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PROGRAM
SEMESTER
3rd
SUBJECT CODE
MU0050
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
SUBJECT NAME
Assignment submitted by
Q1. Research is a sequential method of enquiry, directed towards a clear implicit or explicit objective.
Describe in detail the steps to be carried out in a typical research study.
Research Methodology refers to the procedures used n making systematic
observations or otherwise obtaining data, evidence, or information as part of a
research project or study. It defines what the activity or research is, how to proceed,
how to measure progress, and what constitutes success.
Research helps in decision making, especially in business. Effective decisions lead
to managerial success, and this requires reducing the element or risk and
uncertainty.
While conducting research, information is gathered through a sound and scientific
research process. Each year, organizations spend enormous amounts of money on
research and development in order to maintain their competitive edge.
The process of research is interlinked at every stage. The steps are given below :
find that the young student group consume more pizzas. This may lead to a
hypotheses that young consumers consume more pizzas that older consumers.
Hypothesis is, in fact, the assumptions about the expected results of the research.
Developing the research proposal :
Once the management dilemma has been converted into a defined problem and a
working hypothesis, the next step is to develop a plan of investigation. This is called
the research proposal. The reason for its placement before the actual research
study in order to answer the research question one need to spell out the research
problem, the scope and the objectives of the study and the operational plan for
achieving this.
Research Design formulation :
Based on the orientation of the research, i.e., exploratory, descriptive or casual, the
researcher has a number of techniques for addressing the stated objectives. These
are termed in research as research design. The main task of the design is to explain
how the research problem will be investigated. There are different kinds of designs
available while doing a research.
Sampling design :
It is not always possible to study the entire population. Thus, one goes about
studying a small and representative sub-group of the population. This sub-group is
referred to as the sample of the study. There are different techniques available for
selecting the group based on certain assumptions. The most important criteria for
this selection would be the representativeness of the sample selected from the
population under study.
Planning and collecting the data for research :
Planning and collecting data for research is processed after sampling the data.
Sampling plan helps in identifying the group to be studied and the data collection
plan helps in obtaining information from the specified population. The data
collection methods may be classified into secondary and primary data methods.
Primary data is original and collected first hand for the problem under study. There
are number of primary data methods available to be researcher like interviews.
Focus group discussions, personal / telephonic interview/mail surveys and
questionnaires.
Data refining and preparation for analysis :
Once the data is collected, it must be refined and processed in order to answer the
research question(s) and test the formulated hypotheses (if any). This stage
requires editing of data for any omissions and irregularities. Then it is coded and
tabulated in a manner in which it can be subjected to statistical testing. In case of
data that is subjective and qualitative, the information collected has to be post
coded i.e., after the data has been collected.
Q2. What are descriptive research designs? Explain the different kinds of descriptive research
designs.
As the name implies, the objective of descriptive research studies is to provide a
comprehensive and detailed explanation of the phenomena under study. The
intended objective might be to give a detailed sketch or profile of the respondent
population being studied. For example, to design an advertising and sales
promotion campaign for high end watches, a marketer would require a holistic
profile of the population that buys such luxury products. Thus a descriptive study,
would be the design necessary to fulfill the research objectives.
Descriptive research thus are conclusive studies. However, they lack precision and
accuracy of experimental designs. Yet it lends itself to a wide range of situations
and is more frequently used in business research. Based on the time period of the
collection of the research information, descriptive research is further subdivided into
two categories :
Cross-sectional Studies
Longitudinal Studies
Cross-sectional Studies :
As the name suggests, cross-sectional studies involve a slice of the population. Just
as in scientific experiments one takes a cross-section of the leaf or the cheek cells
to study the cell structure under microscope, similarly one takes a current
subdivision of the population and studies the nature of the relevant variables being
investigated.
There are two essential characteristics of cross-sectional studies :
The cross-sectional study is carried out at a single moment in time and thus
the applicability is most relevant for a specific period. For example, one crosssectional study was conducted in 2002 to study the attitude of Americans
towards Asian-Americans, after the 9/11 terrorist attack. This revealed the
mistrust towards Asian. Another cross-sectional study conducted in 2102 to
study the attitude of Americans towards Asian-Americans revealed more
acceptances and less mistrust. Thus the cross-sectional studies cannot be
used interchangeably.
Secondly, these studies are carried out on a section of respondents from the
population units under study (e.g. organizational employees, voters,
consumers, industry sectors). This sample is under consideration and under
investigation only for the time coordinate to the study.
There are also situations in which population being studied is not of a homogeneous
nature but composed of different groups. Thus it become essential to study the subsegments independently. This variation of the designed is carried out at the same
moment in time. However, there might be instances when the data is obtained from
different samples at different time intervals and then they can compared.
The technique is especially useful in predicting election results, cohorts of makesfemales, different religious sects, urban-rural or region-wise cohorts are studied by
leading opinion poll experts like Nielsen, Gallup and others. Thus, Cross-sectional
studies are extremely useful to study current patterns of behaviors or opinion.
Longitudinal Studies :
A single sample of the identified population that is studied over a long period of
time is termed as a longitudinal study design. A panel of consumers specifically
chosen to study their grocery purchase pattern is an example of a longitudinal
design. There are certain distinguishing features of the same :
Longitudinal study using the same section of respondents thus provides more
accurate data than one using a series of different samples. These kinds of panels a
redefined as true panels and the ones using a different group every time are called
omnibus panels. The advantages of a true panel are that it has a more committed
sample group that is likely to tolerate extended or long data collecting sessions.
Secondly, the profile information is a one-time task and need not be collected every
time. Thus, a useful respondent time can be spent on collecting some researchspecific information.
However, the problem is getting a committed group of people for the entire study
period. Secondly, there is an element of mortality and attrition where the members
of the panel might leave midway and the replaced new recruits might be vastly
different and could skew the results in an absolutely different direction. A third
disadvantages is the highly structured study situation which might be responsible
for a consistent and structured behavior, which might not be the case in the real or
field conditions.
Q3. The procedure of testing hypothesis requires a researcher to adopt several steps. Describe in
brief all such steps.
A hypothesis is an assumption or a statement that may or may not be true. The
hypothesis is tested on the basis of information obtained from a sample. Instead of
asking, for example, what the mean assessed value of an apartment in a
multistoried building is, one may be interested in knowing whether or not the
assessed value equals some particular value, say Rs 1 Cr. Some other examples
could be whether a new drug is more effective that the existing drug based on the
sample data, and whether the proportion of smokers in a class is different from
0.30.
The concepts of hypotheses are :
Null Hypothesis The hypotheses that are proposed with the intent of receiving a
rejection for them are called null hypotheses.
Alternative hypotheses Rejection of null hypotheses leads to the acceptance of
alternative hypotheses. The rejection of null hypothesis indicates that the
relationship between variables or the difference between proportions have
statistical significance and the acceptance of the null hypotheses indicates that
these differences are due to change.
One-tailed and two tailed test a test is called one-sided (or one tailed) only if
the null hypothesis gets rejected when a value of the test statistic falls in one
specified tail of the distribution. Further, the test is called two-sided (or two-tailed) if
null hypothesis gets rejected when a value of the test statistic falls in either one or
the other of the two tails of its sampling distribution.
Steps in testing of Hypothesis Exercise :
The following steps are followed in the testing of a hypothesis :
Setting up of a hypothesis :
decisions are based upon the statistical decision of either rejecting or accepting the
null hypothesis.
In case a hypothesis is rejected, the difference between the sample statistic and the
hypothesized population parameter is considered to be significant. On the other
hand, if the hypothesis is accepted, the difference between the sample statistic and
the hypothesized population parameter is not regarded as significant and can be
attributed to chance.
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9.
Questionnaire
Schedule
10.
The
success
of
questionnaire
methods lies more on the quality of
the questionnaire itself.
Open-ended questions :
In open-ended questions, the openness refers to the option of answering in ones
own words. They are also referred to as unstructured questions or free-response or
free-answer questions. Some illustrations of this type are listed :
What is your age ?
Which is your favourite TV Serial ?
I like Nescafe because _______________
My career goal is to _________________
Closed-ended questions :
In closed-ended questions, both the question and response formats are structured
and defined. There are three kinds of formats .
a) Dichotomous questions these are restrictive alternative and provide
respondents only with two answers. They could be yes or no etc.
b) Multiple choice questions unlike dichotomous questions, the person is
give and number of response alternatives here. He might be asked to choose
the one that is most applicable. For example the question was to given a
retailer who is currently not selling organic food products
c) Scales - Scales refer to the attitudinal scales. The following is a question
which has a two sub-questions designed on the Likert scale. These require
simple agreement and disagreement on the part of the respondent. This scale
is based on the interval of measurement.
Given below are statements related to your organization. Please indicate your
agreement / disagreement with each :
Q5 a). What is the analysis of variance? What are the assumptions of the technique? Give a few
examples where the techniques could be used.
The test of hypothesis concerning the equality of two population means using both
the Z and t test. However, if there are more than two populations, the test for the
equality of means could be carried out by considering two population at a time,
which is very cumbersome job. One easy way is to use the Analysis of Variance
(ANOVA) technique. The technique helps in performing this test in one go and,
therefore, is considered to be important technique of analysis for the researcher.
The technique has found applications in the fields of economics, psychology
sociology, business and industry. It becomes handy in situations where we want to
compare the means of more than two populations. Some examples are :
In ANOVA, it is assumed that each of the samples is drawn from a normal population
and each of these populations has an equal variance. Another assumption that is
made is that all the factors except the one being tested are controlled. Basically,
two estimates of the populations variances are made. One estimate is base d upon
between the samples and the other one is based upon within the sample.
Q6. Explain the Structure of the Research Report. What are the guidelines for effective report
writing?
The reporting requires a structured format and by and large, the process is
stabilized. The process of report formulation and presentation is presented below. As
we can observe, the preliminary section included the title page, followed by the
letter of authorization, acknowledgements, executive summary and the table of
contents. Then comes the background section, which includes the problem
statement, introduction, study background, scope and objectives of the study and
the review of literature. This is followed by the methodology section, which, is again
specific to the technical report. This is followed by the findings section and then
come the conclusions. The technical report would have detailed bibliography at the
end.
In the management report, the sequencing of the report might be reserved to
suit the needs of the decision-maker, as here the reader needs to review and
absorb the findings.
Preliminary section
Title page
Letter of authorization
Executive summary
Acknowledgements
Table of contents
Background Section
Problem statement
Study introduction and background
Scope and objectives of the study
Review of literature
Methodology Section
Research design
Sampling design
Data collection
Data analysis
Findings Section
Results
Interpretation of results
Conclusions Section
Appendices
Glossary of Terms
Bibliography
Guidelines for effective report writing :
Clear report mandate while writing the research problem statement and study
background, the writer needs to be absolutely clear in terms of why and how the
problem was formulated.
Clearly designed methodology Any research study has its unique orientation
and scope and thus has a specific and customized research design, sampling and
data collection plan.
Clear representation of findings Complete honesty and transparency in stating
the treatment of data and editing of mission or contrary data is extremely critical.
Representativeness of study finding A good research report is also explicit in
terms of extend and scope of the results obtained, and in terms of the applicability
of findings.
Command over the medium A correct and effective language of communication
is critical in putting ideas and objectives in the vernacular of the reader/ decisionmaker.
Phrasing protocol The use of tone of the reporting should be neutral.
Simplicity of approach along with grammatically and structurally correct
language, care must be taken to avoid technical jargon as far as possible..
Report formatting and presentation in terms of paper quality, page margins
and font style and size, a professional standard should be maintained. The font style
must be uniform throughout the report. The topics, subtopics, headings and
subheadings must be constructed in the same manner throughout the report.