3-1

Part One
INTRODUCTION TO
BUSINESS RESEARCH

3-2
McGraw-Hill/Irwin © 2003 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.,All Rights Reserved.
 Chapter Three
THE RESEARCH PROCESS

3-3
 The Management-Research
Question Hierarchy

6 Management Decision
5 Measurement Questions
4 Investigative Questions
3 Management Questions
2 Research Questions
1 Management Dilemma

3-4
 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

3-5
 Working with the Hierarchy

• Management Question Categories

– Choice of purposes or objective
– Generation and evaluation of
solutions
– Troubleshooting or control situation

3-6
 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

3-7
 Working with the Hierarchy

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

3-8
 Working with the Hierarchy

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

3-9
 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

3-10
 Research Process Problems

• The Favored Technique Syndrome

• Company Database Strip-Mining
• Unresearchable Questions
• Ill-Defined Management Problems
• Politically Motivated Research

3-11
 Designing the Study

• Select a research design from the large

variety of methods, techniques,
procedures, protocols, and sampling
plans

3-12
 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

3-13
 Evaluation Methods

• Ex Post Facto Evaluation

• Prior Evaluation
• Option Analysis
• Decision Theory

3-14
 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

3-15
 Data Collection

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

3-16
 Final Steps in Research

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

3-17