Business Communication Today, 11e (Bovee/Thill)
Chapter 11 Finding, Evaluating, and Processing Information
1) At the beginning of a research project, you need to
A) develop a formal outline that you plan to stick to throughout your researching and writing.
B) familiarize yourself with the subject.
C) just jump in by finding resources on the Internet and taking notes from them.
D) develop the conclusion you want to reach and start looking for evidence that supports that
conclusion.
2) A problem statement
A) outlines all the potential drawbacks of your research.
B) defines the purpose of your research.
C) is an unsupportable claim or assertion.
D) should be long and complex.
3) Sources of secondary information include
A) first-hand observation.
B) in-person interviews.
C) newspapers and periodicals.
D) experiments.
4) Primary research refers to
A) new research done specifically for your current project.
B) the evidence that stands out in your report.
C) the research you conduct first.
D) research that is fairly easy to conduct.
5) Which of these documents would not qualify as primary research?
A) A recent survey of your company’s top clients
B) The most recent issue of a trade magazine in your industry
C) Notes from a conversation you recently had with a local government official
D) Your company’s latest balance sheet
6) In evaluating material you have gathered for a report, you should
A) assume that any information taken from a webpage will be credible and reliable.
B) throw out any information whose source is an organization that might be biased.
C) check to make sure the material is current.
D) ignore government documents.
7) Bing is an example of a
A) metacrawler.
B) web directory.
C) search engine.
D) none of the above.
8) Which of the following is not true of conventional search engines?
A) They travel the web automatically, identifying new websites.
B) They access the deep Internet or hidden Internet.
C) They return to previously identified websites to look for changes.
D) Not all search engines operate in the same way.
9) A web directory differs from a search engine in that
A) it doesn’t include Usenet newsgroups.
B) it doesn’t provide as precise results as a search engine.
C) human editors find and index the websites to include.
D) it usually locates more sites than a search engine.
10) A metacrawler is
A) a highly specialized directory that focuses on a specific subject matter area.
B) a search engine that examines only newsgroup messages.
C) a type of aggregator that offers subscribers all-day information on their desktops.
D) a special type of engine that searches several search engines at once.
11) Which of the following is not a characteristic of online databases?
A) They often categorize information by subject area.
B) They offer access to many materials that are not accessible through standard search engines.
C) Using them requires knowledge of basic search techniques.
D) Most of them are available free of charge.
12) Unlike Internet search engines, online databases
A) can be accessed only from a library.
B) often provide access to various parts of the hidden Internet.
C) are rarely up to date.
D) do not require a subscription.
13) If you are researching a topic on which new material appears frequently, you should
A) take advantage of search engines, but stay away from most databases .
B) use only metacrawlers for your search to ensure the accuracy of your sources.
C) consider using online monitoring tools so that you will automatically get new information as
it comes out.
D) explain to the audience that you simply couldn’t keep up with all of the new information.
14) When conducting a database search, you use wildcards to
A) find similar spellings of your search terms.
B) provide variations on your key terms.
C) help you find plurals and alternative spellings of your key words.
D) do all of the above.
15) To conduct an effective database search
A) choose one search engine and stick with it.
B) think before you search about questions such as where useful information might be found.
C) use long search phrases in quotes rather than short phrases or single terms.
D) avoid Boolean operators because they provide only mathematical results.
16) Innovations in research technology allow you to
A) completely avoid unreliable information on the web.
B) rely exclusively on standard search engines, regardless of your needs.
C) access all online databases free of charge.
D) find webpages and also the documents webpages that are linked to those sites.
17) You would not need to cite a source if you have
A) used a direct quotation of under 250 words from a book titled Modern Economics.
B) used a table from the 1985 Farmer’s Almanac.
C) described, in your own words, a plan for organizing production lines, which appeared in a
professional journal.
D) provided general knowledge about your topic.
18) According to the fair use doctrine
A) plagiarism is not an issue in the business world—it is a problem only in schools and academic
circles.
B) crediting sources is all that is necessary to avoid legal problems.
C) once material is made public, it no longer belongs to the author.
D) you can use other people’s work only if you don’t prevent them from benefiting as a result.
19) The two most common primary research methods in the social sciences are
A) not appropriate for test marketing.
B) experiments and observations.
C) surveys and interviews.
D) test panels.
20) You create a survey and administer it five times under identical conditions. Because it
yielded completely different results each time, you should conclude that this survey is
A) not valid.
B) not reliable.
C) valid
D) reliable
21) A survey is not valid if it
A) does not include at least 50 responses.
B) is more than one year old.
C) fails to measure what it is intended to measure.
D) lacks secondary evidence to supplement it.
22) People are more likely to respond to a questionnaire if
A) they can complete it within a short time.
B) you allow them plenty of time to research their answers.
C) the questions are open ended.
D) all of the above are the case.
23) Questions such as, “Do you shop at the mall often?” are
A) perfect for most surveys.
B) too ambiguous to yield useful information.
C) likely to offend your respondents.
D) too personal and will offend most audiences.
24) “How do you spend your leisure time on the weekends?” is an example of
A) a closed-ended question.
B) an open-ended question.
C) a restatement question.
D) an inappropriate question.
25) Which of the following is a closed-ended question?
A) Would you rate the proposed expansion plan as likely to succeed or unlikely to succeed?
B) What do you see as the primary benefit of the proposed expansion plan for your family?
C) What corporate goals does the expansion help achieve?
D) How will the expansion affect day-to-day operations?
26) A disadvantage of using too many closed questions in an interview is that they
A) do not take full advantage of the interview format.
B) prevent any important information from being revealed.
C) diminish the interviewer’s control over the interview.
D) do all of the above.
27) When conducting an information interview, it is a good idea to
A) learn about the person you are interviewing ahead of time.
B) stick to using just one type of question.
C) save the most important questions for last.
D) avoid making an appointment, since you don’t want the subject to think ahead about answers.
28) Unlike a summary, a paraphrase
A) restates the original material in your own words and with your own sentence structures.
B) presents the gist of the original material in fewer words by eliminating some of the original
words.
C) does not require complete documentation of sources.
D) is never acceptable in business documents.
29) To paraphrase effectively
A) avoid using any business language or jargon.
B) check your version against the original to make sure that you didn’t alter the meaning.
C) make sure your version is the same length as or longer than the original.
D) do all of the above.
30) What would be the median for the following set of monthly salaries: $1200, $1200, $1300,
$1500, $1700, $2000, $2800?
A) $1200
B) $1500
C) $1671.43
D) $1700
31) To find out your company’s average monthly utility bill over the last year, you would need to
calculate the ________ of the last twelve bills.
A) mean
B) median
C) mode
D) highest
32) The number 29 is the ________ in this set of figures: 25, 29, 34, 29, 29, 42, 8.
A) mean
B) median
C) mode
D) correlation
33) When drawing conclusions for a report, you
A) should make sure to take into account any information you know about that hasn’t been
included in the report.
B) shouldn’t compromise with others working as a part of your team.
C) should suggest actions for the company to take based on the facts you have collected.
D) interpret what the facts you have gathered mean.
34) Recommendations differ from conclusions in that recommendations
A) suggest a clear course of action.
B) interpret evidence.
C) are always acceptable to readers.
D) always come at the end of the report.
35) The recommendations you make in a report should be
A) the same as the conclusions.
B) easy to implement.
C) what the audience wants to hear.
D) practical and offer clear guidance on next steps.
36) Because of their complexity, industry publications and blogs are not a good place to begin
familiarizing yourself with an unfamiliar subject area.
37) To help guide your research, you should develop a problem statement that defines the
problem or purpose of your research.
38) In conducting research on General Electric, you should not use any information from
General Electric’s official website, www.ge.com, because it is bound to be biased.
39) The difference between primary sources and secondary sources is that primary sources are
those you create specifically for your project.
40) It is particularly important to verify information when it goes beyond simple facts to include
projections and interpretations.
41) With so much information available online, professionals have little need for libraries when
it comes to finding secondary information.
42) If you wanted to find statistical information about countries in South America, the best type
of library resource to consult would be a directory.
43) When you need to consult government documents, your only option is to go to the
appropriate government office in your city.
44) When using the Internet to conduct research, you can be reasonably sure that any information
you find will be accurate.
45) The best general purpose search engines are capable of reaching information on the hidden
Internet.
46) Some of the most useful and up-to-date resources available at libraries are online databases.
47) Although they are helpful for staying up to date on personal interests, online monitoring tools
are not helpful for business-related research.