Assignment Task:
Learning Outcomes Assessed:
LO1: Explore the application of quantitative and qualitative research methods used in the business environment.
LO2: Demonstrate and apply the principles and methods (both primary and secondary) of research. LO3: Identify and develop research aim and objectives
The goals of this exercise are to:
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Get Help Now!- Provide an understanding of the research process in total and discuss the application of that process to a research problem.
- Provide the base understanding of the process to undertake the major assignment and develop the theoretical and practical elements.
You are required to:
Describe a research problem of your choice meeting specified criteria for a client (real or fictional).
Prepare a report for the client of the process that will be undertaken including all steps in the process.
Follow the Marking guide for the areas that must be addressed and the marking criteria.
TOPIC for the Assignment: This is discussed in class with the lecturer. Make sure you do that. I will be looking at the topic in terms of whether you can complete the assignment with it. Other than this you can use any topic of interest to you.
Explanatory note:
The purpose of this assignment is an overview understanding of the research process and being able to relate this to a manager. The scenario would be: You are employed in, a consultant to, or part of an organization. That can be any organization including a company, charity, sport, and business. There is a problem. The problem is the general issue that would be understood by the business. The manager has asked that you make a recommendation on what to do so that a decision can be made on resourcing a process to resolve the issue. This is preliminary to a proposal. At this step, you are outlining an entire process and providing general guidance on how the process would be undertaken with options. In a proposal, you provide a clear process including the steps and the tools to be used.
There are three preliminary areas:
Setting out the issue for the business. This is generally saying what is going wrong, an area that needs evaluation, a growth aim, an investigation to understand some parts of the organization. Something that needs to be looked into.
The research problem statement. This is a general but more focused statement of what needs to be understood and/or provided to solve the issue. Research aims can be included here. What are you trying to achieve?
The research questions. This is a set of questions that refine the research problem into the specific questions needed to be answered. This includes analysis of the sector of the business which is relevant, understanding the theories relevant to the issue(s), making comparisons with industry standards (benchmarking), understanding the environment operated in, finding the best methods to collect and analyze data.
Subquestions. The research questions are headings and you explain why the question is needed to solve the issue. They should be quite separate questions. If you need more detail under any of them you create research sub-questions.
Information needs
Once you have the research questions clear you then ask yourself; ‘what information do I need to be able to answer the question’? This is important as it drives the next steps.
Tools
Tools for data collection. These are your research methods (not methodology).
For each question – how will you collect data AND how will you analyze that data.
Be clear on what is primary and what is secondary, what is qualitative and what is quantitative.
Resources
Timeline
You look at the tools and consider how long and when. For surveys the setting up, conducting and analyzing. Do this for each tool.
Resources
Time costs – use a $hr figure. For example, an employee doing basic administration at $30hr, manager $75, consultant $150 hr. This is arbitrary but you are demonstrating a process so don’t be concerned about the numbers.
Literature review
Lit reviews are so that you start your work using the work that has gone before. We want to know the “state of the art”. This is an old phrase which simply means we want to know the best knowledge to date and go from there.
HOWEVER, as discussed in class its best to do several smaller lit reviews in research than rely on just one.
Each one supports a step. The first one is to understand the problem better, its causes and how people have looked into similar problems.
So, here you should do a very brief lit review on the problem area to identify the areas to research. This will tell you what to research or as we say it “informs the research”. Don’t assume you know the answer, or, that the organization knows what the cause is. This is not ‘objective’ and will narrow your focus. You always start wide, then narrow down. Your brief lit review here is to avoid this problem.
Tools – you do NOT need to design the tools. You talk about the ones you would use and how they would provide the information needed.
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