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Q:
The writing style for a report should be more formal if
A) you know your readers reasonably well.
B) your report is internal.
C) the subject is controversial or complex.
D) the report is relatively short.
E) you are not confident in your conclusions.
Q:
When you write in a formal style, you should
A) eliminate references to I and me.
B) open with a humorous anecdote.
C) use many colorful adjectives or adverbs.
D) still include contractions such as "We've" to retain a conversational tone.
E) use as much jargon as possible.
Q:
To gain credibility with your audience in business reports, do all of the following except
A) research all sides of your topic.
B) make the report longer than it really needs to be.
C) avoid setting unrealistic expectations.
D) document your findings with credible sources.
E) All of the above will increase your credibility.
Q:
An employee who writes a report on her experiences during last week's sales calls is preparing a(n)
A) analytical report.
B) informational report.
C) proposal.
D) work plan.
E) business plan.
Q:
Which of the following is not a useful strategy in preparing business reports?
A) Clarify the problem or opportunity at hand.
B) Use the same format for reports, regardless of length.
C) Develop a work plan.
D) Consider delivering reports through multiple media.
E) All of the above are useful strategies.
Q:
When outlining the content of your report
A) it is helpful to use informative headings as opposed to descriptive ones.
B) you should use complex language for all headings.
C) keep in mind that you will have to use this same outline for your final report.
D) you should not use any adjectives.
E) do all of the above.
Q:
Delivering a business report as a word processing file
A) is usually not preferable to a printed document.
B) is useful if the audience will need to search the report frequently.
C) wastes time and confuses your audience.
D) is rarely, if ever, necessary.
E) is considered unprofessional in the U.S., but acceptable in most foreign countries.
Q:
When selecting media for a report
A) you should choose the ones that are most convenient.
B) you should choose the ones that are most economical.
C) your decisions should reflect your audience's expectations.
D) you should always present your report in writing.
E) you should always select those that are high-tech.
Q:
Which of the following is not a typical element in a formal work plan?
A) Statement of purpose
B) Statement of the scope of the investigation
C) Discussion of tasks to be accomplished
D) Conclusions and recommendations
E) Preliminary outline
Q:
A formal work plan includes all of the following except
A) a statement of the problem or opportunity addressed in your report.
B) a list of all the sources you will use.
C) plans for following up after delivering the report.
D) a statement of the purpose and scope of your investigation.
E) a list of final conclusions and recommendations.
Q:
Which of the following is the least clear statement of purpose?
A) "The purpose of this report to determine which of four alternative investments will have the highest return."
B) "The purpose of this report is to analyze four potential investments."
C) "The purpose of this report is to answer the question, 'Which of four investments will provide the highest return?'"
D) "The goal of this report is to evaluate the return on four investments."
E) "The primary purpose of this report is to evaluate the return on four investments."
Q:
Which of the following is an infinitive phrase?
A) updating clients
B) update clients
C) updated clients
D) to update clients
E) will update clients
Q:
The best way to phrase the purpose statement of a report is with
A) complex language.
B) an infinitive phrase.
C) a controversial statement.
D) jargon.
E) humor.
Q:
Despite the variety among them, many analytical reports include a
A) standard opening.
B) section of recommendations.
C) "this is how it's done" quality.
D) standard middle section.
E) disclaimer on the last page.
Q:
The basic purpose of informational reports is
A) to persuade the audience to act.
B) to present recommendations and conclusions.
C) to present data, facts, feedback, and other types of information, without analysis or recommendations.
D) to convince the reader of the soundness of your thinking.
E) to change the audience's opinion on your topic.
Q:
Q:
Explain the three basic categories of analytical business reports and provide at least one example of each type.
Q:
Describe three strategies for effectively organizing a website.
Q:
Describe the elements of a formal business plan.
Q:
Describe several benefits and one potential drawback of organizing business reports using the direct approach.
Q:
List and briefly describe the five elements that usually are part of a formal work plan.
Q:
List the three major disadvantages of Internet search engines, then briefly describe other electronic research tools that overcome those shortcomings.
Q:
Describe the general function of internal proposals, and provide at least one example to illustrate.
Q:
Briefly describe the circumstances in which the yardstick approach would be particularly useful for organizing your proposal, and provide an example of a report that would benefit from this organizational approach.
Q:
You have been asked to help a company find ways to reduce the amount it spends on employee health and dental benefits. Write a problem statement for the report that you will produce.
Q:
List three guidelines to follow in order to avoid ethical lapses when conducting research.
Q:
Provide an example of a conclusion, and then give an example of a recommendation on the same topic.
Q:
Briefly explain the difference between primary research and secondary research.
Q:
List the three most common strategies for structuring analytical reports.
Q:
Briefly explain problem factoring.
Q:
Give three reasons that writing analytical reports presents a greater challenge than writing informational reports.
Q:
What is the primary difference between a feasibility report and a justification report?
Q:
Provide at least five examples of topical organization strategies for business reports.
Q:
List three types of reports commonly used to monitor and control operations in business.
Q:
You have been asked to help a company find ways to reduce the amount it spends on employee health and dental benefits. Write a purpose statement for the report you will produce.
Q:
Briefly explain the primary function of a statement of purpose, then indicate the most useful way to phrase one.
Q:
If sales for the first six months of the year were $24,000, $20,000, $23,000, $20,000, $19,000, and $21,000, the mean for the six months would be $20,000.
Q:
Paraphrases do not require documentation of sources.
Q:
"Do you think the new employee benefit package is adequate?" is an example of an open-ended question.
Q:
Observations, interviews, and experiments are all considered secondary sources of information.
Q:
Boolean operators include terms such as AND, OR, and NOT.
Q:
A metacrawler enables you to use multiple search engines simultaneously.
Q:
Unlike most search engines, a web directory yields results that have been screened by human editors.
Q:
The best general purpose search engines are capable of reaching information on the hidden Internet.
Q:
With so much information available online, professionals have little need for libraries when it comes to finding secondary information.
Q:
In conducting research on General Electric, you should not use any information from www.ge.com because (like all information companies post online) it is bound to be biased.
Q:
A landscaper bidding on a job at the request of a general contractor would submit an external, unsolicited proposal.
Q:
The yardstick approach is best for organizing reports when you and your audience do not agree on the criteria you're using in your analysis.
Q:
Focusing on conclusions in an analytical report involves using the direct approach to organization.
Q:
Managers use feasibility reports to examine the ramifications of a decision they are about to make.
Q:
A justification report is an internal report designed to persuade top management to approve a proposed investment or project.
Q:
Information architecture refers to the structure and navigational flow of all parts of a website.
Q:
In an informational report describing the chain of events that led to a plant closing, chronology would be the best topical organization strategy to use.
Q:
Sales call reports are a type of compliance report.
Q:
An email summarizing an employee's trip to a trade show would be an example of a personal activity report.
Q:
Compliance reports, progress reports, and monitor/control reports are all types of informational reports.
Q:
In business reports, it is never appropriate to combine the direct and indirect approaches by revealing conclusions and recommendations as you go along.
Q:
Online reports are always preferable to paper reports in today's business environments.
Q:
When writing a work plan, it's important to begin by developing a problem statement.
Q:
Very few reports require a work plan.
Q:
The recommendations you make in a report should offer practical guidance on next steps.
Q:
Conclusions differ from recommendations in that conclusions suggest what ought to be done about the facts.
Q:
The number 29 is the mode in this set of figures: 25, 29, 34, 29, 29, 42, 8.
Q:
To find out your company's average monthly utility bill over the last year, you would need to calculate the mode of the last twelve bills.
Q:
$1,500 is the median for the following set of monthly salaries: $1,200, $1,200, $1,300, $1,500, $1,700, $2,000, $2,800.
Q:
An analytical report often ends by presenting a recommendation.
Q:
One task in effective paraphrasing is to
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) write in the passive voice.
E) do all of the above.
Q:
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.
C) does not require complete documentation of sources.
D) is never acceptable in business documents.
E) is more difficult to understand.
Q:
Which of the following is a closed-ended question?
A) Do you think the proposed expansion plan is feasible?
B) What do you see as the primary benefit of the proposal?
C) What corporate goals does the expansion help achieve?
D) How will the expansion affect day-to-day operations?
E) What advantages do you see in this course of action?
Q:
"What are your plans for expanding your sales to the European market?" is an example of
A) a closed-ended question.
B) an open-ended question.
C) a restatement question.
D) an inappropriate question.
E) a conclusion.
Q:
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) open-ended.
D) leading.
E) closed-ended.
Q:
The two most common primary research methods are
A) not appropriate for test marketing.
B) experiments and observations.
C) surveys and interviews.
D) test panels.
E) reports and memos.
Q:
You would not need to cite a source if you
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.
E) found it on Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
Q:
To conduct an effective database search,
A) choose one search engine and stick with it.
B) consider questions such as where useful information might be found.
C) use long search phrases rather than short ones or single terms.
D) avoid Boolean operators.
E) use no more than one search term at a time.
Q:
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.
E) are not reliable.
Q:
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.
E) a search engine that can access the hidden Internet.
Q:
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.
E) it is much easier to use.
Q:
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 the material for currency.
D) ignore government documents.
E) do none of the above.
Q:
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
E) All of the above are examples of primary research.
Q:
Sources of secondary information include
A) first-hand observation.
B) in-person interviews.
C) newspapers and periodicals.
D) experiments.
E) an online survey designed specifically for your project.