ARAŞTIRMA YÖNTEMLERİ - Deneme Sınavı - 3

By answering the question "Who has written the longest research paper related to your topic?", a researcher cannot demonstrate the “gap” in the literature to prove that his/her work is worth studying. Such question including quantity of another work has no importance in contributing to the research. Therefore, the answer is C.

Synthesizing the results is the last one of the seven steps a literature review can be performed in. Literature review results may be synthesized expressively.

Meta-analysis is performed by statistical techniques combining data from multiple studies that have analyzed the same research questions. The correct answer is E.

In primary sources, the person presenting the data is actually present. Original written works such as poems, diaries, court records, interviews, surveys and original research/fieldwork and research published in scholarly journals are some examples of primary sources.

The given information is related to accuracy. If the accuracy of the web source is uncertain, it should not be preferred.

Grey literature is the unpublished, non-commercial, hard-tofind information that organizations such as professional associations, research institutes, think tanks, and government departments produce.

Organization of the Literature defines the process of finding the relevant literature, reading them, and writing up the literature. Therefore, the correct answer is B.

For the empiricists, all knowledge is a posteriori, that is, it comes from experience or is dependent on experience. Thus, empiricism does not have any claim about existence of any underlying reality beyond experience. In short, all our knowledge is induced from our sense experiences and sense experience is the only source of our knowledge. The correct answer is D.

Dualism: is a position between materialism and immaterialism, argues for two substances of existence, matter and ideas/mind (a dualistic position). The correct answer is E.

Validity of any inductive conclusion assumes that nature acts in a regular way, however there is no guarantee that the things will happen in the same way in future, this issue is known as the problem of induction. It is called ‘problem’ because it is always possible that one or more future cases will have a disconfirming case. Thus, inductivist theories provide probabilistic knowledge at best, or provide knowledge that is based on what is observed so far. The correct answer is C.

Hypothesis: Predictions or educated guesses about a certain phenomenon that are derived from a theory. The correct answer is D.

When over time, an individual or a group comes up with superior ideas and their ideas begin dominating, paradigm shift (PS) takes place as the previously accepted theory is replaced by a new theory. The correct answer is C.

Basic beliefs of positivist philosophy include: 1. Scientific knowledge must be based on empirically testable data. Thus, any scientific claim must be empirically verifiable. If any claim is not empirically verifiable, then it must be non-scientific, or even meaningless. 2. Empirical observations must be generalized and expressed as universal laws. Thus, observations must be reformulated as mathematical expressions, most often in statistical formulations. 3. There must be a unity of method across all sciences. Thus, there is no significant difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences. The correct answer is E.

Interpretive position is also known as constructivism or social constructivism, because of its focus on reflecting the constructed nature of social reality and human knowledge of the constructed reality. The correct answer is A.

It is possible to deduce that a scientific research process involves 1) problem identification, 2) data collection, 3) data analysis, 4) interpretation, and 5) report writing. All these stages are relevant parts of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method research efforts. The correct answer is B.

If a variable can only assume certain values or options, and if it can be expressed through only whole numbers, then it is a discrete variable. For example, gender variable can assume either male or female option. Continuous variables, on the contrary, are those that can take any value between their bottom and top limits, that is to say, they can be expressed in fractions. For instance, the value that variable of weight can assume ranges from zero to infinity. The correct answer is C.

Face-to-face experiment is not of the types of experimental research design. The correct answer is E.

The dependent variable is subjected to pretest and post-test procedures prior to testing the independent variable experimentally in this version of time series design, a.k.a intervention analysis or interrupted time series analysis. Just like the other non-randomized designs, formation of the independent variable is observed but not interfered by the researcher. The correct answer is A.

Common descriptive analysis techniques often employed in quantitative research include frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean, weighted mean, mode, median, range, and standard deviation. The correct answer is B.

Similar to quantitative research, identifying the research problem is the very first step of a qualitative research process. Literature, researcher’s personal and professional experience, and social issues discussed in the field bear a crucial role in terms of identifying the research problem. Literature review includes reading and learning about theories, research studies, and documents, which eases problem identification. The correct answer is D.