Some general guidance:

 Please check you understand the requirements of the assessments;

 Failure to engage in significant research and wider reading of suitable academic
sources will have a significant impact on your marks.

Overview of Assessment
This course gives a comprehensive introduction to the subject of business research methods.
Acquainting participants with all modern and universally applied research concepts, tools
and techniques, and encouraging them to apply their acquired theoretical knowledge to real-
life situations.

How is the module assessed?

Assignment 2- Literature Review 10%

The literature review represents 10% of your coursework mark and is a formal academic piece of writing
(MAX. 2000 words excluding references). This is based upon your chosen research topic.

The potential topic areas are covered in the first six weeks of the module.

Submission of your literature review is electronic via blackboard and MUST be completed by 5pm, on the
18th DEC 2016. Please do not leave this until the last minute and ensure that, if you submit multiple
versions the final submission is COMPLETE and FINAL. This is the only version that will be marked.

Assignment 3- CONCEPTUAL FRAME WORK 10%

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The CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK represents 10% of your coursework mark and is a formal academic
piece of writing. This is based upon your chosen research topic.

Assignment 4 – PRESENTATIONS 30%

FINAL RESEARCH REPORT 40%

The Final research proposal is a 5000 word desk-based project and is worth 40% of the marks on this module.
It is due in on …...

The literature review allows you to explore an area of your own academic interest in depth, to demonstrate
your interpretation and evaluation skills and to give you the chance to make recommendations for practice.
This is done through:
 reviewing, summarising and evaluating the literature on a topic of your choice from a broad list of
topics provided by us
 critiquing the methodologies and methods used in the topic literature
 bringing together your findings to suggest new ideas such as models or gaps
 suggesting areas for further research
 suggesting implications for managerial or policy practice

How do I format my literature review?

In short it should be:
- 5000 words – excluding references (see above)
- Formatting and references should be in the Harvard style
- You may include figures and tables in the body of the text.
- The cover sheet should include: title of the review, module name, name of your supervisor, your student
number and word count. Do not use artwork.
- The title of the review should follow an academic style and should not be phrased as a question.
- The second sheet should include an abstract of up to 150 words (included in the word count) in which
you summarise the key points from your review.
- The third sheet should be a contents page, with major sections of the review listed and relevant page
numbers given (included in the word count).
- The review should start on the fourth page.
- The structure of the review should include an introduction, the main body of the review organised by
themes, issues and/or debates in the literature, conclusions (included in the word count) and reference list
(not included in the word count).
- You may choose to have a separate section within the main body in which you review methodological
issues in the literature as a whole, or you may do this within each theme, but you must ensure this aspect
is adequately covered.
- You are required to include a section dealing with the implications of your analysis for management
action and or policy
- Use a clear heading format but use headings sparingly: we expect you to use main and second-level
headings only.

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- All references in the text should be included in the reference list at the end of the review in the Harvard
style. This should be in alphabetical order. Do not provide separate lists for books, journals, websites,
etc. Do not provide a separate bibliography of sources you have read but not cited. Any review which
does not include a list of references will automatically fail.
- Avoid appendices.
- All pages must be numbered and show your student number.
- The assignment should be proof-read and spell-checked. Typographical and spelling errors will be
penalised.
- Any acknowledgements should be presented in an endnote following your conclusion and preceding your
references.
- The literature review should be word-processed.
- We will use the electronic submission to check your work with plagiarism detection software.

Guidelines
1. Writing a Dissertation proposal: What is it?

The Dissertation proposal guidelines for research methodology course for BACC students. It is a core
requirement all students. Research methodology course offers the opportunity to prepare a research proposal
to undertake independent research on a topic of your choice within the field of accounting and finance. It
enables you to explore a topic in more depth than an assignment essay. As it is your piece of work you have
to:

have an idea for an area of research

identify your research questions
decide how to undertake the research
Prepare a proposal

A dissertation proposal is 5,000 words in length, excluding references and appendices.

A dissertation proposal should be:

 a blue print of a piece of small-scale research which can be completed at the final year.,
 There should be some empirical research in your proposed dissertation. This may be modest in
scale but first hand research will "lift" the overall quality of your dissertation and enable you to
conclude, perhaps in a very qualified way, that your findings support, contradict, or modify the
literature on the problem you have investigated. If there is no empirical research planned for your
dissertation, talk to your supervisor about it!

2. Objectives

On completion of your dissertation you should be able to:

 demonstrate the ability to conduct a major piece of Accounting and Finance inquiry by using
research approaches
 demonstrate academic written skills through the presentation of an extended piece of writing

3. Structure
Your proposed dissertation should be a sustained argument. This means that it should draw upon the results of
your reading, thinking and information-gathering in such a way that it could persuade readers to accept your
understanding of the topic. In other words, the main aim is to use a selection of concepts, theoretical ideas,
observations, statistical findings and your own faculties of criticism and imagination in an attempt to reach
defensible conclusions about a topic which interests, challenges or puzzles you.

4. The Structure of the Module

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As writing a dissertation can be a lonely experience. The department of Accountancy (DoA) offers the
opportunity to attend lecture seminars during the semester. These seminars help to discuss possible areas of
research and to discuss what a dissertation involves. Further, they focus on research methodology and the
analyzing and writing up your data.

5. Getting started

The biggest hurdle lies not in the technique of researching or carrying out the research or writing up the research
but in deciding what it is you want to find out. This is the thinking stage. Ask other people what they think of
the topic (this will make you think more clearly). It is essential to choose a topic which interests and motivates
you. You should now be able to move ahead knowing that you are really committed to the project. Do not panic
if you find that you need to adjust your topic or research questions as this often occurs in doing research. It is
a good idea to have a look at previous dissertations written.

6. Topic

The topic should be not only broad enough to make connections with current debates in accounting and finance.
Topics are initially best framed as questions which force you into investigative and enquiring mode rather than
being merely descriptive. So, ‘Current issues in accounting and finance would be much too broad and
unfocussed, but ‘What factors influencing the share prices in 2010?’ would be acceptable. Your choice of
dissertation topic also needs to take into account the resources and time available to you.

7. Getting Started: Defining the Project

Try to write just one or two sentences defining your project. This will provide a good test for you. “I want
to research and write a dissertation about ....................”. Do not be too ambitious about the project. Many
projects start off by being far too ambitious in scope and have to be reduced in scale - a shorter time-span,
a smaller number of case-studies, fewer aspects of the problem to be researched, etc. You may need to
redefine the project after you have started.

8. Getting Started: Outcome and Process

It is unlikely that your research will produce a new paradigm for the accounting and finance, or completely
revise the way we understand the value of, for example, the application of accounting standards in financial
statements of banks. But you will contribute to understanding if your dissertation is well organized and has an
empirical dimension which gives some outcome or findings, however modest. Your dissertation is also of
interest as a record of a research process. Telling the story of the research may be as interesting as what you
find out. One way to ensure you do this is to keep a research journal or diary in which you record what you do
and how it goes. For instance, if you have great difficulty in obtaining responses to a questionnaire, please
consider. This process is one of the most interesting parts of the dissertation to read.

9. Getting Started: Write it Down

Write it down! References, dates, and articles you see in newspapers. You won't remember and it will take
hours to chase up half-forgotten facts in six months time. If you familiar Use ENDNOTE library.

10. Getting Started: Time-Management

The beginning of May seems a long way off now but it will come round quickly so start writing early on.

11. Managing Your Dissertation proposal

As this is independent study without weekly lectures and seminars, you need to be disciplined in terms of time
management. Once you have identified a research area and lecturer has approved it you need to make a work
plan. You need to remember that you need to allocate the same amount of weekly time to your study as your
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 other modules.

12. What Type of Research?

A dissertation can involve the following types of research:

 Empirical fieldwork such as a questionnaire survey, interviews, life history/biographical

interviews, or a combination of these
 a critical discussion theory
 use of secondary data such as literature, diaries, existing data sets
 Policy analysis

13. Writing Your Dissertation proposal

The following is a guideline for your sections’ structure:

Title Page

Certificate page
“A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the degree of Bachelor of Honours at the University of Warwick.
I confirm that the attached represents my own work, and that I am aware of the University’s Regulations on
Plagiarism”.

Acknowledgement

Contents

1: Introduction
A brief outline of the topic and how you came to choose it; what you wanted to find out; how you tackled
it, and perhaps how your results fit into the broader picture. It is also the place to include a brief description
of the background, context and setting in which the study has taken place.
Approximately 500 words plus

2. Objectives

Objectives of the study

Approximately 100 words plus

2: Literature Review

A review of the literature you have found on your subject, with particular emphasis on theories and debates on
the subject. This will place your project into a broader academic context and may give you a theory or
hypothesis that you wish to test in your empirical research.
Approximately 2,000 words

3: Methodology

A review of the methods you used to carry out your research with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of
the approach you followed and the approaches you rejected. A discussion of any ethical issues rises by the
research.
Approximately 2,000 words
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4: Expected outcome and contributions
An account of what you expect to be found from your study.
Approximately 500 words

References

Appendices

14. Some simple hints for beginners:

 Do not leave the writing of your dissertation to the last minute. Remember that you will also have other
assignments to write and revision for examinations to do.
 Thinking of the dissertation proposal in terms of chapters makes 5,000 words appear to be much less daunting
that it may appear to you now!
 Start writing early. You do not write a dissertation in three phases: thinking then researching then writing up.
Writing up can start almost immediately and by the end of July you should certainly have the introduction,
literature review and research methodology written - you can always come back to them, revise them, edit
them, etc.
 Sub-headings within sectors may be helpful.
 You must write in paragraphs, not in bullet points or in sentences that appear on the page as if they were
paragraphs. A paragraph will normally have about 150 words and convey one important stage of the argument.

15. Two less obvious hints:

You can organize the literature review by author in which case it will appear something like:

Jones (1990) said the following about training in Coventry ......

Smith (1992) said the following and disagreed with Jones in the following respects.... Byrd (2000)
said the following and concluded that ...... Conclusion - the main themes in the literature are as
follows ......

The second concerns the qualifications framework and here Jones and Byrd agree
while Smith...
The third concerns who has access to the training and here…
This second approach is better because your objective as a student must always be to master information
and to make it your own - to impose your own structures on the information and not passively to
summaries the views of others.
You may find that you wish to draw together into one single results chapter my two suggested chapters on
results and discussion. That's fine. A more important question concerns how you present your results. Let us
say that your research consisted of six in- depth interviews. Do you present the results of each of the six
interviews and then compare and contrast the responses? Or do you identify the main themes in the six
interviews and organize your findings into these main themes? There is something to be said for each approach.
Whatever you do, you will need to think about how best to present your results.

16. Searching for Information

While your supervisor will make suggestions for reading you will also need to use your independent
learning skills and search the library OPAC system and Google Scholar for relevant books, journal articles,
etc.
It is important to keep a record of all books, journal articles, etc, you have read as these need to be included in
your references. You need to use the Harvard System in ENDNOTE.
If you think that an extract from the literature you read will be useful as a quote you need to make a note of
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 the page number and year of publication.

17. Appendices

Appendices can be attached to dissertations proposal and these are not included in the word count. Appendices
offer supporting evidence of your work. You, therefore, need to assess whether or not this is the case rather
than putting a large amount in the appendices.
 Relevant appendices include:
 Evidence of research instruments expected to be used such as a questionnaire or interview schedule,
letters to participants, research logs, etc.
 Technical information relating to sources, for example, access to research sites, limitations of secondary
data sets.
 Brief policy documents of organizations studied.

18. Useful References for Writing a Dissertation

Most of these are aimed at postgraduate students but will still be useful:
th
Bell, J (2005) Doing your Research Project: a Guide for First-Time Researchers in Education, Health and Social Science, 4
edn, Buckingham, Open University Press – entire text available online via Google Scholar
Burnett, J (2009) Doing Your Social Science Dissertation, London, Sage
Glatthorn, A & Joyner, R (2005) Writing the Winning Thesis or Dissertation, London, Sage
Wyse, D (2006) The Good Writing Guide for Education Students, London, Sage
Hunt, A (2005) Your Research Project: How to Manage It, London, Routledge
Allison, B & Race, P (2004) The Student’s Guide to Preparing Dissertations and Theses, London, Routledge
Adamson, A (1990) A Student’s Guide for Assignments, Projects and Research, Oxford, Thamesman
Berry, R (2004) The Research Project: How to Write It, London, Routledge
Walliman, N (2001) Your Research Project: A step-by-step Guide for the First-time Researcher, London, Sage

19. References on Research Methods (General):

Bryman, A (2008) Social Research Methods, Oxford: Oxford University Press – comes with a companion web site
Gilbert, N (ed) (2005) Researching Social Life, London, Sage
Gray, D E (2004) Doing Research in the Real World, London, Sage
Hammersley, M (ed) (1993) Social Research, London, Sage
May, T (2001) Social Research: Issues, methods and process, Buckingham, Open University Press

20. Handing in Your Dissertation proposal

The completion date is outlined in the course contents. You need to upload soft copy to assignment 4 drop box.

21. Plagiarism and Collusion

The University regards plagiarism as a very serious issue. In submitting assessed written work it is important
to beware of plagiarism, which is the unacknowledged use of other people’s material. The University regards
this as cheating and it can have serious consequences, even if it is unintentional. To avoid any misunderstanding,
always put quotations from other authors within quotation marks and give full references to every source you
use, even if you are not quoting directly from it. Module lectures will be happy to give you advice if you are
worried about plagiarizing unintentionally.

Every year some students are reported for plagiarism. If you are using ideas, diagrams, models, tables,
quotations or ANY other material from a published or unpublished source, you must give details of that source.
Use the referencing system recommended by the library, and if in doubt ask a tutor for clarification. To fail to
credit your sources is plagiarism, which is an assessment offence according to the regulations of the University.

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 Another commonly reported assessment offence is collusion: although you can discuss, review or advise on
each other’s work, to present the same, or very similar, piece of individual work between two or more of you
is collusion.

To avoid either of these offences:

 NEVER CUT AND PASTE FROM A RESOURCE INTO YOUR OWN WORK – even if you later change the
words, students often get caught out
 Always give the authors’ name(s) and year of publication in the text every time you use information from their
work, plus a full citation in the reference list at the end
 Never allow other students to use your work, or share your work with others
 Never copy from other students’ assignments
 Never copy from previous years’ assignments
 Never copy from assignments at other universities or from other modules
 Never use internet essay mills or ‘cheat sites’
 Never copy from books, articles or newspapers without full attribution
 Never copy material from the internet, or from any other source whatsoever

22. Extensions

Extensions will only be granted in extenuating circumstances such as ill health or severe personal problems.
You need to contact your supervisor if you require an extension.

23. Marking
Dissertation proposals are marked by your supervisor and a second marker. The same marking criteria
apply as assignments.