Research in Physical Education Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The problem is both (A) and (B).

The categories are not mutually exclusive: the boundary values 5, 10, 20 and 30 each appear in two categories, so a 10-year-old could tick either (2) or (3). They are also not exhaustive: there is no category for anyone under 1 or over 40, so many respondents have no answer to give.

Response categories must satisfy both requirements. Since both faults are present, option A or option B alone describes only half the problem, and option D is plainly wrong.

Answer: B

The stem contains a double-barrelled question.

The question asks about two subjects at once: physical education and nutrition. A respondent who thinks children should study physical education but not nutrition, or the reverse, cannot give a meaningful single answer, and the researcher cannot tell which part the answer refers to. The fix is to ask two separate questions.

A leading question pushes the respondent towards an answer, and a loaded question contains an emotionally charged or presumptive assumption. Neither describes this stem, whose fault is joining two issues.

Answer: B

The key gives systematic sampling as the preferred method for a finite population.

In systematic sampling every k-th unit is taken from a complete list of the population, after a random start, with k equal to the population size divided by the sample size. This needs the population to be finite and listed, and in that case it is simple to apply and spreads the sample evenly through the list.

Area and cluster sampling are used when no list of individuals exists and the population is spread over a large region. Purposive sampling is non-probability sampling chosen by the researcher's judgement, so it is not preferred when a full list makes probability sampling possible.

Answer: C

The row headings of a statistical table are called the stub.

A table has a title, a caption (the column headings), a stub (the row headings, in the left-hand column), the body (the numerical entries), footnotes and a source note.

The source note, below the table, gives where the data came from. A footnote explains a particular entry or item. The body is the set of figures inside the table, not its headings.

Answer: D

It is the standardized open-ended interview.

In a standardised open-ended interview every respondent is asked the same open-ended questions, worded exactly the same way and in the same order. The answers are free, but the fixed wording makes them comparable across respondents and reduces interviewer bias.

A focus group interviews several people together in a guided discussion. A closed quantitative interview uses fixed questions and fixed response categories, so its questions are not open-ended. An informal conversational interview lets the questions arise naturally, with no fixed wording or order.

Answer: A

The correct match is 1-iii, 2-iv, 3-ii, 4-i.

• Alpha is the level of significance, the probability of a type I error that the researcher accepts, often 0.05 (1-iii).
• A type I error is rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true (2-iv).
• A type II error is accepting (failing to reject) the null hypothesis when it is false (3-ii).
• Beta is the probability, the magnitude, of a type II error; 1 - beta is the power of the test (4-i).

The other codes give alpha to type II error or swap the definitions of the two errors.

Answer: A

The sequence is introduction, method, results, discussion, references.

This is the standard IMRaD structure of a research report: the introduction states the problem and reviews earlier work; the method describes the participants, tools and procedure; the results present the findings; the discussion interprets them and draws conclusions; and the references list the sources cited.

The references always come at the end, and the discussion can only follow the results it interprets, so the other three orders are wrong.

Answer: B

The defining feature of historical research is to research about people, places and events in the past.

Historical research systematically collects and evaluates evidence from the past, primary sources such as documents, records and eyewitness accounts, and secondary sources, to describe and explain past events, for example the development of physical education in India.

Generating and developing a theory is the aim of grounded theory research. Describing the culture of a group is ethnography, and understanding how individuals experience a phenomenon is phenomenology.

Answer: C

It is a repeated measures design.

In a repeated measures (within-subjects) design each participant takes part in every treatment condition, and the measurements are compared within the same people. This controls for individual differences and needs fewer participants, though the order of conditions must be counterbalanced.

A pre-test post-test control group design and a post-test only design assign different participants to the treatment and control groups. A factorial design studies two or more independent variables at once, which may be between or within subjects.

Answer: A

Increased muscle memory is a mediating variable.

A mediating variable lies on the causal path between the independent and dependent variables and explains how the effect happens: here the amount of training (IV) increases muscle mass and muscle memory, and it is through them that exercise performance (DV) is affected.

A moderator variable changes the strength or direction of the relation between IV and DV (age or gender, for example) without being caused by the IV. An extraneous variable is an outside influence to be controlled, and a categorical variable is one measured in categories.