Question

Select one qualitative and one quantitative question that you are interested in investigating. Identify the independent and dependent variables. Next, create a hypothesis or set of hypotheses to go along with your research question. Identify your hypothesis as one of each of the four categories below and explain why your hypothesis fits into these categories (hint: review chapter 3).

• Associative or causal
• Simple or complex
• Nondirectional vs. directional
• Null vs. research

Answer 1

Quantitative

A study on Smoking and how it causes lung cancer.

Independent variable:Smoking

It is the independent variable as it doesn't depend on the lung cancer.

Dependent variable: Lung Cancer

It is the outcome of smoking

Hypothesis:Assosiative

Most of the lung cancer patient have been smokers for over 10 years

It's associative because it is associating the probability of lung cancer with long term smoking.

Qualitative:

To research the culture of a large tech company, you decide to take an ethnographic approach. You work at the company for several months and use various methods to gather data:

1. You take field notes with observations and reflect on your own experiences of the company culture.

2. You distribute open-ended surveys to employees across all the company’s offices by email to find out if the culture varies across locations.

3. You conduct in-depth interviews with employees in your office to learn about their experiences and perspectives in greater detail.

Independent Variable: Culture.

Dependent variable: company rules and Employees Behavior.