Homework answers / question archive / QB3504 Research Methods for Business: Assessment: Part One For this assessment, you are expected to write a report of 2,500      words (-/+           10%)

QB3504 Research Methods for Business: Assessment: Part One For this assessment, you are expected to write a report of 2,500      words (-/+           10%)

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QB3504 Research Methods for Business: Assessment: Part One

For this assessment, you are expected to write a report of 2,500      words (-/+           10%).

Your report should achieve the following:

 

• Draw on relevant course materials, such as the textbooks, lecture content, tutorial exercises or additional readings
• Ensure citations conform with normal academic procedures using Harvard-style referencing conventions. Please note that the list of references do not count towards the overall word limit

 

 

The file should be in MS Word, RTF format or PDF and should use the following formatting requirements - font 12 point, one-inch margin, double spaced.

 

Assessment – Research Report

You are expected to critique 2 articles found in a major business and management journals. The critiques should be based on the theories and research methods applied by the papers’ authors. Examples can include critiques based on survey or experimental studies, content analysis or those purely based on an empirical qualitative method. You are expected to visit the journal databases to examine the most recent issues of the following journals:

• Journal of Sustainable Tourism
• Journal of Behavioural Decision Making
• Journal of Business Ethics
• Strategic Organization
• International Journal of Human Resource Management
• European Journal of Marketing
• Entrepreneurship and Regional Development
• Research in Organizational Behaviour

 

All of the above are available through the University of Aberdeen library website. They are referred to as 3* journals, suggesting that the research is good but not perfect.

 

Find two research articles that interest you and that employs some of the research techniques we will discuss in class: surveys, experiments, content analysis, in-depth interviews, focus groups, case studies or participant observation. If you know what kinds of issues your future dissertation will look at, then it makes sense to choose articles employing the methodology you think you might use for your future study, but if you are not sure at this stage, then that is fine.  

What is “a research article”?

 

Published articles and journals come in different forms: some of them are designed for a business audience and provide a good but sometimes superficial review of a main area of interest to managers and others. The focus here is to educate busy people in a succinct manner over maybe 4 or 5 pages, rather than to discuss in detail any research that they have carried out. Such an article is not a suitable article to use for this assignment.

 

At other times, there may be longer articles which provide a long and detailed literature review into a specific topic. The article might discuss the effectiveness of research into that topic generally and may even evaluate others’ research, but will not give details of a new piece of research carried out by the authors. Such an article is a review: it is not a suitable article to use for this assignment.

 

The kind of article we are looking for here is a journal article which describes in detail a piece of research carried out by the authors. It will usually start with an abstract – a summary of the investigation and its findings – and provide a number of common sections, including a literature review, description and justification of the methodology, analysis of the findings and some commentary on the strengths and weaknesses of the work, and the possibilities for further research going forward into the future. This is the kind of article we want you to review.

 

You are not expected to reproduce whole sections of the text: that might make you open to allegations of plagiarism and will use up valuable words, but you should use your writing skills to summarise the article clearly. The main emphasis of this assignment should be around evaluating what you are reading:

critique means evaluation.

 

Structure of the Assignment

 

A brief introduction at the beginning of the assignment and a short conclusion should be provided, but should be brief.

 

1. In your introduction, provide clear bibliographic details of the two articles, indicate why you chose them and a summary in your own words stating what each of the articles tell us that we didn’t know before. (Guidance: 300-400 words)

 

2. After your introduction, provide an evaluation of the first article – perhaps addressing some of the issues and questions given below.

 

3. The third part of your review should provide the same for your second article.

 

 

4. Finally, a brief conclusion which provides some information about what you have learnt, having completed the assignment. (Guidance: 200-350 words).

 

What should I evaluate?

 

 

Evaluation is about answering the question ‘How good was…?’ So, anyone critiquing an article might want to think about the key strengths and weaknesses of the article, addressing some of the following questions, and presenting clear evidence for your view (including evidence from relevant literature) in each case. You might want to think about some, or all of the following.

 

1. Literature Review & Research Theories: Are the conclusions from the literature review appropriate? Are there any ideas presented with insufficient evidence? Does the article present any contradictory information? Compared with the publication date of the article, how recent were the articles used – and does this appear to be a problem? If you have selected an older article (2 years+), are there any more recent research articles which could be added? If there are research questions, do these follow logically from what you read in the literature review, or have the researcher(s) missed any gaps in logic? How credible are the sources cited in the literature review?

 

2. Investigation: What methodology (ies) are used? Which research approaches are used? Are these suitable for investigating the topic(s) or research question(s) which the article tries to address? Are there any better ways or more interesting ways to investigate these questions? Was any sampling used – if so, what was the sampling strategy? Was that sampling strategy the right one? Does the methodology (philosophy, approach, method, strategy, data collection, sample size and analysis) used convince you of the accuracy of the findings?

 

3. Findings and Analysis: How well were the findings analysed? How detailed were the statistics used? Did the authors provide an argument for the analysis method(s) used? Did you find the conclusions convincing? If so, why? If not, why not? Were the conclusions clear? Did the article answer the questions it was supposed to answer?

 

4. Evaluation: Did the article provide any evaluation of the research methods and findings? Do you agree with their evaluation? Why? Were there any strengths or weaknesses that you think the authors missed? If you wanted to, how would you take their findings forward into a new piece of research?

 

(These are the kinds of questions you will need to address when you are putting your literature review together for your research dissertation later on in your degree.)

 

For each of the above areas that you address, you should provide citations of some method-specific academic literature in support of your answers.

 

You should be able to evaluate the 2 articles you have chosen within 2,500 words, so you should be succinct and focus on where you think the key strengths and weaknesses of the pieces of research chosen are.

Areas for Assessment:

 

In grading your work, we will be evaluating the following:

 

 

1. The extent to which you have done what was asked of you in light of the above instructions;
2. The extent to which your evaluation provides a reasonable analysis of the extent to which the two articles reflect good practice (as defined in research methods literature);
3. Whether there are any obvious areas of strength and/or weakness which were not referred to in the assignment;
4. The written clarity - including structure – with which you present your views and arguments;
5. The way that external reading and evidence was used – including the quality of referencing, citations and bibliography – to support your views.
6. The extent to which the assignment was well-structured and compiled.

  Assessment Marking Matrix

 

 

Description	Weighting
The extent to which you have practically done what was asked of you in light of the above instructions;	5%
The extent to which your evaluation provides a reasonable analysis of the extent to which the two articles reflect good practice (as defined in research methods literature);	25%
Whether there are any obvious areas of strength and/or weakness which were not referred to in the assignment;	30%
The written clarity – including structure – with which you present your views and arguments;	20%
The way that external reading and evidence was used – including the quality of referencing, citations and bibliography – to support your views.	20%