Unit 1: Introduction, Scope and Application of Research - Practice Quiz

1 What is research?

2 What is the primary purpose of research?

3 Which activity usually begins the research process?

4 What is a research objective?

5 What does the scope of research define?

6 Which type of research aims to solve an immediate practical problem?

7 Which type of research mainly seeks to expand general knowledge or theory?

8 Which type of research describes the characteristics of a population or situation?

9 Which type of research is commonly used when a problem is not clearly understood?

10 Which research approach mainly uses numerical data?

11 Which research approach mainly studies meanings, opinions, and experiences?

12 Which characteristic requires research to follow an organized sequence of steps?

13 What does objectivity in research mean?

14 What does reliability mean in research?

15 What does validity indicate in a research study?

16 Which issue is a common challenge in conducting research?

17 In business research, what is a population?

18 What is a sample in business research?

19 What is a variable in research?

20 What is a hypothesis?

21 A retail company notices that customer complaints about delivery delays have increased. Which research activity should be conducted first?

22 A manager studies monthly sales records to determine whether sales decline during periods of heavy rainfall. This activity is best described as:

23 A researcher begins with the question of why employees leave an organization and then gathers interviews and exit records. What does this example primarily illustrate?

24 A company uses research findings to redesign its customer-service process. Which purpose of research is most directly demonstrated?

25 A researcher repeats a survey using the same procedure and obtains similar results. Which quality of research is most strongly indicated?

26 A university investigates how consumers form opinions about sustainable packaging without seeking an immediate commercial solution. This is primarily:

27 A bank tests two versions of a mobile application to determine which produces fewer transaction errors. Which type of research is this?

28 A start-up interviews a small group of potential users to identify important features for a product that has not yet been designed. This is mainly:

29 A company surveys 1,000 customers to measure satisfaction with price, quality, and delivery speed. Which type of research is most appropriate?

30 A manufacturer wants to determine whether reducing product price causes an increase in sales, while controlling advertising expenditure. This is best classified as:

31 A research instrument gives nearly identical results each time it is used, but it does not accurately measure customer loyalty. The instrument is:

32 A researcher selects participants only from the company headquarters, although the study concerns employees across five regions. Which challenge is most evident?

33 In a study of workplace stress, employees give answers they believe their supervisor wants to hear. Which problem is most likely present?

34 A researcher changes the wording of survey questions midway through data collection without recording the change. Which characteristic of ideal research is weakened?

35 A study is carefully designed but cannot be completed because the organization will not provide access to relevant records. This situation mainly demonstrates the challenge of:

36 A researcher studies whether employee training hours affect monthly sales. In this study, monthly sales are the:

37 A study examines whether customer age is related to online purchase frequency. Customer age is most appropriately treated as a:

38 A researcher expects that shorter waiting times will increase customer satisfaction. This expectation is an example of a:

39 A company wants to study all registered customers but surveys only 500 of them. The 500 surveyed customers represent the:

40 A researcher defines customer loyalty as the likelihood of repeat purchase within the next six months. This definition is an example of:

41 A retail chain observes that stores with longer opening hours have higher monthly sales and concludes that extending hours will increase sales in every store. Which limitation most directly undermines this conclusion?

42 A researcher begins with transaction data, detects an unexpected purchasing pattern, develops a tentative explanation, and then designs a new study to test it. Which sequence of reasoning is being used?

43 Which research question is most suitable for systematic empirical investigation?

44 Two theories explain the same historical observations, but Theory X also predicts outcomes in conditions not yet examined, whereas Theory Y can accommodate any possible outcome after it occurs. Which feature gives Theory X greater scientific value?

45 A study reports a statistically precise estimate of customer satisfaction but measures satisfaction solely by the number of support tickets closed. What is the primary methodological problem?

46 A company enters an unfamiliar market where the reasons for product rejection are unknown. Researchers first conduct open-ended interviews, then use the findings to construct a structured survey for estimating the prevalence of identified reasons. How should this design be classified?

47 A researcher surveys different samples of first-year employees in 2023, 2024, and 2025 to track changes in onboarding satisfaction. Which design is used?

48 Managers introduce a training program at one branch and compare its performance change with a similar branch that did not receive the program. Assignment was not random, but both branches have pre-intervention and post-intervention measurements. What is the most accurate classification?

49 A university team develops a general theory of organizational trust while a consulting team uses that theory to redesign a specific firm's grievance process. How are the two projects best classified?

50 An organization repeatedly diagnoses workflow problems, implements changes with employee participation, evaluates the results, and revises the intervention. Which type of research is most clearly represented?

51 A replication uses the original procedure exactly but obtains a different result because the effect depends on an economic condition absent from the replication. Which conclusion is most defensible?

52 A perfectly randomized field experiment estimates the effect of a pricing message among existing premium subscribers. The firm wants to generalize the result to all prospective customers. Which research quality is most at risk?

53 A scale produces nearly identical scores when administered twice, yet experts agree that its items omit a central dimension of the construct. Which statement is correct?

54 In an employee study, participants are told that responses are anonymous, but the dataset contains department, age, job title, and exact tenure combinations that can identify individuals. What is the central ethical problem?

55 A researcher tests 40 unrelated outcomes, reports only the two with , and does not disclose the remaining tests. Which practice most directly threatens the credibility of the findings?

56 A study finds that training increases employee confidence, which subsequently improves sales performance. In this theoretical model, confidence is best described as what type of variable?

57 The positive relationship between workload and turnover intention is strong among employees with low supervisor support but weak among those with high support. What role does supervisor support play?

58 Researchers use regional averages to show that regions with more remote work have higher productivity, then conclude that every remote employee is more productive than every office employee. Which error have they made?

59 A researcher defines customer loyalty as a latent commitment reflected by repeat purchase, resistance to switching, and willingness to recommend. What do the three observed measures represent?

60 A firm's advertising expenditure appears positively related to sales. Market size causes firms to spend more on advertising and independently raises sales, but market size is omitted from the analysis. How should market size be classified?