or nameless.
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Chapter 4: Reviewing the Scholarly Literature and Planning a Study
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Q1) When writing a literature review,taking notes is a good practice.Which of the following is NOT one of the features of an article,book,or other source a good note-taker should generally record?
A) Design of the research
B) Hypotheses tested
C) Spelling and grammar mistakes made by the author(s)
D) Main findings
E) How major concepts were measured
Q2) Which of the following types of periodicals is designed for teaching purposes?
A) Scholarly journals
B) Readers
C) Dissertations
D) Theses
E) Abstracts
Q3) mass market publication
Q4) annotated bibliography
Q5) Identify the four main goals of a literature review.Explain why each of the four goals is important.
Q6) What are the advantages and disadvantages of using the internet in social research? Page 6
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Chapter 5: Designing a Study
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Q1) alternative hypothesis
Q2) Simpson's paradox
Q3) Benjamin hypothesizes that people who grow up in violent households are more likely to be violent as adults.Benjamin wants to conduct quantitative research to determine whether his hypothesis is correct.What should Benjamin's null hypothesis be?
A) The less violence one experiences in their childhood home, the less violence they will exhibit as adults.
B) There is no relationship between growing up in violent households and being violent as an adult.
C) Children who grow up in violent households are less likely to be violent as adults.
D) Children who grow up in violent households are more likely to be violent as adults.
E) There is a negative relationship between growing up in violent households and being violent as an adult.
Q4) Explain how a linear and nonlinear path to doing research differ,and how a preplanned vs.emergent research question differ.What types of researchers are most likely to use each?
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Chapter 6: Qualitative and Quantitative Measurement
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Q1) content validity
Q2) external validity
Q3) Professor Richard Rockabilly developed a measure of an ideal rock group.He added together ratings of six factors: clear beat in music,on-stage performance excitement,new electronic sound,dress and appearance of performers,distinctiveness of sound,and degree to which lyrics were relevant.He rated 25 groups on the six factors to get an overall measure of each rock group.He created a(n)
A) index.
B) scale.
C) measure of central tendency.
D) statistic.
E) item analysis.
Q4) Create three example items,using the Likert Scale,that have mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories and no problem with the response set.
Q5) empirical hypothesis
Q6) credibility
Q7) internal validity
Q8) conceptual hypothesis
Q9) predictive validity
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Chapter 7: Qualitative and Quantitative Sampling
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Q1) simple random sampling
Q2) statistic
Q3) sampling distribution
Q4) Professor Mary Mancini studied class level and drinking behaviour at Rocky Mountain University in Red Deer,Alberta.At Rocky Mountain,every student is required to live in one of six 20-story dormitories,and every student has a single room.All dormitory room phone numbers begin with the prefix 747 or 757 (e.g.,phone numbers are 747-0001 to 757-9999).She used the student telephone directory and,after a random start,selected every fifteenth student.She then mailed a questionnaire to the 1000 students selected and had two follow-up postcard reminders.A total of 900 students returned questionnaires.Later,Professor Mancini asked the university registrar's office whether any students were omitted from the directory. What is Professor Mancini's target population?
A) All students living in Red Deer, Alberta
B) All students enrolled in Rocky Mountain University
C) Students who drink alcohol
D) All residents of Red Deer, Alberta
E) Students who have roommates
Q5) random number table
Q6) probability sample
Page 10
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Chapter 8: Survey Research
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Q1) Professor Wendy Jones created a questionnaire that contained the following question: "How often do you get sexually aroused while smoking marijuana?" What is the problem with this question?
A) It is a leading question.
B) It has social desirability bias.
C) It is a double-barrelled question.
D) It is a threatening question.
E) It contains jargon.
Q2) full-filter question
Q3) What are five ways that an ordinary conversation differs from a survey research interview?
Q4) order effects
Q5) From beginning to end,identify and briefly describe each of the basic steps in conducting survey-based research.
Q6) prestige bias
Q7) social desirability bias
Q8) cover sheet
Q9) wording effects
Q10) contingency question
Q11) closed-ended question Page 11
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Chapter 9: Experimental Research
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Q1) Professor Ronald Ronaldson conducted an experiment to test changes in sex roles.The experimental group read 15 articles about the achievements of great and wonderful women.The control group read 15 articles about cooking,automobiles,astronomy,and accounting.During the lunch break,subjects from the experimental and control groups met and talked about what they were reading.What internal validity problem may occur?
A) Testing
B) Maturation
C) Diffusion of treatment
D) Experimental mortality
E) Hawthorne effect
Q2) What kinds of questions are appropriate for using an experimental logic? What kinds of limitations do researchers employing experimental methods face? What sorts of research topics are best suited for experiments?
Q3) Latin square design
Q4) natural experiment
Q5) Hawthorne effect
Q6) experimental group
Q7) deception
Q8) double-blind experiment
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Chapter 10: Nonreactive Quantitative Research and Secondary Analysis
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Q1) nonreactive
Q2) Coding systems identify four characteristics of text content.Identify and briefly describe each of these characteristics.
Q3) Items found in the trash or on the floor of the theatre after a movie has concluded are examples of A) traces.
B) erosion.
C) accretion.
D) hash marks.
E) vital statistics.
Q4) direction
Q5) Compared to latent coding in content analysis,manifest coding usually has A) greater reliability than latent coding.
B) lower rates of intercoder reliability.
C) greater validity than latent coding.
D) lower reliability than latent coding.
E) subjective meanings associated with the codes.
Q6) social indicator
Q7) erosion measures
Q8) space Page 14
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Chapter 11: Analysis of Quantitative Data
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Q1) multimodal
Q2) Which of the following research topics is an example of multivariate analysis?
A) An analysis of the ages of all women who are corporate executives
B) An analysis of the relationship between age, sex, and type of restaurant frequented in Saskatoon
C) An analysis of the relationship between undergraduate majors and level of position held in a major corporation
D) An analysis of the relationship between type of offense and length of prison sentence
E) The relationship between socio-economic status and annual income
Q3) descriptive statistics
Q4) direct entry method
Q5) Describe each of the three measures of central tendency.What are the main differences between them? How are they affected by a normal versus a skewed distribution of data?
Q6) percentile
Q7) histogram
Q8) Is a Type I or Type II error more likely if a 0.05 level is used? Explain.
Q9) control variable
Q10) body of a table
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Chapter 12: Qualitative Interviewing
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Q1) Which of the following is NOT one of the advantages of qualitative interviews?
A) They allow the researcher to see the world from the interviewee's perspective.
B) Reading reports that use qualitative interviewing for data collection is very engaging, and creates a sense of intimacy between the researcher, interviewees, and the reader.
C) Qualitative interviews are a valuable method for studying understudied or previously understudied populations.
D) Qualitative interview data can create theories that can give rise to future research, including quantitative research.
E) Sample sizes are usually small in comparison to those used in quantitative research.
Q2) Using ________ can actually encourage a participant to continue talking.
A) personal experience
B) silence
C) asking for details
D) talking about specific topics
E) the Socratic method
Q3) interview guide
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Chapter 13: Field Research
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Q1) appearance of interest
Q2) As a field researcher,Sally Ann adopts the attitude of strangeness.This means that she
A) is strange, because only strange people want to do social research.
B) finds it difficult to conduct social research on strangers.
C) acts as if she knows less than she really does and puts on a "front" as if she were ignorant of what is going on.
D) remains distant, cold, and angry toward members in the field setting.
E) questions and notices ordinary details as if she was a stranger.
Q3) Ethnography is often considered a ________ rather than a ________.
A) method; methodology
B) methodology; method
C) technique; method
D) general theoretical orientation; specific theoretical orientation
E) method; technique
Q4) negative case analysis
Q5) member-checking
Q6) Briefly describe the main features of "participatory action research" (PAR).What one major feature distinguishes this approach from all other quantitative and qualitative approaches?
Page 18
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Chapter 14: Nonreactive Qualitative Research
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Q1) running records
Q2) external criticism
Q3) primary sources
Q4) directed content analysis
Q5) nonreactive
Q6) discourse analysis
Q7) historiography
Q8) Professor Randy Rudiment conducted a study of First Nations in Ontario between 1880 and 1920.He interviewed elderly Aboriginals about what they remembered about their childhood and the stories told to them by their parents and grandparents.His data is an example of
A) running records.
B) recollections.
C) supporting evidence.
D) nonsource-based knowledge.
E) primary sources.
Q9) recollections
Q10) oral history
Q11) post facto explanations Page 19
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Chapter 15: Analysis of Qualitative Data
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Q1) qualitative coding
Q2) The analytical memo builds a link between _______ and ________.
A) the raw evidence; abstract theoretical ideas
B) abstract theoretical ideas; the final report
C) concepts; themes
D) data notes; other files
E) the raw evidence; the final report
Q3) Explain the process of concept formation in qualitative data research.What role or function do concepts play in qualitative research?
Q4) With which method of data analysis does a researcher begin with "empty boxes" or concepts and then go looking for empirical evidence showing that the concepts are useful in organizing information?
A) Narrative analysis
B) Fixed point-in-time analysis
C) Successive approximation
D) Ideal type analysis
E) Illustrative method
Q5) illustrative method
Q6) analogy
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Chapter 16: Combining Methods in Social Science Research
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Q1) institutional ethnography (IE)
Q2) Professor Klaus von Stoppen obtained conflicting results in the qualitative and quantitative parts of his mixed methods study on illicit drug use among high school students in Saskatoon.What approach should he take to resolve this contradiction?
A) He should get another researcher to re-do the study.
B) He should re-do the study.
C) He does not need to resolve the contradiction.
D) He should make the decision to prioritize one approach over the other.
E) He should reanalyze the data to examine the reasons behind the contradictions.
Q3) ________ approaches assume that facts are objective,that they can be collected by value-free researchers,and that the pursuit of truth can be achieved through the testing of causal hypotheses.
A) Explanatory
B) Positivist
C) Nonreactive
D) Qualitative
E) Survey-based
Q4) triangulation
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