GSM5114: BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS

ASSIGNMENT 1

LECTURER: ASSOC. PROF.DR. NOOR AZMAN ALI

PREPARED BY: NOR AZURA BINTI MOHD YUSOF (GM04772)

INTRODUCTION

Businesses are doing study or research in order to make informed decisions. In fact, business decision-making is a process of developing and deciding options or alternatives on how to resolve business problems and take advantages of good business opportunity. Understanding this, businesses are taking steps to do research to not only resolve the problems but mainly to gain competitive advantage. Business research, like other forms of scientific research, involves a sequence of highly interrelated activities. As noted earlier, business research process should engage a systematic process that focuses on being objective and collecting and analyzing all types of information so that the researcher can draw a conclusion. Business research process will document the study in such a way that other future researchers or individuals are able to conduct or replicate the same study again. However, if some research is conducted without any documentation of the study for others to refer to or review the process and its results, it no longer qualified to be called as using the scientific research process.

STAGES OF BUSINESS RESEARCH PROCESS

There are at least 6 stages of business research process. Appendix 1 shows the flowchart how the process works successively and sequentially:

1.

Defining the research objectives

The first step is to identify a problem or develop a research question and the said problem is identified by the management and explored further. Once the problem has been identified and clarified either with or without any exploratory research, the researcher should state the research objectives. It is the statement that defines the type of research that would allow management to make informed decisions thus concludes the decision into something more actionable. To get more information and investigate further, the researcher must review the literature related to the research problem from previous journals or study. It is an important step to explore foundational knowledge about the problem area being studied and researched upon. Furthermore, intense review of literature will educate the researcher not only about the conclusions draw from the study but also what studies and how the studies were conducted in the past, which related to the same problem area. At the same time, the researcher would be able to get the scope of the study narrower and avoid from having too broad in scope. This stage also needs to clearly define terms and concepts because they will be used throughout the study. Clear understanding of these will minimize confusion about what the terms and phrases

mean, thus making the scope of the study is more manageable and easier to collect the necessary data for the study. 2. Planning a research design

This stage is a detailed, carefully constructed plan of the methods and procedures for collecting and analyzing data and the needed information. It is a master plan that provides a framework or plan of action for the whole research process and thus the aim of this stage is to prepare general plan of real research. The researcher should have identified all the variables, construct operational definitions for the variables and the design for data analysis. During this stage also, the objectives of the study that we earlier determined are included in making sure that the information collected is appropriate for solving the problem. The researcher now should establish the sources of information, the design technique like survey or experiment, and the sampling methodology, and the schedule and cost of the research. Some techniques that can be used by a researcher from four basic categories in order to obtain understandings and insights and gain a clearer idea of the problem are previous research, pilot studies, case studies, and experience surveys. This phase is where the researcher will have to make important decisions with regards to the cost of obtaining the data as well as the time allocated that will later determine which method should be chosen. 3. Planning a sample or Sampling

Sampling involves procedure that draws conclusions based on measurements of a portion of the population or a subset from a larger population. Sampling plan is usually outlined in the research design, however the sampling stage is a different phase of the research process. At this stage where the research problem and the purpose of the study have been clarified, it will help the researcher to identify the group to involve in the study and researchers call the group as the population. Defining the population is very essential because it narrows the scope of the study from a very large population to one that is manageable and this makes the study more focused and at the same time avoiding from wasting the time and effort towards irrelevant materials/subjects or information. Lastly, the researcher that used good sampling of population would be able to identify the group that the results will apply to at the conclusion of the study and be confident with the results. Moreover, by narrowing the population the study will become more manageable in terms of time and resources.

4. Collecting the data The actual study begins with collecting the date when the research framework is completed. This stage is critical in providing sufficient information needed to answer the research questions. In fact, in any research or study, data collections that can be derived from the

literature or subjects being studied will provide and guide towards the answers to the research questions. However, a researcher should avoid from having any bias towards data collected. Data collection can be in the form of words from surveys or questionnaires, or through observations, or from literature based on past studies. Upon completion of data that have been collected on the variables, the researcher will now move to the final step of the process, which is the data analysis.

5. Analyzing the data In the research design master plan, the researcher somehow has specified how the data collected will be analyzed. Hence at this stage the researcher has the data to analyze so that the research question can be answered according to the plan. In doing so, the researcher will need to choose appropriate statistical analysis and find out if the assumptions behind the statistical procedures met. Then, analyze whether the results of the statistical procedure answer the research question. Last but not least, the results of this analysis will be reviewed and summarized in a manner directly related to the research questions.

6. Formulating the conclusions and preparing the report This is the final stage of the research process, and it is equally as important as other stages. In order for the results of the research to be meaningful, the results obtained from data analysis require interpretation. Interpretation of data will require the researcher to draw some conclusions and make sense of the results. This stage consists of not only the interpretation of the research results but also descriptions of its implications as well as making the appropriate conclusions of the study. These conclusions should accomplish the deliverables as undertaken in the earlier phase in research proposal. Meanwhile, in writing the report, it should be made in such a way that its targeted readers or users could understand the research results and for the type of research that is not for academic purpose, usually management is not interested in detailed reporting but only needs a summary of the findings. Thus its presentation should be effectively communicated to the management.

To conclude, scientific research process is a multiple-step process where the steps are connected or linked with the other steps in the process. Thus, any changes done by the researcher in any step or stage of the process, it should be properly revised in order to make sure that the changes would be reflected throughout the whole process.

APPENDIX 1