St. Joseph’s College of Commerce (Autonomous)
END SEMESTER EXAMINATION – APRIL 2012
M.I.B. – II SEMESTER.
BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Time: 3 hrs. Max. Marks: 100
SECTION A
- Answer any SEVEN questions from the following ten: (7 x 5 = 35)
(Your answers have to be precise, max. five sentences!)
- What is the main difference Bibliography and Reference List?
- What is Exploratory Research? How is it different from Pilot Study?
- Explain ‘Interviewer’s Bias’. Illustrate.
- How does Survey Research differ from Case Study?
- Snowball Sampling vs. Cluster Sampling.
- Define MRQH in Business Research.
- How does Applied Research differ from Pure Research
- Distinguish between “Error of Central Tendency” and “Error of Leniency”.
- What are the two main reasons for Sampling Error?
- Structured Interview vs. Unstructured Interview.
SECTION – B
II) Answer any THREE questions from the following Five: (3 x 15 = 45)
(Your answers have to be analytical and to the point!)
- Define the terms: Parameters of Interest, Variables, Population, Sampling Frame and Sample?
Illustrate your answers with examples.
A farmer divides his total land of 300 acres into 300 one-acre plots in order to study the yield of
rice per acre.He then selects at random 15 plots and examines the harvest in these 15.
Identify: (a) population, (b) sample,(c) variable under study and (d) the parameter of interest.
- How will you make out from a Box-and-Whisker plot the degree of skewness (positive and
negative)?
Draw a Box-and-Whisker plot for the following data set after leaving out the Outliers:
43, 51,39, 45, 44, 49, 50, 47, 41, 79, 46, 44, 43, 48, 44, 42, 45, 21, 44
What are the values of Q1, Q3, Median and Interquartile range?
- Explain: “Regression Analysis” and “Correlation” with an example each.
What is the main difference between Regression analysis and Correlation analysis?
What are Scatter-plots? What is meant by “goodness of fit”?
- Differentiate between a Research Abstract and a Research Article. Explain with an example the
preferred format of writing a Research Article under various headings and sub-headings.
- What are the three fundamental issues related to a well-designed Questionnaire?
Explain the issues.
Formulate and write a Covering Letter which is to accompany a Mail Survey Questionnaire used for a Study on Service Quality of Dish TV. Assume that you are the Marketing Chief of Dish TV. (Don’t develop the Questionnaire- only the letter!)
SECTION – C
III) Answer any ONE question from the following two. (1 x 20 = 20)
- Write a detailed essay on “Scales of Measurement” in Research Methodology?
What are the three main characteristics of good measurement?
What are the three main errors which occur in Scaling?
Then explain, giving examples, under what conditions the following Scales would be useful:
- Likert
- Itemised Scale
- Paired-comparison Scale
- Semantic Differential Scale
Case Study:
Are the following Nominal, Ordinal, Interval or Ratio data? Explain your answers very briefly:
- Temperature measured on the Fahrenheit scale
- Military Ranks
- Numbers on the T-shirts of footballers
- Number of passengers on a flight from Mumbai to Delhi.
- Number of typographical errors in a manuscript
OR
- What do you understand by the following terms in Hypothesis Testing?
(a) Level of Significance, (b) Decision Rule, and (c) Type I & Type II Errors.
You may draw a simplified Normal Distribution curve to explain your answers
Case Study: Solve the following problem using the “chi² – test”:
The Manager of a car dealership, did not want to stock cars that were bought less frequently
because of their unpopular colour. The five colours that he ordered were red, yellow, green, blue,
and white. According to him, the expected frequencies or number of customers choosing each
colour should follow the percentages of last year. He expected that 20% would choose yellow,
30% would choose red, 10% would choose green, 10% would choose blue, and 30% would choose
white. He now conducted a poll, took a random sample of 150 customers and asked them their
colour preferences.
Colour Preference for 150 Customers polled by the Car Dealership
Category Colour Customers’ Colour Preferance Expected Frequencies
Yellow 35 ?
Red 50 ?
Green 30 ?
Blue 10 ? White 25 ?
(A) State Ho and H1 for the given problem.
(B) Draw the necessary tables and work out the problem systematically.
(C) Will the Manager pay attention to the results of the poll or go by last year’s trend?
Help:
(i) The chi² formula can be written as: chi² = Σ(O –E) ² ÷ E
(ii) The Table of Critical Values for chi² shows that with D.F. = 4, the Critical Value of chi² is 9.49 at
alpha = 0.05
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