Posted: December 4th, 2014

Business and Management research and then develop a plan for data collection and analys

Business and Management research and then develop a plan for data collection and analysis

Order Description

For the research presentation, you need to identify a relevant topic in Business and Management research and then develop a plan for data collection and analysis.
You should be able to justify your selection of methodology and discuss potential alternatives. The presentation will serve as the main source of feedback in preparation for the project report (assessment 2).

Presentations will be assessed based on the following three criteria:
• Introduction to a research topic (40 marks): what is the motivation for your study? Have you identified one or more research questions of interest? What is the core literature related to your topic?
• Plan to implementation (30 marks): how do you plan to address your research question(s)? What data sources have you considered? How do you plan to carry out the analysis? Any specific challenges that you are expecting to face?
• Presentation style and response to questions (30 marks): your presentation should flow well with appropriate visual aids (slides or equivalent). You should be able to give informative answers to any follow-up questions about the material presented.

Presentations will last approximately 10 minutes plus a few minutes for any questions.

Getting started
The first decision that you need to make is whether your project will be based on quantitative or qualitative research. This decision should be based entirely on your interests, nature of selected topic and willingness to further develop your skills. The marking framework is common for both types of projects. A mixed methods project could potentially be feasible but given the space limitation, you not advised to pursue this option. In case you do, please contact the module organiser in advance.
Scope of the project: any area within Business and Management or Social Science research. Other areas are also possible as long as the methodology remains within the scope of the methodologies taught throughout the module.
Quantitative research
For a quantitative research project, you need to identify an appropriate dataset. There are three main types of data sources:
• Official statistics, public surveys, open government data and other secondary sources (see Business Research Methods chapter 12). You might need to combine more than one data sources. The following are indicative ones:
o UK Data Archive for Social Science and Humanities http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/
o European Commission Social Science Data Archives http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/links_en.htm – Social Science Data Archives and http://www.cessda.net/catalogue/
o European Social Survey http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/data/
o World Bank repository of data http://data.worldbank.org/indicator
o United Nations repository of data http://data.un.org
o International Monetary Fund (IMF) data and statistics http://www.imf.org/external/data.htm
o Open government data, e.g. http://data.gov.uk or http://data.police.uk/ BUS007 guidance for assessments Page 3 of 5
?????????
• Content analysis to quantify media, websites or other data sources (see Business Research Methods chapter 12). An example of a paper using a web content analysis methodology will be available on QMPlus.
• Survey research to collect your own data. In this case you will need ethical approval. Please consult the module organiser for assistance in designing your survey. If it is an online one, you can use the School’s online survey platform via Qualtrics
For any type of quantitative project, your observations must not be time-dependent in the form of a time series or panel data that require different methods of analyses. You can use SPSS, MS Excel or any other software for as long as choices are documented in the report.
Examples of topics could include the following:
• Determinants of birth rate on a global scale. Potential independent variables could include: infant mortality rate, percentage of urban population, Gross Domestic Product per capita and female unemployment. Unit of analysis: country.
• Factors that affect poverty indicators in the UK local government. Potential independent variables could include: unemployment rate, age distribution of the population or size of the population. Unit of analysis: UK council.
• Attitudes of Europeans towards job satisfaction using different factors recorded in the European Social Survey available at http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/data/. Unit of analysis: individuals (European citizens).
Suggested requirements for a quantitative project:
• Dataset with at least 30-40 observations.
• Hypothesis development and testing; 2- 4 hypotheses are recommended.
• Projects should include at least descriptive statistics and bivariate analysis. You do not need to report on all possible descriptives and bivariate measures (e.g. correlations).
• Statistical conclusion using an appropriate significance test (e.g. t-test for regression coefficients) and interpretation.
• More advanced projects are expected to use of multiple regression.
• You can export SPSS tables and figures for your report. They are excluded from the word count (up to 2,500 words).
• You will not be asked to submit your dataset or analysis files but they need to be made available to the module organiser upon request until you complete the module.

Qualitative research
A qualitative research project does not aim at statistical validity and generalisability but is equally rigorous and needs to satisfy its own requirements. It is expected that for a qualitative project you need to invest more effort in writing up and identifying an appropriate theoretical perspective to support your arguments. Possible methods for a qualitative project include:
• Qualitative interviews (Business Research Methods chapter 18): interviews can provide a rich source of data for a qualitative project. For the scope of this essay and depending on your topic, about 2-4 interviews can be sufficient. If you have the opportunity to conduct group interviews, you might want to read more about focus groups (Business Research Methods chapter 19).
• Ethnography or observation (Business Research Methods chapter 17): this form of project can lead to interesting insights but might be difficult to organise in short timeframes. If you have an idea for an ethnographic project, please consult the module organiser.
• Documentary analysis (Business Research Methods chapter 17): you can complete a qualitative project using only secondary sources. A qualitative content analysis approach will be sufficient (e.g. instead of semiotics or hermeneutics as explained in Business Research Methods chapter 17).
• Case study research: a case study can use several sources of qualitative data using one or more cases as the unit of analysis. Material from the forthcoming lecture on case study research will be made available in advance. For an introduction, see p.59 from Business Research Methods chapter 2.
Suggested requirements for a qualitative project:
• An extended literature review is not acceptable on its own. It should at least be supported by an illustrative case study.
• Regardless of your choice of method, you need to list your documentary sources and fully reference the core ones.
• If you use NVivo or other research software for analysis, do not forget to document it in your methodology section.
• Qualitative studies generally need more space than quantitative ones and a wider source of references. References are excluded from the word count. For secondary thoughts or evidence, you can add an appendix of reasonable length to your report.
• You might need to use quantitative data as secondary sources to support your arguments. This does not qualify as a quantitative project.
• You will not be asked to submit your sources or (any) analysis files but they need to be made available to the module organiser upon request until you complete the module.

PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT 🙂