Match List - I with List - II. Research Study Research Method A.…

Concept

A research study is classified by two questions: can the researcher assign and control the causal condition, and how are the data gathered across time? Those two questions separate the four designs named in List-II, and each study in List-I answers them in only one way.

• Ethnographic research: the investigator enters a natural social or cultural setting and describes behaviour and interaction as they actually occur there, without introducing or withholding anything.

• Cross-sectional survey research: several groups that differ on a variable such as age or grade are measured at a single point in time, and the differences between those groups are read as a pattern of development.

• Experimental research: the investigator assigns a treatment to one group and withholds it from a comparable group, holds other conditions constant, and measures the treatment's effect on an outcome.

• Ex-post facto research: the causal condition already exists in the participants' past and cannot be assigned; the investigator begins from the present outcome and traces it back to that pre-existing condition.

Application to the four studies

1. A — peer-interaction in a racially mixed classroom of an urban high school: the researcher stays inside the classroom's own social world and records how students of different races interact with one another. Nothing is assigned, withheld or held constant, and the output is a description of that setting on its own terms, which is ethnographic research (III).

2. B — development pattern of intelligence among middle-level school students: a developmental pattern is obtained here by measuring students of several grade levels at the same time and comparing those age groups, instead of following one cohort for years. Measuring different age groups at one point in time is cross-sectional survey research (I).

3. C — effect of watching television on Science achievement of 9th grade students: television viewing is a condition the researcher can hand out — one group is given the viewing schedule, a comparable group is not — and Science achievement is then compared between them under controlled conditions. A manipulated treatment with a controlled comparison is experimental research (IV).

4. D — impact of education on social status of marginalized groups: the education these groups received is already complete and cannot be granted or withheld by the researcher. The study starts from the social status observed now and works backwards to the schooling that preceded it, which is ex-post facto research (II).

Cross-check

C and D are the discriminating pair: both are worded as cause-and-effect questions, so the deciding test is whether the researcher can hand out the causal condition. Television viewing can be assigned, so C is experimental; schooling already received cannot be assigned, so D is ex-post facto. The complete match is A-III, B-I, C-IV, D-II.