Research Aptitude MCQ Quiz - Objective Question with Answer for Research Aptitude - Download Free PDF

The correct answer is - CrossRef

Key Points

• CrossRef is a major publisher-neutral citation platform used for tracking and managing research publications and their citations.
• It assigns DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) to research articles, making it easier to track and link academic publications.
• CrossRef serves as an authoritative source for citation management in research, offering a robust citation indexing service.

Additional Information

• Web of Science
  • It is a well-known research database that indexes scholarly articles, but it is not a citation management platform like CrossRef.
  • Web of Science tracks citations but is more focused on bibliometric analysis and research metrics.
• SpringerLink
  • SpringerLink is an academic platform for accessing journals and books published by Springer, but it is not primarily focused on citation tracking.
  • It provides access to a wide range of scientific literature but does not function as a neutral citation platform like CrossRef.
• ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)
  • ERIC is a digital library for education research, but it does not function as a citation management platform.
  • It indexes educational publications and provides resources for academic research in education but does not offer citation indexing like CrossRef.
• GARP (Global Academic Research Platform)
  • GARP is an initiative that aims to improve academic research transparency and accessibility.
  • While not a citation platform itself, GARP supports platforms like CrossRef in managing and verifying citations for global research.
  • GARP is focused on establishing best practices for academic publishing and improving research impact metrics.

The correct answer is - A–3, B–2, C–1, D–4

Key Points

• Fabrication (A) refers to making up data or results (3). This means creating false information instead of relying on actual data.
• Plagiarism (B) is using others’ ideas or words without credit (2), which involves copying someone else's work without acknowledging the original author.
• Falsification (C) means misrepresenting data or findings (1), which includes manipulating or altering data in a deceptive way.
• Self-Plagiarism (D) occurs when one reuses their own previous work without citation (4), which is also considered unethical in academic contexts.

Additional Information

• Fabrication
  • Involves creating fake data or results for research or experiments.
  • It is a serious ethical violation, as it distorts the validity of research findings.
• Plagiarism
  • Refers to using someone else’s work without proper attribution.
  • It is often committed in academic writing, but can also occur in other forms of content creation.
• Falsification
  • Includes altering or manipulating research data to mislead others or to support a specific conclusion.
  • Like fabrication, falsification undermines the integrity of the research process.
• Self-Plagiarism
  • Occurs when an individual reuses their own previously published work without citation.
  • It is considered a form of academic dishonesty because it misrepresents the originality of the work.

The correct answer is -  UGC mandates institutions to use plagiarism detection tools

Key Points

• UGC mandates the use of plagiarism detection tools
  • Under the UGC's 2018 Plagiarism Regulations, institutions must use plagiarism detection software to ensure research integrity.
  • The regulation encourages institutions to establish mechanisms for preventing plagiarism in academic and research papers.
  • Plagiarism detection tools are critical in identifying copied content, ensuring proper citations, and maintaining academic honesty.

Additional Information

• Plagiarism Regulations
  • The UGC's 2018 regulations define plagiarism as presenting someone else's work, ideas, or intellectual property as one's own.
  • Research misconduct, including plagiarism, is subject to penalties ranging from penalties to disqualification, depending on the severity of the violation.
  • Plagiarism can include direct copying, paraphrasing without proper citation, and using the same work in multiple publications (self-plagiarism).
• Accountability for Plagiarism
  • Plagiarism is not restricted to students alone; faculty members are also held accountable for research misconduct.
  • Plagiarism affects the credibility of academic research and violates ethical standards within academic publishing.

The correct answer is - These are applicable only to PhD scholars

Key Points

• The UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism) Regulations, 2018
  • Are not limited to PhD scholars; they are applicable to all stakeholders in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).
  • This includes undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, faculty, and non-teaching staff involved in research.
  • The objective is to institutionalize academic integrity and prevent plagiarism across all levels of academia.

Additional Information

• Salient Features of the UGC 2018 Regulation
  • Institutions are required to develop a policy for academic integrity and use licensed plagiarism detection software.
  • Plagiarism is categorized based on the percentage of similarity:
    • 0–10%: No penalty (Level 0)
    • 10–40%: Warning and resubmission (Level 1)
    • 40–60%: Denial of benefits such as increments or supervision (Level 2)
    • Above 60%: Cancellation of registration or dismissal (Level 3)
  • Institutional Academic Integrity Panel (IAIP) must be formed in each HEI to handle cases and enforce penalties.

The correct answer is - To create awareness about academic integrity

Key Points

• Main objective of UGC 2018 Regulation:
  • To promote academic integrity and prevent misconduct such as plagiarism in academic writing.
  • Applies to all stakeholders including students, researchers, faculty, and staff.
  • It aims to ensure a culture of responsible conduct of research across Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).
  • Supports fair and ethical practices in the creation of theses, dissertations, and research articles.

Additional Information

• Scope of UGC 2018 Regulations
  • Applies to all academic, research, and professional writing submitted by individuals in HEIs.
  • Defines plagiarism as the unauthorized use of another’s work without credit.
  • Sets thresholds for similarity index (e.g., 0–10% is acceptable with no penalty).
• Institutional Responsibilities
  • Establish an Academic Integrity Panel and use software tools to check for plagiarism.
  • Implement a mechanism for reporting, investigating, and penalizing plagiarism cases.
  • Educate all stakeholders through mandatory training and awareness programs.
• Penalties under the regulation
  • Vary based on level of similarity (e.g., 10–40%, 40–60%, above 60%).
  • Include penalties like resubmission, denial of increments, and dismissal depending on severity.

The correct answer is Hyderabad.

• National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), a constituent research laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was established in 1961.
• The research areas of this institute are ground water-management, artificial recharge, pollutants, natural hazards-earthquakes, tsunami.

Additional Information

Research is a systematic inquiry based on the scientific method and concerned with understanding, prediction and control of phenomena. Educational research applies the scientific method for the systematic study of educational situations. It seeks to help us solve educational problems (not merely identification of problem) and searching for the new facts and principles underlying the process of education. Studies in educational research are categorised under two broad heads:

Key Points

Quantitative Studies

• Experimental Research: It is concerned with the investigation of cause-effect relationships in educational events. Variable(s) related to cause must precede those related to the effects. Since in terms of time, the cause variables occur first, they are also known as 'antecedents' while effect variables are called 'consequents'. 

• Quasi-experimental Studies: The literal meaning of 'quasi' is "seemingly, but not really". Thus research studies that do not use a truly experimental design are called quasi-experimental studies.  This type of research investigates the same issues that experimental research does, the difference is only in terms of the manner in which an experiment is designed and conducted. 

• Correlational Research: Correlation means 'going togetherness'; in other words, a correlation between two variables tells us about the relationship between them. For example, if we know how achievement in mathematics (x) is related with achievement in science (y), then on the basis of marks, in 'x' we can predict marks in 'y' and vice versa

Qualitative or Non-Quantitative Studies: Qualitative studies are also called 'descriptive' studies by some researchers. 

• Descriptive Research: Below are part of descriptive research:
  • It investigates 'what exists'. If it is conducted on large samples through surveys, it is called a 'survey study'.
  • It may also be based on a detailed and comprehensive study of just one unit of population, i.e. just one case, thus resulting in a 'case study'.
  • Descriptive research may examine how various aspects of human development (e.g. intelligence, attitudes, social development, moral development) or skills (cognitive skills, social interaction skills etc;) develop in groups of persons of the same characteristics. Such studies are called 'developmental studies'.
  • Similarly analysis of documents related to a particular aspect/area of education (e.g. religious and moral instruction, value education etc;) is collectively known as 'documentary analysis studies'. 
• Ethnographic Research: It is just the opposite of experimental research. In the latter, research is conducted through carefully controlled experiments but in ethnographic research, the emphasis is on naturalistic (i.e. totally without control) field studies. 
• Historical studies: They are concerned with the study of 'what was'; they try to determine, evaluate and understand past events primarily for the purpose of gaining a clearer understanding of the present and a better prediction of the future. 
• Philosophical Research: It studies in education can be taken up under historical research. ' These studies usually deal with philosophical aspects of education (e.g. related to knowledge and acquiring knowledge), metaphysical (i.e. related to reality aspects) or axiological (i.e. concerned with values) aspects of the education process. Philosophical research is basically interpretive in its approach and it involves a careful definition of the terms and processes. 

Hence, we conclude that searching for the new facts and principles underlying the process of education is the aim of educational research.

Action Research is research intended to solve practical problems of an individual or a group or an institution through planned intervention in day-to-day working. Here, the emphasis lies on solving problems through the adoption of alternative practices. It helps to further build on the understanding that teaching is influenced by personal knowledge, trial and error, reflection on practice, and conversations or dialogues with colleagues, students, and other stakeholders within the school system. 

Key Points

Objectives of Action Research:

• To improve the working conditions of various infrastructural components of school premises.
• To take collaborative action, reflect on activities taken up in the school, and generating discussion on key issues of concern that require to be addressed.
• To prompt us to evaluate our own instructional practices in the classrooms. 
• To develop a scientific attitude among teachers, so they can motivate to study the problems scientifically.
• To organize a healthy and congenial environment for effective learning.
• To stimulate the students to raise their standard of learning.
• To make way for developing and monitoring changes in the existing teacher-learner activities and instructional practices.
• To cultivate the art of identifying local resources, and make use of these resources to find solutions for the identified problems.

Hence, we conclude that motivating the students to attend school is not a major objective of action research as it comes under a learning environment and is implicitly achieved by organizing a healthy and congenial environment for effective learning. 

The correct answer is Ethnographic method

Important Points

• Ethnographic methods
  • It is a research approach where participants look at people in their cultural setting, with the goal of producing a narrative account of that particular culture, against a theoretical backdrop.
  • The methods used by participants in learning the various socio‑cultural systems that they interact with are the same methods that are used by the ethnographer in learning a new cultural system that is by observation, interviewing, participating, and making interpretations.

Additional Information

• Experimental research
  • It is research conducted with a scientific approach using two sets of variables. The first set acts as a constant, which you use to measure the differences of the second set.  
• Historical research method:
  • it involves studying, understanding, and interpreting past events is to reach insights or conclusions about past persons or occurrences.
• Exegetical method 
  • it is the critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture.

Positivism research clings to the view that only “factual” knowledge gained through observation (the senses), including measurement, is reliable.

Post-positivist research accepts concepts to be relevant only if they support action. It says that a lot of our interpretations may be based on assumptions and conjectures.

• Researchers practicing this approach believe that there are laws and theories that govern the world and they can be identified and tested using scientific methods.
• In the post-positivist approach to research, the following types of research got emphasized :

1. Phenomenological research : 
   • An approach to qualitative research that focuses on the commonality of a lived experience within a particular group.
   • The researcher attempts to understand how one or more individuals experience a phenomenon.
   • For example, interviewing the wives of 10 prisoners of war and asking them to describe their experiences.
2. Ethnographic research :
   • The process of studying and describing a culture.
   • It provides an insider's picture of a community under study.
   • The researcher can go and live in a specific community where the research is going to conduct and study the culture and their educational practices.
3. Action research : 
   • A wide variety of investigative, evaluative, and analytical research methods are designed to identify problems - be it organizational or academic - and help researchers to develop practical solutions to address them quickly and efficiently.
   • It may also be applied to educational techniques that are not necessarily problematic but researchers want to identify a change or improve their knowledge.
   • Action research is also called a "cycle of actions" because it follows a predefined process that is repeated over time, i.e., PLAN → ACT → OBSERVE → REFLECT.

Therefore, the Ethnographic study falls under the post positivistic approach.

The correct answer is (B) and (C)

Hypothesis testing is the process of assessing the validity of an assumption by evaluating data from a sample of the population.

The three main categories of psychological research are descriptive, correlational, and experimental research.

Important Points

• .Experimental method:
  • It is used in conducting scientific experiments,
  • In this researchers develop hypotheses to guide experimental design.
  • A hypothesis is a suggested explanation that is both testable and falsifiable and then it is tested to check the validity of the hypothesis to prove this to be  true or false.
  • 3 types of hypothesis testing in experimental research:
    • z-test
    • t-test
    • F-test
• Ex post facto research design:
  • It is a method in which groups with qualities that already exist are compared on some dependent variable.
  • It is Also known as "after the fact" research,
  • It is also considered quasi-experimental as the subjects are not randomly assigned - they are grouped based on a particular characteristic or trait.
  • ​For example,
    • a researcher is interested in how weight influences self-esteem levels in adults. So the participants would be separated into differing groups (underweight, normal weight, overweight) and their self-esteem levels measured. ​

Additional Information

• Historical research method:
  • it involves studying, understanding, and interpreting past events is to reach insights or conclusions about past persons or occurrences.
  • it uses two types of research methods 
    • ​Primary sources include first-hand information, such as eyewitness reposts and original documents.
    • Secondary sources include secondhand information, such as a description of an event by someone other than an eyewitness, or a textbook author's explanation of an event or theory.
• Exegetical method 
  • it is the critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture. 
• Descriptive Research method:
  • ​Research studies that do not test specific relationships between variables are called descriptive, or qualitative, studies.
  • Its primary focus is to simply describe the nature of the demographics under study instead of focusing on the “why”.
  • It is also called an observational research method as none of the variables in the study are influenced during the process of the research.

Validity in research mainly stands for accuracy of procedures, research instruments, tests, etc. The concept of validity can also be understood by posing a question, ‘Are we measuring or able to measure what we originally intended to measure?’. Validity means that research must be unbiased and free from any systematic error as these may impact the applicability of research. Without validity, research goes in the wrong direction.

External Validity:

• It means that external factors that can affect the study must be controlled.
• For example, the response of a respondent in social sciences surveys may be affected by the mere presence of a non-participant observer.
• It also refers to the extent to which the research outcome can be generalized and applied to other cases that are not under study.
• It is also termed as credibility and external validity is termed as generalizability or transferability. 

​Hence, External validity in research refers to The extent of generalizability that the results provide.

Personalistic style refers to the quality of being characterized by purely personal modes of expression or behavior while writing a research report.

The above style is permissible in the following research:

1. Grounded theory research:

• This method helps to construct theory from the systematically obtained data and analysis of it
• It follows the data collection method for the focused group
• It is systematic and inductive in nature.

2. Participant-observation based research:

• It is the process to learn about the activity of people
• The data collected by itself

3. Case study research:

• A case study has no sample
• It is a detailed and specific study of a subject. 
• It helps to gain concrete, in-depth and contextual knowledge about the concerned subject
• It identifies the issues, describes the situation, and analysis using theoretical concepts

Therefore, option 4 is the correct answer.

The correct answer is Systems, Applications, Products.

Important Points

• SAP is one of the world’s leading producers of software for the management of business data processes.
• SAP provides “future-proof Cloud ERP solutions that will power the next generation of business”.
• SAP can boost your organization's efficiency and productivity by automating repetitive tasks, making better use of your time, money, and resources.

Key Points

• An SAP number is a unique six-digit number used by a municipality to identify a vendor in its system.

The Correct Answer is Philosophical research.

Research is defined as careful consideration of study regarding a particular concern or problem using scientific methods. Empirical research is a research approach that makes use of evidence-based data while non-empirical research is a research approach that makes use of theoretical data

Important Points

Philosophical research

• It deals with the understanding and assessment of aspects of the thinking of those who have contributed significantly to developments in the history of philosophy or of human thought.
• It includes the study of the history of philosophy, the study of different philosophers, and the general development of philosophical thought.
• For example, Educational issues are looked at from the viewpoint of different philosophers
• It comes under non empirical research.

Additional Information

Ethnography:​ 

• It is the study of people in their own environment through the use of methods such as participant observation and face-to-face interviewing
• The ethnography research study is also carried out through direct observation of users in their natural environment rather than in a lab. hence it is less dependent on empirical fact
• The objective of this type of research is to gain insights into how users interact with things in their natural environment. 

Experimental research

• It is a scientific approach to research, where one or more independent variables are manipulated and applied to one or more dependent variables to measure their effect on the latter.
• The effect of the independent variables on the dependent variables is usually observed and recorded over some time, to aid researchers in drawing a reasonable conclusion regarding the relationship between these 2 variable types.
• it is heavily dependent on empirical facts

 Phenomenological research.:

• It is the qualitative research approach that helps in describing the lived experiences of an individual is known as phenomenological research.
• The phenomenological method focuses on studying the phenomena that have impacted an individual
• A variety of methods can be used in phenomenologically-based research, including interviews, conversations, participant observation, action research, focus meetings and analysis of personal texts.
• Hence it depends on empirical facts.