NGI – MBA Department – 2016

NOBLE GROUP OF INSTITUTION – DEPARMENT OF MANAGEMENT

Questions Bank – Research Methodology
Semester – I
1. What is a research? State each aspect of a good research and write distinct features or
characteristics of that aspect.
2. Prepare a research plan for marketing manager of Tata Nano car who wants to know about
customer satisfaction level across India who recently purchased newly introduced car.
3. Describe the Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research.
4. What do you mean by hypothesis? Should every research problem have hypothesis? Discuss.
5. What is a Research Problem? State the main issue which should receive the attention of the
researcher. Give examples to illustrate your answer.
6. What is a research problem? How are the research questions related to components of the
problem?
7. Explain descriptive studies and causal studies.
8. Define business research. How can it be used in each stage of decision making process for
development and implementing strategy?
9. Explain with a diagram the different sequences of a research process.
10. What is the function of a focus group? Explain the advantages and disadvantages of focus groups.
11. Enlist the different positive advantages of conducting a survey. Compare the communication
approaches used in a survey.
12. Enlist the three parts of measurement definition. Explain the three major criteria for evaluating a
measurement tool.
13. Differentiate between purpose of using rating and ranking scales in business research? Explain any
four types of rating scales with examples.
14. Describe the three general classes of measurement questions found in a questionnaire. Enlist the
three critical decision areas for question construction.
15. Enlist the reasons for sampling. Explain the five steps of sampling design.
16. Define data preparation, editing and coding. Prepare a data table for a class of 60 students of MBA
III semester based on the following information: Sex (male, female), graduation degree (BBA,
B.Comm, B.E., B.C.A., Any other degree), major functional area of specialization (Marketing,
Finance, Human Resource and Information Systems) opted for in the second year of MBA
programme. Assume the data and interpret the result.
17. Define null hypothesis. State the six steps of hypothesis testing procedure.
18. Differentiate between the two general classes of significance tests. Enlist the three questions that a
researcher should consider before attempting to choose a particular significance test. Which
statistical technique will be appropriate when the testing involves two samples, the samples are
independent and the data are interval?
19. A company has re-organized its sales department. The following data show its weekly sales both
before and after re-organization. The period for comparison is taken from January to mid March in
two successive years.
Sales (in Rs. Lakhs)
Week Sales before Sales after
No. reorganization reorganization
1. 12 16
2. 15 17
3. 13 14
4. 11 13

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 NGI – MBA Department – 2016
5. 17 15
6. 15 14
7. 10 12
8. 11 11
9. 18 17
10. 19 22
The company wants to know if the re-organization of the sales department has contributed
positively and significantly to sales. Mention the hypothesis testing procedure for this situation and
suggest a test to reach to the conclusion. (Please do not perform any calculation.)
20. Define projective techniques. Explain with illustration four different types of projective
techniques.
21. When is observation as a method of data collection used in research? What are its strength and
limitation as a method of data collection?
22. What are experiments? Explain the three types of most widely accepted experimental research
designs.
23. Explain the different components of a research report.
24. What are the different kinds of data collection instruments? State their suitability according to their
applications.
25. Write a Short Note on: Non probability methods of sampling and Describe briefly the sampling design
process.
26. Define hypothesis in research terminology. What is a null hypothesis? Give important features on each of
the followings. (1) Descriptive Hypothesis (2) Relational Hypothesis (3) Co relational Hypothesis, and (4)
Explanatory Hypothesis (5) Type-I and Type-II Errors (6) Alternative Hypothesis (7) One tailed & Two
Tailed Test.
27. It was claimed that persons crossing certain age group may not like to change their reading habits. The
study of 22 randomly selected persons divided in two equal groups, the total numbers of books or
magazines they read during a span of one year are as follows.
Group A Group B
Average books read 1500 1300
Standard Deviation 225 251
Do the two groups means differ from each other? (Use 0.05 % level of significance)
28. Briefly discuss the two important features – (1) Accuracy and (2) Precision of a good sample. Discuss
Cluster Sampling and Double Sampling.
29. Give suitable examples of usage and application of the following:
1. Chi –square Test 2. Regression Analysis
30. Discuss the parameters to be kept in mind while structuring an instrument for primary data
collection? Suggest sources of secondary data. Explain each of them in detail.
31. (1) Identify the type of scale being used in each of the following questions:
1. During which season of the year were you born?
______ Winter _______Spring _______Summer
2. Which are your three most preferred eating joints? Rank them from 1 to 3 according to your preference,
with 1 as most preferred
______ Honest _______ US Pizza ______ Pizza Hut _______ Subway _______ McDonalds
3. How much time do you spend traveling to the institute every day?
______ Under 5 minutes ______ 5-10 minutes ______ 11-15 minutes ______ 16 minutes and above
4. How satisfied are you with your current job profile?
______ Very satisfied ______ neither Satisfied ______ Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied ______
Dissatisfied ______ Very Dissatisfied.

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 NGI – MBA Department – 2016
(2) Identify the type of scale being used in each of the following questions:
1. During which season of the year were you born?
______ Winter _______Spring _______Summer
2. Which are your three most preferred eating joints?
Rank them from 1 to 3 according to your preference, with 1 as most preferred
______ Honest _______ US Pizza ______ Pizza Hut _______ Subway
_______McDonalds
3. How much time do you spend traveling to the institute every day?
______ Under 5 minutes
______ 5-10 minutes
______ 11-15 minutes
______ 16 minutes and above
4. How satisfied are you with your current job profile?
______ Very satisfied
______ Satisfied
______ Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied
______ Dissatisfied
______ Very Dissatisfied
32. What is Sample Size? What features would you consider in designing a Sample Size?
33. Prepare a format of a Research Report showing all the required items in it.
34. Explain the dependency methods and independency methods with respect to Multivariate Analysis.
35. Discuss the parameters to be kept in mind while structuring an instrument for primary data collection?
36. A two-wheeler manufacturing company wants to study the satisfaction level of its customers. The
company appoints you as researcher for this project. Prepare a questionnaire for conducting this
survey.
37. What do you understand by extraneous variables? Discuss some of the extraneous variables that
affect the validity of experiment.
38. In business research errors occurs other than sampling error. What are different non-sampling
errors?
39. Explain stratified sampling and cluster sampling methods.
40. Define coding, editing, and tabulation of a data. Explain coding rules. Data coding and data editing
are two important activities in business research. Do you agree? Support your answer with proper
explanation.
41. Explain univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis with examples.
42. A consumer research firm routinely selects several car models each year and evaluates their fuel
efficiency. In this year’s study of two similar sub-compact models from two different automakers,
the average mileage of 12 cars of brand ‘A’ was 27.2 kmpl, and standard deviation was 3.8 kmpl.
The nine brand ‘B’ cars that were tested averaged 32.1 kmpl, and the standard deviation was 4.3
kmpl. At _ = 0.01, should it conclude that brand ‘A’ cars have lower mileage than do brand ‘B’
cars?
43. A shampoo manufacturing firm wanted to test the claim that its brand is used more by male than
female. A sample of 100 consumers was drawn at random in which there were 60 females and 40
males. It was found that 30 females and 24 males used the brand regularly. Do the results support
the aforesaid hypothesis at 5% level of significance?
44. From the following table find out if there is any association between the family size and the size of the soft
drink bottle purchased by the consumer family. Use 5% level of significance.

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 NGI – MBA Department – 2016
Family size
Bottle size
1-2 3-4 5 or more Total
250 ml 30 20 10 60
500 ml 15 60 65 140
1000 ml 05 50 90 145
Total 50 130 165 345
45. Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? If not than explain.
(i) Validity is more critical to measurement than reliability.
(ii) Semantic differential scales are often used to describe a respondent to specify a degree of
agreement or disagreement with a variety of statements related to the attitude or object.
(iii) A major distributor of office equipment is considering a new sales presentation program for its
sales persons. The largest sales territory is selected, the new program is implemented, and the
effect on sales is measured. This design is pre-experimental design in which one-shot case study
done.
46. Explain what a ratio scale is. What are its superiorities over other scales of measurement?
47. Discuss the type of statistical tests that apply in each of the following situations:
(i) Ordinally scaled data in which there are two related samples being compared.
(ii) Nominally scaled data when the two samples are related, such as with pretest and post-test
situation.
48. Explain in detail Focused Group Discussions.
49. Identify the differences between Parametric and non-Parametric tests. In the context of χ 2 test,
comment on ‘Goodness of fit is identified by badness of fit’. It is hypothesized by a researcher that
the three cities A, B , and C have selling potential of a product in the ratio 2:3:4. The sales
manager of the company gave the actual sales figures 380, 640, and 780 in the respective cities
.What test do you suggest? Perform basic steps towards the solution and find the calculated value.
(There is no need of searching for ‘Table value’.)

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