Part One INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS RESEARCH McGraw-Hill/Irwin © 2003 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.,All Rights Reserved.

Chapter Three THE RESEARCH PROCESS

The Management-Research Question Hierarchy Management Dilemma Measurement Questions Investigative Questions Research Questions Management Questions Management Decision 1 2 3 4 5 6

Working with the Hierarchy Management Dilemma The symptom of an actual problem Not difficult to identify a dilemma, however choosing one to focus on may be difficult

Working with the Hierarchy Management Question Categories Choice of purposes or objective Generation and evaluation of solutions Troubleshooting or control situation

Working with the Hierarchy Fine tune the research question Examine concepts and constructs Break research questions into specific second-and-third-level questions Verify hypotheses with quality tests Determine what evidence answers the various questions and hypothesis Set the scope of your study

Working with the Hierarchy Investigative Questions Questions the researcher must answer to satisfactorily arrive at a conclusion about the research question

Working with the Hierarchy Measurement Questions The questions we actually ask or extract from respondents

Other Processes in the Hierarchy Exploration Recent developments Predictions by informed figures about the prospects of the technology Identification of those involved in the area Accounts of successful ventures and failures by others in the field

Research Process Problems The Favored Technique Syndrome Company Database Strip-Mining Unresearchable Questions Ill-Defined Management Problems Politically Motivated Research

Designing the Study Select a research design from the large variety of methods, techniques, procedures, protocols, and sampling plans

Resource Allocation & Budgets Guides to plan a budget Project planning Data gathering Analysis, interpretation, and reporting Types of budgeting Rule-of-thumb Departmental or functional area Task

Evaluation Methods Ex Post Facto Evaluation Prior Evaluation Option Analysis Decision Theory

Contents of a Research Proposal Statement of the research question Brief description of research methodology Pilot Testing Data collection Data preparation Data analysis and interpretation Research reporting

Data Collection Characterized by Types abstractness verifiability elusiveness closeness to the phenomenon Types Secondary data Primary data

Final Steps in Research Data analysis Reporting the results Executive summary Overview of the research Implementation strategies for the recommendations Technical appendix