Exam 4: Exploratory and Observational Research Designs and Data Collection Approaches

Is it possible that in some situations qualitative research may be sufficient (in the sense that there may be no need to do a follow-up quantitative study)? If yes, give examples of situations when this may be true.

Observations conducted for a formal research study can either be structured or unstructured.

In-depth interviewing increases the likelihood of participants responding in a socially desirable manner.

Online focus groups can be conducted relatively quickly because of the ease of participation and because the focus group transcript is produced automatically during the group.

An in-depth interview:

A moderator's guide should include follow-up questions to help the moderator elicit more information.

Purposive sampling means:

Alex is an accomplished quantitative researcher. At one point, he discovered that he was simultaneously working on four different projects whereas his colleague who specialized in qualitative research was working on only one project. The objectives of all these studies are listed below. Which of the following studies was Alex's friend working on?

When conducting netnographic research, researchers tend to select forums with limited traffic and small number of discreet message posters so that each message can be analyzed in depth.

Quantitative methods are statistically projectable to the target population and relatively more reliable since every question is asked of all respondents in precisely the same way.