RME620S - RESEARCH METHODOLOGY - 2ND OPP - JAN 2023


RME620S - RESEARCH METHODOLOGY - 2ND OPP - JAN 2023



1 Page 1

▲back to top


nAm I BI A u n IVE RS ITY
OF SCIEnCE Ano TECHnOLOGY
FACULTYOF HEALTH,NATURAL RESOURCESAND APPLIEDSCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ANO NATURAL RESOURCE SCIENCES
QUALIFICATION: BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN AGRICULTURE
QUALIFICATION CODE: 07BAGA
LEVEL: 7
COURSE CODE: RME620S
DATE: JANUARY2023
DURATION: 3 HOURS
COURSE NAME: BASICRESEARCHMETHODOLOGY
MARKS: 100
SECONDOPPORTUNITY/SUPPLEMENTARY EXAMINATION QUESTION PAPER
EXAMINER(S) Dr Thinah Moyo
MODERATOR: Dr Tendai Nzuma
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Answer ALL five (5) questions.
2. Please write neatly and legibly.
3. Number the answers clearly.
4. Show all your working.
5. Round your answers to two decimal places for all calculations.
PERMISSIBLEMATERIALS
1. Examination question paper
2. Answering book
3. Calculators
THIS QUESTION PAPER CONSISTS OF 3 PAGES (Excluding this front page)

2 Page 2

▲back to top


QUESTION 1
(a) How would you best describe a research proposal?
[20 Marks]
(5 Marks)
(b) State four reasons why research proposals are written.
(4 Marks)
(c) Explain in 3 strong points the purpose of a good literature review.
(6 Marks)
(d) What is meant by the acronym SMART objectives in research?
(5 Marks)
QUESTION 2
[20 Marks]
(a) What is the difference between quantitative and qualitative research methods? (2
Marks)
(b) Explain why research is considered to be an iterative process.
(2 Marks)
(c) Define mixed-methods research?
(2 Marks)
(d) You are interested in knowing what percent of all households in a large city have
a single woman as the head of the household. To estimate this percentage, you
conduct a census survey with 300 households and determine how many of these
300 are headed by a single woman. In this example,
(i)
what is the population?
(2 Marks)
(ii) what is the sample?
(2 Marks)
(iii) what is the parameter?
(2 Marks)
(iv) what is the variable?
(2 Marks)
{v) what is the statistic?
(2 Marks)
(e) List incorrect citations from the paragraph below.
According to (Scoones, 2009), diverse livelihoods emerge from multiple activities
interacting with each other. Several factors influence smallholder farmers' choice of
livelihood strategies and dependence on agriculture (Ellis 1998; Alemu, 2012). Sikhweni
& Hassan (2014) state that apart from understanding rural households' preferred
livelihood strategies, underlying determinants driving them towards any of the
livelihood choices are equally important for an investigation.
(3 Marks)
(f) Is this a correct way of listing this journal article using APA 6th Edition referencing style?
Francis, D. & Mayo, T. {2022). Making minds: What's wrong with education, and what
should we do about it? Journal of Teaching and Teacher Education, 11(3), 229-241. (1
Mark)
2

3 Page 3

▲back to top


r
'.
QUESTION 3
[20 Marks]
You take a random sample of ten car owners and ask them, ''To the nearest year, how old is
your current car?" Their responses are as follows: 0 years, 1 year, 2 years, 4 years, 8 years, 3
years, 10 years, 17 years, 2 years, 7 years.
(a) To the nearest year, what is the standard deviation of this sample?
(15 Marks)
s=
Hint:
(b) What is the mode and median for the age of the cars?
(5 Marks)
QUESTION 4
[20 Marks]
(a) A Real Estate Agent tells you that the average cost of houses in a town is NAD2,176,000.
You want to know how much the prices of the houses may vary from this average. What
measurement do you need?
(2 Marks)
A. standard deviation
B. interquartile range
C. variance
D. percentile
(b) To the nearest thousandth, what is the mean of the following data set? 0.003, 0.045, 0.58,
0.687, 1.25, 10.38, 11.252, 12.001
(2 Marks)
(c) To the nearest tenth, what is the median of the following data set? 18, 21, 17, 18, 16, 15.5,
12, 17, 10, 21, 17.
(2 Marks)
(d) Define a percentile.
(2 Marks)
(e) Which of the following is an example of a quantitative variable (also known as a numerical
variable) and why?
(2 Marks)
A. the colour of an automobile
8.
a person's region of residence
C.
a person's postal code
D. a person's height, recorded in centimetres
E. choices (C) and (D)
(f) From the scenario in (d) above, which variables are qualitative and why?
(6 Marks)
(g)
You took a survey of 100 people and found that 60% of them like chocolate and 40%
don't. Which of the following results presentations gives the distribution of the "chocolate
versus no chocolate" variable?
(4 Marks)
A. a table of the results
B. a pie chart of the results
C. a bar graph of the results
3

4 Page 4

▲back to top


-'
D. a sentence describing the results
E. all of the above
QUESTION 5
[20 Marks]
(a) If the formula for a regression line is y= 6x +10. Describe the components of this line and
the interpretation thereof.
(5 Marks)
(b) State and describe 5 common data distribution patterns in statistics.
(10 Marks)
(c) Define correlation coefficient and state two known properties of this coefficient. (5
Marks)
THEEND
Total Marks: 100
4