Lesson 9: Qualitative Analysis
Each question has only one best answer. Circle clearly the letter of the best answer. If
you make a mistake, cross out the circle, and write the letter in capitals next
to the question. If a question has both a capital letter and is circled, the
letter will be considered to be the answer.
1.
Keith
asked 20 men and women to describe what they considered to be an ideal website.
To examine gender differences in appreciation, Keith plans to identify the 100
most commonly mentioned nouns, verbs, and adjectives in the texts. Next, he
will test whether men and women differ in the frequency with which they use
these common words. What kind of analysis does Keith propose to do?
a.
Qualitative
analysis of qualitative data.
b.
Qualitative
analysis of quantitative data.
c.
Quantitative
analysis of qualitative data.
d.
Quantitative
analysis of quantitative data.
e.
Analysis
of observational data.
2.
Paul
has analyzed a closed-ended survey of people’s preferences for technology. He
used a statistical package to plot the level of respondents’ preference by
their reported income. Paul now needs to interpret this graph. What kind of
analysis will this be?
a.
Qualitative
analysis of qualitative data.
b.
Qualitative
analysis of quantitative data.
c.
Quantitative
analysis of qualitative data.
d.
Quantitative
analysis of quantitative data.
e.
Analysis
of observational data.
3.
What
is analysis?
a.
Labeling
patterns in data.
b.
Finding
the right answer to a research question.
c.
Intepreting
data.
d.
The
search for patterns in data and for explanations of those patterns.
e.
Testing
hypotheses.
4.
Susan
conducts a telephone survey with 65 people. She asks them 25 questions each.
She puts the data into a spreadsheet where the rows represent the respondents
and the columns represent the questions. What kind of data matrix does she
have?
a.
A
65-by-25 profile matrix.
b.
A
65-by-65 similarity matrix.
c.
A
25-by-65 similarity matrix.
d.
A
25-by-25 profile matrix.
e.
None
of the above.
5.
What
is not a logical expression for
doing searches in a database?
a.
Not
b.
And
c.
Maybe
d.
Or
e.
And/or
6.
Research
data matrices, spreadsheets, and databases use similar concepts but with
different names. What do rows in a matrix or spreadsheet or records in a
database typically represent?
a.
Characteristics
of rows
b.
Units
of analysis
c.
Fields
d.
Characteristics
of units
e.
Summary
features.
7.
Bryan
wants to know how researcher characteristics influence the kinds of grants that
are submitted at a major university. To manage the data, he creates several
linked files. In one file, he puts each researcher’s ID code and
characteristics such as age, degree, academic department, and academic rank. In
another file, he puts all the information about each grant that is submitted,
including title, granting agency, total budget, and which researchers submitted
the proposal. In a third file, he keeps track of all the granting agencies and
their characteristics. What kind of database management system is Bryan setting
up?
a.
Unrelated
dataabase.
b.
Flat
file database
c.
Similarity
database
d.
Relational
database
e.
None
of the above.
8.
The
interpretation of a company’s strategic vision statement is what kind of
analysis
a.
Discourse
analysis
b.
Performance
analysis
c.
Hermeneutic
analysis
d.
Content
analysis
e.
Narrative
analysis.
9.
What
is hermeneutic analysis?
a.
The
act of discovering regularities in how people tell stories or give speeches.
b.
The
search for meanings and their interconnection in the expression of culture.
c.
The
act of identifying emic categories and figuring out how these are linked
together.
d.
The
close study of naturally occurring behavioral interactions.
e.
The
use of direct quotes to represent different ideas held by informants.
10.
John
is hired by a computer company to better understand how customers interact with
its technical support staff over the phone. John tape records 200 conversations
between customers and technicians. He is particularly interested in how patient
technicians are when listening to consumers’ descriptions of the problem. John
notes the number of times that technicians interrupt customers to ask other
questions and the number of times that technicians ignore customers’ own
diagnosis of the problem. What kind of analysis is John doing?
a.
Discourse
analysis
b.
Narrative
analysis
c.
Hermeneutic
analysis
d.
Content
analysis
e.
Performance
analysis
f.
False.
11.
Amanda
interviewed 40 users about her company’s website. Amanda wants to use a grounded
theory approach to analyze these tape-recorded interviews. What does she need
to do first?
a.
Pull
all the text together that corresponds to potential themes.
b.
Identify
exemplary quotes in order to illuminate the themes.
c.
Identify
potential themes in the text.
d.
Produce
transcripts of interviews and read through a sample of them.
e.
Build
theoretical models by constantly checking
for negative cases.
12.
Saskia
has been studying online purchasing practices for some time. Now she wants to
test some hypotheses about how these practices vary across ethnic groups. After
collecting and transcribing people's stories about past experiences, Saskia
needs o code the data. What kind of coding is she likely to use?
a.
Grounded
theory coding
b.
In
vivo coding
c.
Deductive
coding
d.
Open
coding
e.
Inductive
coding.
13.
What
is the fundamental difference between a grounded theory approach and content
analysis?
a.
Grounded
theory is primarily concerned with the discovery of hypotheses from texts,
while content analysis is concerned with using text to test hypotheses.
b.
Content
analysis is fundamentally inductive, and grounded theory is fundamentally
deductive.
c.
Content
analysis is primarily interested with the discovery of hypotheses from texts,
while grounded theory is concerned with using text to test hypotheses.
d.
Content
analysis is a quantitative technique for discovering themes, and grounded
theory is a qualitative technique for discovering themes.
e.
There
is no real difference between the two approaches.
14.
What
does it mean to say that coding categories are exhaustive and mutually
exclusive?
a.
All
items can be classified.
b.
All
items can be classified into only one category.
c.
All
items can be classified into only one category and no items are left
unclassified.
d.
No
items are left unclassified.
e.
None
of the above.
15.
Matt
has two coders look at 100 texts and code them for the presence or absence of
five themes. For each code, Matt calculates the percentage of times that Coder
1 agreed with Coder 2. Why is this not a good way of calculating intercoder reliability?
a.
Coder
1 might be much better than Coder 2 at assigning values to the text.
b.
Percentage
agreement does not take into account the degree to which Coder 1 and Coder 2
would have agreed just by chance.
c.
Some
of the themes might be easier to code than others.
d.
Coder
1 might code for one of the themes more often than Coder 2.
e.
Percentage
agreement is a perfectly good way to calculate intercoder reliability.
16.
What
does Cohen’s kappa do?
a.
It
calculates how much better than chance the agreement is between a pair of
coders who mark the presence or absence of binary themes in texts.
b.
It
calculates the probability that two coders agree just on chance.
c.
It
calculates the degree to which two texts are marked by the same two themes.
d.
It
calculates the probability two coders will use all the same themes when marking
one text
e.
None
of the above.
17.
Which
statement is true?
a.
If
you use a grounded theory approach, there is no reason to use content analysis.
b.
Inductive
approaches are better than deductive methods.
c.
Qualitative
methods are better than quantitative methods.
d.
Open-ended
questions are better than close-ended questions.
e.
None
of the statements are true.
18.
T
F Inductive and deductive approaches are complementary rather than competitive.
a.
True
b.
False
19.
T
F To do text analysis, you need a computer program.
a.
True
b.
False.
20.
T
F A more complex explanation of a phenomenon indicates that a researcher has
thought a problem through and it is therefore better than a simpler
explanation.
a.
True
b.
False.