Research Methodology in Public Administration Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The view is that of Karl Peers, as the paper prints the name of Karl Pearson.

Karl Pearson, the British statistician, wrote in The Grammar of Science (1892) that there is no short cut to truth and no way to gain knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of scientific method. The question paraphrases that claim, which made him a standard citation in research methodology.

T.H. Green was an idealist philosopher of the state, J.W. Best wrote a widely used textbook of educational research, and Chester Barnard wrote on the functions of the executive. None of them is the source.

Answer: A

The type of social research is Quantitative and qualitative research.

Social research studies people, groups and institutions, and is usually classified by the kind of data it uses: quantitative research measures and counts, for example through surveys and statistics, while qualitative research seeks meanings and patterns, for example through interviews, observation and case studies.

Laboratory, physical and biological research belong to the natural sciences, which study matter and living organisms under controlled conditions. Social science does occasionally use experiments, but these three labels describe research outside the social field.

Answer: B

Sample units need not be Subjective; the paper's wording means they should not be.

A sample can stand for the population only if its units are chosen and defined objectively. Each unit must be clearly identifiable, so that it can be located and studied; units should be independent of one another, so that selecting one does not influence the selection of another; and the selection should follow a systematic procedure, such as a random or systematic sampling plan.

Subjectivity, choosing units by the researcher's personal judgement or liking, introduces bias. So systematic, identifiable and independent are all qualities a sample unit should have, and subjective is the one it should not.

Answer: B

The chi-square test was developed in 1900 by Karl Pearson.

Pearson introduced the chi-square statistic in a paper of 1900 as a test of goodness of fit: it compares observed frequencies with the frequencies expected under a hypothesis. It is now also used to test the independence of two attributes in a contingency table, which makes it one of the most used tests in social research.

Max Weber was a sociologist, not a statistician. 'Ronald Den' and 'F.W. Max' are not the names of anyone associated with the test; Ronald Fisher, whose first name the option echoes, later corrected its degrees of freedom but did not create it.

Answer: C

The study of a naturally occurring set of events is Field research.

Field research studies people and events in their natural setting, as they happen, without the researcher creating or controlling the situation. Participant observation, ethnography and field studies of communities and organisations are typical.

Experimental research does the opposite: the researcher manipulates a variable under controlled conditions. Survey research collects information from a sample through questionnaires or interviews rather than by studying the events themselves. Analytical research works on information already available, such as records and statistics, to evaluate it.

Answer: C

The definition is by J.W. Best.

John W. Best, in his textbook Research in Education, describes research as a more systematic activity directed towards discovery and the development of an organised body of knowledge. The definition is widely quoted in research methodology courses.

C.A. Moser (printed 'Mozer') wrote Survey Methods in Social Investigation, Emory Bogardus is known for the social distance scale, and P.L. Bhandarkar wrote on social research methods in Marathi. None of them is the source of this definition.

Answer: C

The answer is the option printed as M.L. Bowell, which points to the British statistician A.L. Bowley.

Arthur Lyon Bowley is credited with the first use of random sampling in a social survey: his study of working-class households in Reading and other towns, published as Livelihood and Poverty (1915), interviewed a sample of households instead of every one.

Charles Booth's earlier survey of London life and labour covered the whole population of the districts he studied, so it did not use sampling. P.V. Young is the author of a well-known textbook on social surveys and research, and the remaining name is not connected with the first sample survey.

Answer: D

It is historical research.

Historical research studies past events, so it cannot generate its own data. It has to rely on records left behind, and its primary sources are original documents, letters, official records and the accounts of eyewitnesses. These are often lost, scattered or incomplete, and their authenticity must be tested, so finding appropriate primary sources is the main problem of this method.

Descriptive and exploratory research collect fresh data through surveys, interviews and observation, and experimental research creates its own data by controlled experiment. None of them depends on surviving records in the way historical research does.

Answer: B

The subset of a larger population studied in social research is a sample.

Where the whole population (the universe) is too large to study, the researcher selects a part of it, by random or other sampling methods, and draws conclusions about the whole from that part. The part is the sample, and the quality of the conclusions depends on how well it represents the population.

Society and community are social units with their own meaning in sociology, not statistical subsets drawn for study. 'Group of peoples' is an informal description of any collection of persons and does not carry the idea of a part chosen to represent a whole.

Answer: C

Of the options, rare manuscripts are a secondary source of data.

In social research, primary data are collected afresh by the researcher for the study in hand, while secondary data already exist because someone else recorded them for another purpose. Documentary material, such as records, diaries, letters and manuscripts, is classed with secondary sources in the standard research methods texts.

Interviews and questionnaires are the main ways of collecting primary data. A radio appeal asks members of the public to send in fresh information or responses, so it too produces primary data. That leaves manuscripts as the only secondary source among the four.