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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Steps
The management dilemma
Defining the research problem
Formulating the research hypotheses
Developing the research proposal
Research design formulation
Sampling design
(c)
market will have to be done. He will also have to decide whether he wants to know
consumer acceptance of a new drink. Thus, there has to be complete clarity in the mind
of the researcher regarding the information he must collect.
Formulating the research hypotheses
In the model, we have drawn broken
lines to link defining the research problem stage to the hypotheses formulation stage.
The reason is that every research study might not always begin with a hypothesis; in
fact, the task of the study might be to collect detailed data that might lead to, at the end
of the study, some indicative hypotheses to be tested in subsequent research. For
example, while studying the lifestyle and eating-out behavior of consumers at Pizza Hut,
one may find that the young student groups consume more pizzas. This may lead to a
hypotheses that young consumers consume more pizzas than older consumers.
Developing the research proposal
This is called the research proposal. The
reason for its placement before the other stages is that before you begin the actual
research study in order to answer the research question you need to spell out the
research problem, the scope and the objectives of the study and the operational plan for
achieving this. The proposal is a flexible contract about the proposed methodology and
once it is made and accepted, the research is ready to begin.
Q2. What are descriptive research designs? Explain the different kinds of
descriptive research designs.
Meaning of Descriptive research designs
Kinds of Descriptive research designs
Ans. Descriptive research thus is conclusive studies. However, they lack the 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 and 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 the 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 cross-sectional
study was conducted in 2002 to study the attitude of Americans towards AsianAmericans, after the 9/11 terrorist attack. This revealed the mistrust towards Asians.
is greater than that of town 2, we formulate the null hypotheses that there is no
difference in the average wages of the skilled workers in both the towns. A null
hypothesis is denoted by H0
.Alternative hypotheses: Rejection of null hypotheses leads to the acceptance of
alternative hypotheses. The rejection of null hypothesis indicates that the relationship
between variables (e.g., sales and advertisement expenditure) or the difference
between means (e.g., wages of skilled workers in town 1 and town 2) or the difference
between proportions have statistical significance and the acceptance of the null
hypotheses indicates that these differences are due to chance. The alternative
hypotheses are denoted by H1
.One-tailed and two-tailed tests: 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. For example, consider a soft drink bottling plant which
dispenses soft drinks in bottles of 300 ml capacity. The bottling is done through an
automatic plant. An overfilling of bottle (liquid content more than 300 ml) means a huge
loss to the company given the large volume of sales.
Steps in Testing of Hypothesis
Setting up of a hypothesis: The first step is to establish the hypothes is to be tested.
As it is known, these statistical hypotheses are generally assumptions about the value
of the population parameter; the hypothesis specifies a single value or a range of values
for two different hypotheses rather than constructing a single hypothesis. These two
hypotheses are generally referred to as (1) the null hypotheses denoted by H0 and (2)
alternative hypothesis denoted by H1.
Setting up of a suitable significance level: The next step is to choose a suitable level
of significance. The level of significance denoted by is chosen before drawing any
sample. The level of significance denotes the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis
when it is true. The value of varies from problem to problem, but usually it is taken as
either 5 per cent or 1 per cent. A 5 per cent level of significance means that there are 5
chances out of hundred that a null hypothesis will get rejected when it should be
accepted. When the null hypothesis is rejected at any level of significance, the test
result is said to be significant. Further, if a hypothesis is rejected at 1 per cent level, it
must also be rejected at 5 per cent significance level.
Determination of a test statistic: The next step is to determine a suitable test statistic
and its distribution. As would be seen later, the test statistic could be t, Z, 2 or F,
depending upon various assumptions to be discussed later in the book.
a.
Distinguish between:
i.
ii.
b.
OPERATOR
A
10
12
13
II
10
12
14
15
III
12
10
11
14
OPERATOR
A
10
12
13
II
10
12
14
15
III
12
10
11
14
SSB =
Conclusion Recommendations
Limitations of the Study
Appendices
Glossary of Terms
Bibliography
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 construed in the same manner throughout the report. The researcher can provide
data relief and variation by adequately supplementing the text with graphs and figures.