Part A
You have been commissioned by the Hong Kong Police to carry out a
small-scale study of the work of the Police Tactical Units (PTU) in
Kowloon West and New Territories North with the following objectives:
• to understand how police constables and other officers carry out their
duties in general;
• to find out whether patterns of anti-crime patrols can be identified
(e.g. more frequent patrolling at a particular period of time of the day)
and if so, why such patterns exist;
• to find out whether the police conduct ‘stop and search’ checks
differently for different groups of suspects (youths, adults, males,
females, etc.); and
• if the checks are conducted differently, to investigate why distinct
approaches are taken.
Answer the following questions.
1 What qualitative research methods will you use to attain the above
research objectives?
2 Why do you think these methods will enable you to collect the
necessary data for achieving your research objectives?
3 What difficulties or problems are likely to be encountered in
employing the chosen methods for the purpose of this research? How
could these difficulties or problems be overcome or at least
minimized?
Note: You will definitely need to use more than one method — a certain
method may be more suitable for a particular research objective, while
another method may be more suitable for another objective. In such
cases, explain why this is so when you answer the questions.
Part B
For Part B, you are required to read (1) the editorials and (2) the lead
stories （頭條新聞）in the following newspapers for the period 10 to 20
August 2021:
• South China Morning Post
• Ming Pao
• Oriental Daily
Assignment File 15
Sometimes, the editorials may contain more than one item, in which case
you should consider all of them.
1 Try to identify whether or not there are distinct differences in the
types of issues addressed in the editorials and the types of news
covered in the lead stories of the three newspapers.
2 If there are clear differences, explain what these differences are.
Please note that you should substantiate your arguments with
evidence derived from the data collected.
3 If you cannot identify any distinct differences, explain why you
consider this to be the case. Again, please remember to substantiate
your arguments with evidence.
Sample Solution
