QUESTION 1

(a) Describe why a critical analysis of the following is important while reading a research article-

(i) The author

(ii) The date of publication

(b) What do you understand by the validity and reliability of a measuring procedure?

(c) List and explain briefly five examples of scientific misconduct

(d) Write down the main differences between qualitative and quantitative research

QUESTION 2

(a) A normal distribution is thought to have a mean of 50. A random sample of 100 gave a mean of 52.6 and a standard deviation of 14.5. A significance test was carried out at the 5% level to verify an increase in the population mean. By letting the population mean to be μ and population variance to be , 2σ

(i) formulate the hypothesis for the problem

(ii) calculate a 95% confidence interval for μ

Using the standard test statistic the null hypothesis is rejected at the 5% level of confidence

(iii) Explain what is meant here, paying particular attention to the level of significance

(iv) What would be your conclusion at the 10% level of significance?

(b) During an experiment the following data is collected from a sample of size 15,10,13,12,14,8,11,7,19,21,18,17,16,14,13,13

Calculate the best estimates of the population mean and variance

(c) A company manager wanted to predict the production cost(), in thousand of rupees, of an item by the number of items produced (), in thousands. A least squares regression model of the form yxxy966.01.20+= is obtained based on available data

(i) Use the model to estimate the production cost when = 69. x

(ii) Given that x= 42.147, calculate y.

(iii) Interpret the coefficient of . x

(iv) The correlation coefficient, r = 0.997. Conclude on the relationship between and . xy

QUESTION 3

(a) Go through the research paper provided

(i) Identify and write down the research problem

(ii) What is(are) the objective(s) of the research?

(iii) Write down the main findings of the research

(iv) Identify all the components of the last reference (i.e., made to D Wilks) in the paper. Why a specific reference to the page number is missing here?

(b) What is the purpose of the abstract, introduction and the methodology part in a research report?