Jammie Price Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice The University of North Carolina at Wilmington

• Read the following excerpts and respond to the questions below: 
  

A corporation's top executives were concerned about the rising costs of employee health insurance and about employees missing work due to health problems associated with smoking.  The Human Relations Department devises a quit-smoking program and asks you, as a member of the department, to conduct a study on the company's 600 employees.  In January, you give a survey questionnaire to each employee.  The survey asks about smoking behaviors and reactions to a planned program to reduce smoking.  In the program all non-smoking employees get a $150 monthly reimbursement check from health insurance savings for a period of three years if they continue to be non-smokers.  Each smoking employee is offered one day at full pay to attend a free quit-smoking workshop.  They are also eligible for the reimbursement after they go at least six weeks without smoking at all.  Once you survey all employees, you help put the program into operation.

In June after the quit-smoking program has been in full operation, you conduct a second survey of all employees who worked for the company in January.  You again ask what employees think about the program.  And you ask employees who were smokers in January and who participated in the program whether they still smoke.  In November you survey all employees who responded to the two previous surveys.  You again asked what they think about the program and about their smoking behavior.  In December you use the results from the three surveys to write a report to the Human Resources Department about how well the experimental program worked in reducing employee smoking.

Questions:

Is your research exploratory, descriptive or explanatory?  What about the description of the study tells you this?

Is your research basic or applied? If applied, what type of applied research is it?  What in the description of the study tells you this?

Is the study cross-sectional, panel, time series or case study?  What in the description of the study tells you this?

Is the study qualitative or quantitative or both? What in the description of the study tells you this?

*Note:  Answering these questions will also help prepare you for Exam 1.