1. 3-1

2. Part One
INTRODUCTION TO
BUSINESS RESEARCH
3-2
McGraw-Hill/Irwin © 2003 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.,All Rights Reserved.

3. Chapter Three
THE RESEARCH PROCESS
3-3

4. 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

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
3-5

6. Working with the Hierarchy
• Management Question Categories
– Choice of purposes or objective
– Generation and evaluation of
solutions
– Troubleshooting or control situation
3-6

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
3-7

8. Working with the Hierarchy
• Investigative Questions
– Questions the researcher must
answer to satisfactorily arrive at a
conclusion about the research
question
3-8

9. Working with the Hierarchy
• Measurement Questions
– The questions we actually ask or
extract from respondents
3-9

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
3-10

11. Research Process Problems
• The Favored Technique Syndrome
• Company Database Strip-Mining
• Unresearchable Questions
• Ill-Defined Management Problems
• Politically Motivated Research
3-11

12. Designing the Study
• Select a research design from the large
variety of methods, techniques,
procedures, protocols, and sampling
plans
3-12

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
3-13

14. Evaluation Methods
• Ex Post Facto Evaluation
• Prior Evaluation
• Option Analysis
• Decision Theory
3-14

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
3-15

16. Data Collection
• Characterized by
– abstractness
– verifiability
– elusiveness
– closeness to the phenomenon
• Types
– Secondary data
– Primary data
3-16

17. Final Steps in Research
• Data analysis
• Reporting the results
– Executive summary
– Overview of the research
– Implementation strategies for the
recommendations
– Technical appendix
3-17