Deck 15: Planning and Researching Proposals and Reports

Question 1

It is a good idea,when planning to write a report,to talk to your readers to determine how much detail and formality they want.

Answer 1

True
Explanation: Up-front planning helps you use your time efficiently. Start by thinking about the whole report process. Talk to your readers to understand how much detail and formality they want.

Question 2

You should write the purpose statement only after researching the specific alternatives the report will discuss.

Answer 2

False
Explanation: To write a good purpose statement, you must understand the basic problem and have some idea of the questions that your report will answer. However, you should write the purpose statement before researching the specific alternatives the report will discuss.

Question 3

Analytical reports interpret data for the reader and recommend actions or solutions.

Answer 3

False
Explanation: Reports can be called information reports if they collect data for the reader, analytical reports if they interpret data but do not recommend action, and recommendation reports if they recommend action or a solution.

Question 4

A manager's report about the various economic opportunities that were available during his trip to Luxembourg is a credit report.

Question 5

Companies' annual reports and audit reports are types of analytical reports that present and interpret data for readers but do not make recommendations.

Question 6

Secondary research retrieves information that someone else gathered; it includes library research and online searches.

Question 7

Accident reports can simply list the nature and causes of accidents.

Question 8

Informal reports may be letters,memos,or computer printouts of numerical information.

Question 9

Progress reports can simply summarize an applicant's income and other credit obligations.

Question 10

Documenting the need to purchase an additional 20 computers for the customer service department based on growth,demand,and sales data is an example of a justification report.

Question 11

The data,evidence,and facts required to produce a report must be both available and comprehensible to the person preparing the report.

Question 12

The purpose statement appears in your proposal,but not in your final report.

Question 13

The easiest way to ask many questions to a group of people is to conduct an interview.

Question 14

Formal reports typically contain elements such as a title page,a transmittal,a table of contents,and a list of illustrations.

Question 15

Extracting data with a computer program is not considered as research.

Question 16

Feasibility reports provide information but not analysis to support a recommendation.

Question 17

Payback reports provide calculations of the point at which a new capital investment will pay for itself.

Question 18

Once you have defined your problem,the next step is to write a purpose statement.

Question 19

Key words are the terms that the computer searches for.

Question 20

When writing a report,you should start writing your first draft only after all the research is completed.

Question 21

On a survey,bypassing occurs when two people use the same words or phrase but interpret them differently.

Question 22

Lisa,a student working for the school journal,is conducting a rough pretest of a survey to determine the maximum amount students are willing to pay for the journal.She distributes the survey to the first 50 students she runs into.The sample she is using is called:

A) a judgment sample.
B) a convenience sample.
C) the population.
D) a random sample.
E) a census.

Question 23

Which of the following is a common method of gathering information through primary research?

A) Library research
B) Government and NGO statistics
C) Previous research reports
D) Online searches
E) Surveys

Question 24

A good report problem in business or administration meets which of the following criteria?

A) The problem is neither real nor worth solving.
B) The problem is intricate but not challenging.
C) The audience for the report is able to implement the recommended action.
D) The facts are insufficient to show that the recommendation will solve the problem.
E) The data, evidence, and facts, though not available, are comprehensible to you.

Question 25

_____ can simply document the causes of a failure or possible products that are not economically or technically feasible under current conditions.

A) Trip reports
B) Closure reports
C) Accident reports
D) Interim reports
E) Credit reports

Question 26

The order in which questions appear on a survey has no bearing on the answers that respondents provide.

Question 27

Indented quotations do not need quotation marks because the indentation shows the reader that the passage is a quote.

Question 28

With a convenience sample,you can generalize from the sample to a larger group.

Question 29

Face-to-face surveys are convenient when you are surveying a large number of people in different locations.

Question 30

Which of the following is a formal report?

A) PowerPoint slides printed out and bound together
B) Computer printouts of sales figures for the past six months
C) A memo describing an event that will be retained on file
D) A long document with a title page, a transmittal, and a table of contents
E) A hard copy of a company' production figures

Question 31

Closed questions are faster (than open questions)for subjects to answer and easier for researchers to score.

Question 32

Which of the following enables a researcher to use older references to find newer articles on the same topic?

A) Citation indexes
B) Abstracts
C) Specialized encyclopedias
D) Newspapers
E) Census reports

Question 33

Hypothetical questions that ask people to imagine what they would do generally yield more reliable answers than questions about critical incidents or key past events.

Question 34

A(n)_____ is a structured conversation with someone who will be able to give you useful information.

A) interview
B) poll
C) wild card
D) questionnaire
E) tally

Question 35

A manager at Sirius Cybernetics Corp.must warrant the need for the purchase of new AI machine translation software,HAL 10000.Hence,he needs to write a _____ report.

A) recommendation
B) feasibility
C) justification
D) problem-solving
E) payback

Question 36

Citation and documentation are used in lieu of quotation marks.

Question 37

When you use multiple-choice questions,the answer categories must be mutually exclusive and exhaustive.

Question 38

A(n)_____ report provides information,but not an analysis or recommendation.

A) feasibility
B) audit
C) justification
D) sales
E) annual

Question 39

After a search for key words,many words can appear in related forms.To catch all of them,one must use _____ for shortened terms and root words.

A) specialized encyclopedias
B) the database's truncated code
C) Google or AltaVista
D) citation indexes
E) Web search abbreviations

Question 40

Online surveys do not generate a random sample.

Question 41

You need to conduct a survey in three months among employees completing their probationary period to determine how company orientation and training could be improved.You have several closed questions prepared for the survey,but you don't know if the choices provided are adequate.You should:

A) conduct a pretest with open questions to find commonly chosen categories.
B) conduct a pretest to see if the terms used mean different things to different people.
C) conduct the survey as it is and leave an "other" line for each question.
D) conduct the survey with open questions, even though it will take respondents twice as long to fill the survey out.
E) conduct a pretest with closed questions to find categories that matter to respondents.

Question 42

Question: "How often do you use the parking garages downtown?"

Question 43

You are creating questions for a survey on the rampant corruption found in today's politics.You initially hand out surveys to journalists,political experts,anti-corruption workers,etc.This sample is called a(n):

A) convenience sample.
B) judgment sample.
C) random sample.
D) evaluative sample.
E) census sample.

Question 44

_____ is a form of qualitative research where a small group of people are convened to provide a more detailed look into some area of interest.

A) An ethnic group
B) A questionnaire
C) A focus group
D) Sampling
E) An online research community

Question 45

"You have probably been in a situation at one time where you had to work with a colleague who did not carry his or her share of the load on a project.How did you handle this?" In an interview,this is an example of a:

A) mirror question.
B) critical incident question.
C) hypothetical question.
D) probe.
E) situational question.

Question 46

In conducting a survey for an AIDS clinic,you must ask participants some very personal questions.It would be most appropriate to ask:

A) closed questions, so the participants will not give you answers you do not expect.
B) open questions, since people will welcome the opportunity to share their problems.
C) open questions, because if slightly pressured, respondents will eventually open up.
D) closed multiple choice questions, since seeing the choices listed shows people that their answer is acceptable.
E) open questions, as analyzing the responses from open questions is less straightforward than from closed questions.

Question 47

John Connor,a manager at Cyberdyne Systems Corp.,asks his customers to voice their thoughts as they try to assemble one of their units,T850 Model 101.John is using:

A) trial-and-error research methodologies.
B) interruption interviews.
C) think-aloud protocols.
D) discourse-based interviews.
E) personal interviews.

Question 48

Which of the following is an advantage of using closed rather than open questions in a survey?

A) Closed questions allow researchers to probe the complexities of a subject.
B) Closed questions are faster for subjects to answer and easier for researchers to score.
C) Closed questions allow subjects to give any possible answer and do not lock the subject into any sort of response.
D) One can improve the quality of open questions by conducting a pretest with closed questions to find categories that matter to respondents.
E) Analyzing the responses from closed questions is usually less straightforward than from open questions.

Question 49

In a _____ sample,each person in the population theoretically has an equal chance of being chosen.

A) random
B) biased
C) convenience
D) judgment
E) quota

Question 50

"According to Thomas Friedman,the world is…" is an example of:

A) an abstract.
B) plagiarism.
C) a citation.
D) documentation.
E) an acknowledgement.

Question 51

The passing off of the words or ideas of others as one's own is called _____.

A) plagiarism
B) documentation
C) abstraction
D) citation
E) piracy

Question 52

"Are you satisfied with your health care benefits? (Yes/No)" This is an example of:

A) a closed question.
B) an open question.
C) a branching question.
D) an overlapping question.
E) a hypothetical question.

Question 53

Which of the following statements is true of face-to-face surveys?

A) They are used for surveying a large number of people in different locations.
B) They can reach anyone who has an address.
C) They are not effective for respondents who don't read and write well.
D) They deliver questions over the Internet.
E) They may lead to biased results based on the interviewer's sex, race, etc.

Question 54

In an unstructured interview,the interviewer:

A) asks questions in a format similar to a questionnaire.
B) uses a detailed list of questions to guide the interview.
C) always asks closed questions to start the interview and set the interviewee at ease.
D) asks a few initial questions and then allows subsequent questions to build on these answers.
E) remains absolutely silent and allows the interviewee to speak freely.

Question 55

A(n)_____ provides a measure of variability that can be attached to survey derived estimates.

A) convenience sample
B) judgment sample
C) confidence interval
D) sampling frame
E) citation index

Question 56

_____ means attributing an idea or fact to its source in the body of the text.

A) Quotation
B) Documentation
C) Acknowledgement
D) Citation
E) Plagiarism

Question 57

Which of the following is a characteristic of good questions?

A) They are asked in an order that influences answers.
B) They are phrased neutrally.
C) They mean different things to different people.
D) They ask several things and aspects.
E) They make certain assumptions about the respondent.

Question 58

_____ occurs when two people use the same words or phrases but interpret them differently.

A) Sampling
B) Bypassing
C) Misconceptions
D) Confidence interval
E) Branching

Question 59

Discourse-based interviews:

A) ask questions based upon something the interviewee has written.
B) are formal interviews based on written questions that the interviewee sees beforehand.
C) are interviews that are taped, so the interviewer can concentrate on the interview and not have to take notes.
D) strive to get the interviewee's spontaneous reaction to using a new product.
E) ask users to voice their thoughts as they use a document or product.

Question 60

_____ follow up an original question to get at specific aspects of a topic.

A) Hypothetical questions
B) Mirror questions
C) Probes
D) Situational questions
E) Critical incident questions

Question 61

How can you narrow your search and identify the concepts you're interested in?

Question 62

List out the various types of reports based on the variety of information they can provide.

Question 63

Explain the different methods of conducting research interviews.

Question 64

List the three things that a good purpose statement should clarify.

Question 65

Describe the different types of reports that can be either information,analytical,or recommendation reports,depending on the particular situation.

Question 66

List the criteria for a good report problem.

Question 67

Compare and contrast between open and closed questions.

Question 68

What are the criteria you should use to decide whether a Web site is good enough to use for a research project?

Question 69

As surveys can be used to show almost anything,people need to be careful when analyzing the results of surveys or designing their own.What questions are commonly asked about surveys?

Question 70

Enlist the five basic steps in writing any report.

Question 71

Explain the different ways of conducting a survey.

Question 72

List the characteristics of well-designed survey questions.

Question 73

List some of the suggestions offered by Nan Robertson to interviewers.

Question 74

Explain the different ways of choosing a sample.

Question 75

List some of the tips for using and documenting sources in a research paper.