End-of-term Test Information

End-of-term Test
Date: 9 Dec 2022
Time: 10:00 to 11:15 (75 minutes)
Venue: HHB UG05 /UG06

Remember … you still have to finish the reading

report after the test
Due on 13 Dec 2022 (1159pm)
Test format
 Section A: 30 multiple-choice questions (2 marks each)
 Lecture 1: introduction
 Lecture 2: theoretical approaches to social research
 Lecture 3: ethics and politics of social research
 Lecture 4: research design
 Lecture 5: conducting in-depth interviews
 Lecture 8: Introduction to Quantitative Research Design and
Experiments
 Lecture 9: survey
 Lecture 10: sampling in quantitative studies
 Lecture 13: reading and evaluating research
Test format
Section B: 20 fill-in-the-blank questions (2 marks
each)
Experiment
Sampling (qualitative and quantitative)
Test format
Section C: Medium-question (20 marks)
Lecture 9: survey
Lecture 1: Introduction (section A only)
• What are the non-scientific ways which we often use
to acquire knowledge and make decisions?
• What is science/social science?
• What are the different types of research?
– Exploratory research, descriptive research, explanatory
research, evaluation
– Quantitative research v. qualitative research
– Deductive research v. inductive research
Lecture 2: theoretical approaches to
social research (section A only)
 What is ontology?
 What is epistemology?
 What are the major features of positivism?
 What are the major features of post-positivism?
 What are the major features of interpretive social science?
 What are the different strands within interpretive social science?
(the differences between the different strands will not be tested)
 What are the major features of critical social science?
 What are the different strands within critical social science? (the
differences between the different strands will not be tested)
Lecture 3: ethics and politics of social
research (section A only)
What are the basic principles we should adopt to
ensure that we are conducting ethical studies?
What are the potential political problems caused by
social research?
Lecture 4: research design (section A
only)
Sampling in qualitative research
What are the different sampling strategies which can
be used when planning a qualitative study?
 What are the limitations of quantitative and
qualitative studies?
Lecture 5 – conducting in-depth
interview (section A only)
What is in-depth interview?
strengths and weaknesses of in-depth interviews
Lecture 8: Introduction to Quantitative Research
Design and Experiments (section A & B)
What are the major elements in a hypothesis?
Independent variable, dependent variable, control
variable etc.
When designing a social research, what are the
different possibilities in terms of its time dimension?
What are the potential errors in causal explanation?
What is a classical experiment?
What are non-equivalent control group designs and
before-and-after designs?
Lecture 9: survey (sections A, B &C)
 How to collect data when doing survey research?
 Structured interview or self-completion survey?
 If structured interview is chosen, what are the strengths and
weaknesses of telephone survey and face-to-face survey?
 What are the strengths and weaknesses of survey research?
 How should you design your questions and your questionnaire?
Lecture 10: sampling in quantitative
studies (section A &B)
Key concepts and issues concerning sampling in
quantitative studies
Differences between probability and non-probability
sampling
How to interpret research results based on probability
sampling
Different probability sampling and non-probability
sampling strategies commonly used in quantitative
studies
‘weighting’ will not be tested
Lecture 13: reading and evaluating
research (section A only)
What is ‘reliability’ and what is ‘validity’?
Different forms of ‘reliability’ and ‘validity’ will not be
tested