3-1

3-2McGraw-Hill/Irwin © 2003 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.,All Rights

Reserved.

Part OneINTRODUCTION TO

BUSINESS RESEARCH

3-3

Chapter ThreeTHE RESEARCH PROCESS

3-4

The Management-ResearchQuestion Hierarchy

Management Dilemma

Measurement QuestionsInvestigative

Questions

Research Questions

Management Questions

Management Decision

12

34

56

3-5

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

3-6

Working with the Hierarchy

• Management Question Categories

– Choice of purposes or objective

– Generation and evaluation of solutions

– Troubleshooting or control situation

3-7

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

3-8

Working with the Hierarchy

• Investigative Questions

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

3-9

Working with the Hierarchy

• Measurement Questions

– The questions we actually ask or extract from respondents

3-10

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

3-11

Research Process Problems

• The Favored Technique Syndrome

• Company Database Strip-Mining

• Unresearchable Questions

• Ill-Defined Management Problems

• Politically Motivated Research

3-12

Designing the Study

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

3-13

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

3-14

Evaluation Methods

• Ex Post Facto Evaluation

• Prior Evaluation

• Option Analysis

• Decision Theory

3-15

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

3-16

Data Collection

• Characterized by– abstractness– verifiability– elusiveness– closeness to the phenomenon

• Types– Secondary data– Primary data

3-17

Final Steps in Research

• Data analysis

• Reporting the results

– Executive summary

– Overview of the research

– Implementation strategies for the recommendations

– Technical appendix