Donald Cooper

1
Business Research Methods

• Donald Cooper
• Pamela Schindler

2
The Research Process
3
The Management-ResearchQuestion Hierarchy
Slide 3 - 1
4
Working with the Hierarchy
Slide 3 - 2

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

5
Working with the Hierarchy
Slide 3 - 3

• Management Question Categories
• Choice of purposes or objective
• Generation and evaluation of solutions
• Troubleshooting or control situation

6
Working with the Hierarchy
Slide 3 - 4

• 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

7
Working with the Hierarchy
Slide 3 - 5

• Investigative Questions
• Questions the researcher must answer to
  satisfactorily arrive at a conclusion about the
  research question

8
Working with the Hierarchy
Slide 3 - 6

• Measurement Questions
• The questions we actually ask or extract from
  respondents

9
Other Processes in the Hierarchy
Slide 3 - 7

• 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

10
Research Process Problems
Slide 3 - 8

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

11
Designing the Study
Slide 3 - 9

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

12
Resource Allocation Budgets
Slide 3 - 10

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

13
Evaluation Methods
Slide 3 - 11

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

14
Contents of a Research Proposal
Slide 3 - 12

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

15
Data Collection
Slide 3 - 13

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

16
Final Steps in Research
Slide 3 - 14

• Data analysis
• Reporting the results
• Executive summary
• Overview of the research
• Implementation strategies for the recommendations
• Technical appendix