BA 5310-580 BRM SS III GUIDE FOR THE MID TERM EXAM .

Chapter 1: EVALUATION RESEARCH Evaluation research is the formal, objective measurement and appraisal of the extent to which a given activity, project, or program has achieved its objectives. Evaluation research can be defined as a type of study that uses standard social research methods for evaluative purposes, as a specific research methodology, and as an assessment process that employs special techniques unique to the evaluation of social programs. After the reasons for conducting evaluation research are discussed, the general principles and types are reviewed. Several evaluation methods are then presented, including input measurement, output/performance measurement, impact/outcomes assessment, service quality assessment, process evaluation, benchmarking, standards, quantitative methods, qualitative methods, cost analysis, organizational effectiveness, program evaluation methods, and LIS-centered methods. Other aspects of evaluation research considered are the steps of planning and conducting an evaluation study and the measurement process, including the gathering of statistics and the use of data collection techniques. The process of data analysis and the evaluation report are also given attention. It is concluded that evaluation research should be a rigorous, systematic process that involves collecting data about organizations, processes, programs, services, and/or resources. Evaluation research should enhance knowledge and decision making and lead to practical applications.

SCIENTIFIC METHOD: is the way researchers go about using knowledge and evidence to reach objective conclusions about the real world. The scientific method requires systematic analysis and logical interpretation of empirical evidence to confirm or disprove prior conceptions. Techniques or procedures used to analyze empirical evidence in an attempt to confirm or disprove prior conceptions.

Ch. 2: BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Is the subset of data and information that actually has some explanatory power enabling effective managerial decisions to be made. So, there is more data than information, and more information than intelligence. Relevance, quality, timeliness, and completeness

Ch. 3: CUSTOM RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM), A decision support system (DSS) is a system that helps decision makers confront problems through direct interaction with computerized databases and analytical software programs. The purpose of a decision support system is to store data and transform them into organized information that is easily accessible to managers. Doing so saves managers countless hours so that decisions that might take days or even weeks otherwise can be made in minutes using a DSS. Modern decision support systems greatly facilitate customer relationship management (CRM). A CRM system is the part of the DSS that addresses exchanges between the firm and its customers. It brings together information about customers including sales data, market trends, marketing promotions and the way consumers respond to them, customer preferences, and more. DATA WAREHOUSING, is the process allowing important day-to-day operational data to be stored and organized for simplified access. More specifically, a data warehouse is the multitiered computer storehouse of current and historical data. Data warehouse management requires that the detailed data from operational systems be extracted, transformed, placed into logical partitions (for example, daily data, weekly data, etc.), and stored in a consistent manner. Organizations with data warehouses may integrate databases from both inside and outside the company. DATA WHOLESALERS Data wholesalers put together consortia of data sources into packages that are offered to municipal, corporate, and university libraries for a fee. Information users then access the data through these libraries. Some of the better known databases include Wilson Business Center, Hoovers, PROQUEST, INFOTRAC, DIALOG (Dialog Information Services, Inc.), LEXISNEXIS, and Dow Jones News Retrieval Services. These databases provide all types of information including recent news stories and data tables charting statistical trends. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Is the process of creating an inclusive, comprehensive, easily accessible organizational memory, which can be called the organizations intellectual capital. The purpose of knowledge management is to organize the intellectual capital of an organization in a formally structured way for easy use. Knowledge is presented in a way that helps managers comprehend and act on that information and make better decisions in all areas of business. Knowledge management systems are particularly useful in making data available across the functional areas of the firm. Thus, marketing, management, and financial knowledge can be integrated. Recent research demonstrates how knowledge management systems are particularly useful in new product development and introduction

PROPRIETARY BUSINESS RESEARCH

Business research has already been defined as a broad set of procedures and methods. To clarify the DSS concept, consider a narrower view of business research. Proprietary business research emphasizes the companys gathering of new data. Few proprietary research procedures and methods are conducted regularly or continuously. Instead, research projects conducted to study specific company problems generate data; this is proprietary business research. Providing managers with nonroutine data that otherwise would not be available is a major function of proprietary business research. Proprietary research often involves either the testing and/or issues types of research.

Ch. 4: CAUSAL RESEARCH Causal research seeks to identify cause and-effect relationships. When something causes an effect, it means it brings it about or makes it happen. The effect is the outcome. Causal research designs can take a long time to implement. Causal research attempts to establish that when we do one thing, another thing will follow. Three critical pieces of causal evidence are: 1. Temporal Sequence 2. Concomitant Variance (concomitant variation means that when a change in the cause occurs, a change in the outcome also is observed) 3. Nonspurious Association (the cause is true and not eliminated by the introduction of another potential cause.) Causal research should do all of the following 1. Establish the appropriate causal order or sequence of events 2. Measure the concomitant variation between the presumed cause and the presumed effect 3. Examine the possibility of spuriousness by considering the presence of alternative plausible causal factors. DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH The Purpose is to describe characteristics of objects, people, groups, organizations, or environments. In other words, descriptive research tries to paint a picture of a given situation by addressing who, what, when, where, and how questions EXPLORATORY RESEARCH These preliminary research activities can narrow the scope of the research topic and help transform ambiguous problems into well-defined ones that yield specific research objectives diagnostic analysis, focus group, pilot study, research objective DIAGNOSTIC ANALYSIS, Seeks to diagnose reasons for business outcomes and focuses specifically on the beliefs and feelings respondents have about and toward specific issues. FOCUS GROUP, Brings together six to twelve people in a loosely structured format. The technique is based on the assumption that individuals are more willing to talk about things when they are able to do so within a group discussion format.

PILOT STUDY

is a small-scale research project that collects data from respondents similar to those that will be used in the full study. It can serve as a guide for a larger study or examine specific aspects of the research to see if the selected procedures will actually work as intended RESEARCH OBJECTIVE Research objectives are the goals to be achieved by conducting research. In consulting, the term deliverables is often used to describe the objectives to a research client.

The six major phases of the research process discussed here are 1) defining the research objectives, 2) planning the research design, 3) sampling, 4) data gathering, 5) data processing and analysis, and 6) drawing conclusions and report preparation.

Ch. 5: ADVOCACY RESEARCH

Research undertaken to support a specific claim in a legal action or to represent some advocacy group puts a client in a unique situation. Researchers often conduct advocacy research in their role as an expert witness.

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS Composed of individuals from various functional areas such as engineering, production, finance, and marketing who share a common purpose. Cross-functional teams help organizations focus on a core business process, such as customer service or new product development. Working in teams reduces the tendency for employees to focus singlemindedly on an isolated functional activity. IDEALISM is a term that reflects the degree to which one bases ones morality on moral standards. Someone who is an ethical idealist will try to apply ethical principles like the golden rule in all ethical dilemmas. INFORMED CONSENT Means that the individual understands what the researcher wants him or her to do and consents to the research study. In other cases, research participants may not be aware that they are being monitored in
some way.

MORAL STANDARDS
Are principles that reflect beliefs about what is ethical and what is unethical. More simply, they can be thought of as rules distinguishing right from wrong.

RELATIVISM Is a term that reflects the degree to which one rejects moral standards in favor of the acceptability of some action. SPYWARE
Is software that is placed on your computer without consent or knowledge while using the Internet. This software then tracks your usage and sends the information back through the Internet to the source.

Ch. 6: CATEGORICAL VARIABLE & CLASSIFICATORY VARIABLE A categorical variable is one that indicates membership in some group, Categorical variables sometimes
represent quantities that take on only a small number of values

CONTINUOUS VARIABLE Is one that can take on a range of values that correspond to some quantitative amount. RESEARCH PROPOSAL Is a written statement of the research design. It always includes a statement explaining the purpose of the study (in the form of research objectives or deliverables) and a definition of the problem, often in the form of a decision statement. SITUATION ANALYSIS involves the gathering of background information to familiarize researchers and managers with the decision-making environment. Ch. 7: CASE STUDIES
simply refer to the documented history of a particular person, group, organization, or event. Typically, a case study may describe the events of a specific company as it faces an important decision or situation, such as introducing a new product or dealing with some management crisis.

ETHNOGRAPHY Ethnography represents ways of studying cultures through methods that involve becoming highly active within that culture. Participant-observation typifies an ethnographic research approach. Participant observation means the researcher becomes immersed within the culture that he or she is studying and draws data from his or her observations. A culture can be either a broad culture, like American culture, or a narrow culture, like urban gangs, Harley-Davidson owners, or skateboarding enthusiasts.

GROUNDED THEORY Grounded theory represents an inductive investigation in which the researcher poses questions about information provided by respondents or taken from historical records. The researcher asks the questions to him or herself and repeatedly questions the responses to derive deeper explanations. Grounded theory is particularly applicable in highly dynamic situations involving rapid and significant change. Two key questions asked by the grounded theory researcher are What is happening here? and How is it

different?19 The distinguishing characteristic of grounded theory is that it does not begin with a theory but instead extracts one from whatever emerges from an area of inquiry. FOCUS GROUP INTERVIEW is an unstructured, free-flowing interview with a small group of people, usually between six and ten. Focus groups are led by a trained moderator who follows a flexible format encouraging dialogue among respondents. Common focus group topics include employee programs, employee satisfaction, brand meanings, problems with products, advertising themes, or new-product concepts. HERMENEUTICS, Hermeneutics is an approach to understanding phenomenology that relies on analysis of texts in which a person tells a story about him or herself. PARTICIPANT-OBSERVATION Typifies an ethnographic research approach. Participant observation means the researcher becomes immersed within the culture that he or she is studying and draws data from his or her observations. PHENOMENOLOGY, Phenomenology is a philosophical approach to studying human experiences based on the idea that human experience itself is inherently subjective and determined by the context within which a person experiences something. It lends itself well to conversational research. QUALITATIVE BUSINESS RESEARCH, Is research that addresses business objectives through techniques that allow the researcher to provide elaborate interpretations of market phenomena without depending on numerical measurement. QUANTITATIVE BUSINESS RESEARCH Can be defined as business research that addresses research objectives through empirical assessments that involve numerical measurement and analysis approaches CH. 8: DATA MINING Data mining refers to the use of powerful computers to dig through volumes of data to discover patterns about an organizations customers and products. MODEL BUILDING, Involves specifying relationships between two or more variables, perhaps extending to the development of descriptive or predictive equations
estimate their companys market potential Forecasting Sales Analysis of trade reas and site

SECONDARY DATA Secondary data are data that have been gathered and recorded previously by someone else for purposes other than those of the current researcher. The chief advantage of secondary data is that they are almost always less expensive to obtain than primary data. Generally they can be obtained rapidly and may provide information not otherwise available to the researcher. The disadvantage of secondary data is that they were not intended specifically to meet the researchers needs.

CH. 9: ACQUIESCENCE BIAS A tendency to agree (or disagree) with all or most questions is known as acquiescence bias. This bias is particularly prominent in new-product research. Questions about a new-product idea generally elicit some acquiescence bias because respondents give positive connotations to most new ideas. CROSS SECTIONAL STUDY A study in which various segments of a population are sampled and data are collected at a single moment in time. LONGITUDINAL STUDY, In a longitudinal study respondents are questioned at multiple points in time. The purpose of longitudinal studies is to examine continuity of response and to observe changes that occur over time. RANDOM SAMPLING ERROR A statistical fluctuation that occurs because of chance variation in the elements selected for a sample. SYSTEMATIC ERROR The other major source of survey error, systematic error, results from some imperfect aspect of the research design or from a mistake in the execution of the research. Because systematic errors include all sources of error other than those introduced by the random sampling procedure, these errors or biases are also called non sampling errors. A sample bias exists when the results of a sample show a persistent tendency to deviate in one direction from the true value of the population parameter. CH. 10: COVER LETTER Letter that accompanies a questionnaire to induce the reader to complete and return the questionnaire. PERSONAL INTERVIEW A personal interview is a form of direct communication in which an interviewer asks respondents questions face-to-face. This versatile and flexible method is a two-way conversation between interviewer and respondent. Business researchers find that personal interviews offer many unique advantages. One of the most important is the opportunity for detailed feedback. PRETESTING Pretesting involves a trial run with a group of respondents to iron out fundamental problems in the instructions or design of a questionnaire. The researcher looks for such obstacles as the point at which respondent fatigue sets in and whether there are any particular places in the questionnaire where respondents tend to terminate. CH. 11: CONTENT ANALYSIS Besides observing people and physical objects, researchers may use content analysis, which obtains data by observing and analyzing the contents or messages of advertisements, newspaper articles, television programs, letters, and the like. This method involves systematic analysis as well as observation to identify the specific information content and other characteristics of the messages. Content analysis studies the message itself and involves the design of a systematic observation and recording procedure for quantitative description of the manifest content of communication.

CONTRIVED OBSERVATION Most observation takes place in a natural setting, but sometimes the investigator intervenes to create an artificial environment in order to test a hypothesis. This approach is called contrived observation. Contrived observation can increase the frequency of occurrence of certain behavior patterns, such as employee responses to complaints. An airline passenger complaining about a meal or service from the flight attendant may actually be a researcher recording that persons reactions. If situations were not contrived, the research time spent waiting and observing would expand considerably. This is one of the reasons for the growing popularity of mystery shoppers introduced in the opening vignette. They can effectively create a situation (such as a customer complaint) that might be very time consuming to observe if it were to occur naturally. OBSERVER BIAS, A distortion of measurement resulting from the cognitive behavior or actions of the witnessing observer is called observer bias. For example, in a research project using observers to evaluate whether sales clerks are rude or courteous, fieldworkers may be required to rely on their own interpretations of people or situations during the observation process.