Introduction to research methodology

1.

GBE:RM
Research Methodology
2016

2.

Introduction to Research Methodology
• Introductions
• Outline of the course and assessment
• Research – what, why and how?
• The research process
• The research question and objectives (team exercise)
• Sources
• Introduction to referencing and the great APA competition!

3.

Introductions
• Getting to know each other…

4.

Introductions
• Jo Whittle
• SIT Research Officer
• Email:
• Contact details are on Blackboard
• Office:

5.

Introduction to RM
• Material relating to this paper can be found in
Blackboard: GBE:RM Intake 7
• Lectures: all lecture slides will go on Blackboard
immediately after the lecture
• Course Outline – in hard copy and available on
Blackboard
• Assessment – submitted through SafeAssign on
Blackboard

6.

Introduction to RM
Course outline
• Aim of the course:
• To introduce students to research techniques that are commonly
applied within a business environment,
outline research methodology, design and ethical considerations, and
provide a “thinking framework” for formulating a dissertation
proposal which will subsequently be developed into a comprehensive,
research based, strategic or business plan.

7.

Introduction to RM
By the end of course, you will be able to:
• Understand and discuss the importance and purpose of
applied research within the business environment
• Define and apply statistical analysis tools for data analysis
and for summarising and presenting statistical data
• Evaluate and critically analyse a range of research models,
approaches and designs
• Define a variety of data collection methods
• Discuss the nature and significance of ethical and cultural
considerations and time management skills in research
• Critically review a current research paper, using given
frameworks and parameters.

8.

Introduction to RM
By the end of course, you will also be able to:
• Conduct a literature search that justifies the nature and
scope of the research, and communicate literature review
findings to peers using written and oral skills
• Outline the systems and processes of presenting a viable
dissertation proposal, including methods of data collection
and analysis, timeline, equipment and resource needs,
project costs and ethical considerations
• Present the proposal in a written format that adheres to the
American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines

9.

Introduction to RM
Course outline continued…
• Class timetable
• Mostly in the Hub
• Some classes will be in the computer lab B1.06 (ground floor, B
Block, Tay Street campus)
Last lecture this year on Friday 16 December
Lectures resume on Weds 18 January
Research Proposal due Monday 6 February 2017
• Course expectations
• Attendance, work expected in your own time too, participation in
class
Avoid plagiarism!
60 hours: 30 hours of lectures, 30 hours of reading and writing in
own time

10.

Please sign in
each day
• I will have a sign in sheet for each lecture
• So please sign next to your name
• Attendance is monitored. You are expected to attend all
lectures.
• If you can’t come – please email me and let me know in
advance

11.

Introduction to RM
Course outline continued…
• PRESCRIBED TEXT:
• Lewis, P., Thornhill, A., & Saunders, M. (2012). Research
methods for business students. (6th ed.). Harlow, United
Kingdom: Pearson Education.
• RECOMMENDED TEXT:
• Collis, J., & Hussey, R. (2009). Business research, a practical
guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan.

12.

Introduction to RM
Course outline continued…
ASSESSMENT
• Individual Research Proposal
• 100% of grade
• Due 6 February 2017, 5pm, via Safe Assign on BlackBoard.
• Need grade of 65% or above to pass the paper
• You can ask for a resubmission – but only if you get above
25% in both the Literature Review and Methodology
sections
• The Research Proposal should be 3,000 to 4,000 words,
of which the Literature Review will comprise 1,500 to
2,000 words.

13.

Introduction to RM
Course outline continued…
•Research Proposal: “The
document which sets out the
research design for a study” (Collis
& Hussey, 2009, p. 340).

14.

Introduction to RM
Course outline continued…
ASSESSMENT FORMAT
• The Research Proposal must be submitted using the
proposal template which will be provided in class.
MARKING SCHEDULE

15.

Introduction to RM
Other important points
• Read the section on late assignment policy
• There is also a reading with some advice about designing
methodologies for research, which will be useful when
you come to writing that
• Allocation of supervisors: this will take place before end of
course so you can make contact, and may be able to meet
your supervisor early

16.

What is research?

17.

Group think
•In groups:
•Discuss: What is one word that comes to
mind when you think about doing
RESEARCH?
•What do you think will be your biggest
challenge with doing research?
•What you believe will be the best thing
about doing research

18.

What is research?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw

19.

Research can be political…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cf
m?c_id=1&objectid=11652351
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/exclusivetaxpayer-funded-study-by-euthanasia-supporters-fatallyflawed-q16367

20.

When research can be dangerous…

21.

…and some research is more
relevant than others

22.

Ideas about what research is:
• a range of practical skills and activities that are used to
carry out types of investigation.
• a way of thinking: about asking critical questions, thinking
about and examining evidence
• we can put these together and come up with a more
inclusive definition:
Research investigation involves both a particular
way of thinking and an identifiable range of skills
and activities

23.

What is research for business?
•A process that people undertake in a
systematic way in order to find out
things about business and
management, thereby increasing
their knowledge and leading to some
action.
Adapted from Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill
(2016)

24.

Why do businesses do research?
• To determine what potential customers want
• To determine how to improve products and services
• To keep abreast of what competitors are doing
• To help spot marketplace and industry trends
• To analyse their own performance and compare
performance against projections, to determine if they
need to make adjustments
• To better understand the business process
• To identify opportunities and solve problems

25.

• What business research is NOT:
• Collecting facts or information with no clear purpose
• Gathering a whole lot of information but not actually interpreting it in
any way
A marketing ploy just to make people notice your product or service
An activity with no relevance to daily life
• Characteristics of good research:
• Systematic collection of data
• Interpretation of data
• Clear purpose: to find things out to the benefit of the business
• Leads to some form of action based on findings
Adapted from Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill (2016)

26.

Everyday research skills
(Blaxter, Hughes &Tight, 2004)
• Reading
• Listening
• Watching
• Choosing
• Questioning
• Summarising
• Organising
• Writing
• Presenting
• Reflecting

27.

The research process
•What do you think the process of
doing research involves?

28.

The research process: linear model
1. Define your information need
2. Develop search strategies
3. Locate and access information
4. Evaluate
5. Synthesise
6. Use/present information

29.

The research process: cyclic model
Choose a topic
Reflect and come
up with
recommendations
Get reading
(literature review)
Disseminate
findings:
Write up
report/present
findings
Plan
methodology
(how you will
collect your data)
Get Ethics
approval
Analyse data
Collect data

30.

The research process: scatter
model

31.

Steps in research process
Define research question
Determine objectives of research
Literature review
Methodology
Data collection
Analysis of data
Discussion and conclusion

32.

Establishing your research question and
objectives:
the WHAT and the WHY of your research
proposal

33.

The Research Question
What do you want to find out in order to
• make your business concept happen?
• ‘I want to have an Filipino restaurant’
• ‘Do people want Filipino food and what will they pay for
that? Who wants Filipino food, where do they want it,
when do they want it, how do they want it, where do they
want it and what type do they want?’
• “Is it viable to establish a restaurant selling Filipino food in
Invercargill?”
• Can have more than one research question
• This is your chance to find out what you need to know for
your business concept
• So think really hard about what you want to find out

34.

Research Objectives
•Research action points
•They are the steps you intend to take to
answer your research question
•What you want to research to be able to
answer your research question
•Need at least three objectives
•Objectives start with “To …”
•And they must clearly relate to answering
your research question!

35.

Research Objectives
FOR EXAMPLE:
• If your research question is: ‘Is a Filipino
restaurant viable in Invercargill?’
• Then your objectives could be:
• “To establish the potential market demand for
Filipino food in Invercargill”
• “To determine the market niche for a further
ethnic food restaurant in Invercargill”
• “To collect data on the menu preferences and
appropriate pricing for a Filipino restaurant in
Invercargill”

36.

Research Objectives
ELEMENTS OF GOOD RESEARCH OBJECTIVES:
• Clear and unambiguous
• All together, the research objectives illustrate the
steps in the research process – without leaving
any gaps
• The objectives are actually all possible to do
• You will be able to demonstrate that you have
achieved these objectives
• And did I mention: the objectives must clearly
relate to answering your research question!

37.

Research Question and Objectives
ANOTHER EXAMPLE:
• Business concept: selling cake decorating kits and
equipment on the internet
• Research question: “What is needed to create and
maintain a successful internet cake decorating business?”
• Research objectives:
• “To explore options for establishing a new internet business in the
cake decorating market ”
“To determine the range of goods to offer and a viable pricing
regime”
“To compare the planned business with potential competing
businesses, both online and in store”
“To identify appropriate marketing and design strategies for the
online business”

38.

esearch questions
and objectives
Get into a pair with someone who
• you haven’t spent much time with
• First person asks questions off sheet to second person and
notes the answers
• Then swap, with second person asking questions to first
person
• So you are filling in the sheet about the other person’s
research
• When finished, please name the sheet and hand it in – as
they will be very helpful for me!

39.

APA Referencing Team Challenge
•Research proposal
and dissertation
needs to be
referenced
correctly
•Using APA style
•APA Referencing
team challenge:
which team will
have the most
points by the end

40.

What is APA style?
• American Psychological Association
• Set of rules for citing and
• referencing,
• and for formatting figures (images, graphs and tables).
• In-text citations: “Smith (2012, p. 74) argues that
increasing numbers of people are purchasing online.”
• SIT uses APA 6
• Refer to:
• APA Referencing & Essay Writing Handbook
• APA Quick Look Help Sheet
• Can be found at:
https://www.sit.ac.nz/Campuses/Invercargill/Library

41.

Who came up with APA anyway?
• Referencing: first known to be used by mediaeval scholars
writing about and translating The Bible.
• Richard White of Basingstoke (1539-1611) devised a system of
endnotes for his 11-volume history of Britain.
• English playwright Ben Jonson (1572-1637) referenced his
classical and modern sources in historical plays with notes in
the margins.

42.

The first footnotes
• During the Enlightenment (late 17
and into 18th
centuries), the footnote was popular.
• Those writing pornographic
• novels used footnotes to
• pretend that the ‘secrets’
• they exposed were based
• on genuine letters,
• clandestine memoirs or
• other genuine sources.
th

43.

The first in-text citation
•The first parenthetical
reference (in text citation
like we use) occurred in an
1881 paper about slugs
written by Harvard
zoologist Edward Laurens
Mark (1847-1946).

44.

APA style arrives…
• American Psychological Association (APA): the world's largest
association of psychologists. Founded in 1892 by a small group of men
interested in the field of psychology. Their first meeting was held at
the University of Pennsylvania.
Psychology was a rapidly growing area of scientific research and
leading scholars were panicking about information overload. How
were they to keep up with all the new publications or know if they had
any scientific validity?
So in 1929 a group of psychologists, anthropologists, and business
managers came up with APA Style: a simple set of procedures, or style
rules, that would codify the many components of scientific writing to
increase the ease of reading comprehension.
APA Style has since been adopted by most other social science
disciplines.

45.

APA Citations
•What is a citation?
•Where do we use citations?
•What is the point of citations?

46.

When to use citations
– with page numbers
• Direct quote:
• The great depression
of the early 1930s:
“called into question
the predominant
patterns of New
Zealand life”
(McKinnon, 1990, p.
247).
• Close paraphrase:
• McKinnon (1990, p.
247) argues that, in
the early 1930s, the
Great Depression
made New Zealanders
question the principle
patterns of their lives.

47.

When to use citations
– without page numbers
•General
statement:
•McKinnon (1990)
analyses the
impacts of the
Great Depression
on New Zealand
society.
• The Great Depression
of the 1930s caused
mass unemployment in
New Zealand and left
many people
unemployed and
desperate (McKinnon,
1990; King, 2002;
“Social welfare and the
state”, n.d.)

48.

The citation chant
•(Surname, year, p. x)
• Surname comma
• year comma
• p dot space
• and page number

49.

Who is the author?
• Authors may be:
• People's names - eg (Revington, 2007) or
(Drucker, 2004)
• Multiple authors - Poulin, Mills and Spiller (1998)
• A corporate author- eg an organisation, a
government department - (Air New Zealand
Limited, 2008)
• Two or three words from a title where there is no
author - eg (Reinventing Auckland, 2003)

50.

When to use page numbers?

51.

When to use page numbers?
Answer
• When using a direct quotation
When paraphrasing
• We use p. followed by a space
•p. 56

52.

What do you do if your quotation or
close paraphrase comes from more
than one page?
•Use pp.
(McKinnon, 1990, pp. 237-239)
•Remember the space after pp.

53.

What do you do if there isn’t a page
number?
•Internet sources
Use para. (short for paragraph)
(para. 5)

54.

Two authors
You need to cite both names every time you refer to a
work by two authors.
If the names are referred to in the text, only the year appears in
brackets ( ).
If the names are not referred to in the text, include them in the
parenthetical reference, joined by an ampersand (&).
Put in the page number.
Baker and Hamilton (2007, p. 63) found a high rate of
depression among the participants.
A high rate of depression was found among the
participants (Baker & Hamilton, 2007, p. 63).

55.

56.

Three, four, or five authors
You must cite all authors, either in text or parenthetically, the first time they
are referred to.
From then on, use only the surname of the first author, followed by et al.
First time authors referred to in the text:
Rogers, Finney and Myers (2004) presented participants with conflicting information.
Subsequent references to the same authors in the text:
Rogers et al. (2004, p. 34) found that the subjects were unable to make decisions.
First time authors referred to in the parenthetical reference:
Participants in the study were presented with conflicting information (Rogers, Finney,
& Myers, 2004, p. 34).
Subsequent parenthetical references to same authors:
The subjects in the study were unable to make decisions (Rogers et al., 2004, p. 34).

57.

the first author followed by et al. for the first citation in the
text, as well as subsequent citations.
Six or more authors
Following are examples of citing a work with seven authors
in text.
Kay et al. (2009) studied the power of the status quo.
A recent study examined the power of the status quo (Kay et
al., 2009).
There are different rules for the reference list. The
reference list will show all authors up to and including
seven authors.
When there are more than seven authors, you will cite
them in text as shown above, but the reference list will not

58.

APA Referencing Team Challenge:
ROUND ONE
•Please get into groups
•These groups will be your APA Challenge
teams for the paper
•Please come up with a name for your team
•Write the team name and the names of
everyone in the team on your answer
sheet

59.

APA challenge
Authors
One – Smith 2013 page 13
Two – Smith and Jones
2013 page 13
Three – Smith and Jones
and Brown 2013 page 13
Five – Smith and Jones and
Brown and Black and
James 2013 page 13
Six – Smith and Jones and
Brown and Black and
James and Longbottom
2013 page 13
First time
Subsequent times

60.

Answers
Authors
First time
Subsequent times
One – Smith 2013 page 13
(Smith, 2013, p. 13)
(Smith, 2013, p. 13)
Two – Smith and Jones
2013 page 13
(Smith & Jones, 2013, p.
13)
(Smith & Jones, 2013, p.
13)
Three – Smith and Jones
and Brown 2013 page 13
(Smith, Jones, & Brown,
2013, p. 13)
(Smith et al., 2013, p. 13)
Five – Smith and Jones and (Smith, Jones, Brown,
Brown and Black and
Black, & James, 2013, p.
James 2013 page 13
13)
(Smith et al., 2013, p. 13)
Six – Smith and Jones and
Brown and Black and
James and Longbottom
2013 page 13
(Smith et al., 2013, p. 13)
(Smith et al., 2013, p. 13)

61.

Summary of today:
• Outline of the course and assessment
• What is research?
• The research process (models)
• Research question and objectives
• APA referencing challenge round 1
• Next lecture: Wednesday 7 December
• Location: Computer lab B1.06 (main campus)