Research Methodology — Mock Test 1

For three or more authors, MLA 9 gives the first author, inverted, followed by 'et al.'

When the signal phrase names the author, the parenthesis gives only the page: (194).

Bartleby.com (classics and reference); Project MUSE (journals and books); WorldCat (OCLC); Shodhganga (INFLIBNET's Indian ETD repository).

Front matter (preface, contents) → body (introduction … conclusion) → back matter (bibliography).

Note: Many theses place the table of contents before the preface; the key puts the preface first.

Table Talk (1832): the professions from the Church, literature from the professions, and the press from literature.

Analytical bibliography (W. W. Greg, Fredson Bowers) studies the physical book — type, paper, printing, binding — to reconstruct how a particular copy was produced and how its text was transmitted. Descriptive bibliography records those features; enumerative bibliography lists works; historical bibliography studies the book trade.

Experimental research manipulates variables under controlled conditions, as in the sciences and psychology. The standard kinds of literary research are bibliographical/textual, biographical, historical and interpretive (critical).

Archive Fever (1995) reflects on the archive — its power to decide what is remembered, and the drive both to preserve and to destroy. It is a standard reading for the archival method in literary research.

Wetherell, Taylor and Yates (Discourse Theory and Practice / Discourse as Data, 2001) list traditions such as conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis, Bakhtinian and Foucauldian research. Saussure's structural linguistics studies langue as a system, not discourse in use, so it is not one of them.

Research moves from topic → problem → concepts and measures (operationalisation) → data collection → analysis and interpretation.

Deduction moves from general premises to a particular conclusion (all men are mortal → Socrates is mortal). Induction moves from particular cases to a general law.

A paper needs a problem statement, a review of the background and a clear thesis. Summarising and paraphrasing are techniques, not components, and self-glorification has no place in academic writing.

Epistemology asks how we know: the search for truth and its justification, and (in the Cartesian tradition) certain, indubitable knowledge. Scientific realism is an ontological position, critical theory concerns power and ideology, and social control is a sociological idea.

Note: The original options were not shown on the source page; options rebuilt around the keyed answer (B and D).

MLA prescribes one-inch margins, allows a slash between paired opposites, and indents Works Cited entries by half an inch. Titles are never bolded in MLA.

Note: Statement E is trivially true since nothing is bolded; the key treats it as false.

MLA 9 omits the city of publication (B), puts a period after the author and uses 'vol.' and 'no.' (D), and needs a chapter title and editor role for a chapter in an edited book (E). A and C follow the template.

Methods are the specific procedures; methodology is the reasoning that justifies them.

Quantitative research measures with standard instruments and analyses numerically.

Reliability is consistency; validity is whether the tool measures what it claims to.

Reusing one's own published text without acknowledgement (duplicate or redundant publication).

Note: The source prints 'Intersexuality' for option 3.

Inductive hypotheses grow out of observations; deductive ones are derived from theory before testing.

MLA italicises unfamiliar foreign words (dharma, Weltanschauung), but not those in common English use.

MLA: prose quotations of more than four lines (verse of more than three) are indented half an inch, without quotation marks, with the citation after the final punctuation.

MLA 9, section 3 'Principles of Inclusive Language'.

Per the key: the mechanics deal with conventions of the written page (spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, numbers), not grammar or content.

Author. "Title of article." Journal (italic), vol., no., year, pp.

Note: Options 1–3 are shortened from the source; their errors (date first, no author, wrong order) are kept.