Research Methods and Statistics Project: Conducting Primary Research
Project Assignment — is due on ___________ . Late submissions are subject to the maximum grade of a “C” and possibly other penalties.
Directions to Students: By now you have explored a scenario that posed a problem in at least one of your management courses (MGT1000 Values and Ethics in the Business Environment or MGT1003 Supervisory Management). In this project, you will conduct primary research to support or refute evidence that you found during your exploration of the issues surrounding your scenario. No other coursework may be used for this project. You will now apply the processes of conducting primary research that you have learned in this class. Your investigation should follow the format that is outlined below. Before starting this project, your instructor must review your work from the written project in MGT1000 or MGT1003. You should provide your instructor with a folder containing the following documents during the second week of class: 1. A copy of the scoring rubric from your MGT100/MGT1003 project; 2.Your revised MGT1000/MGT1003 project based on the scoring rubric. 3. Your original BBA Tracking Sheet signed by your MGT1000/MGT1003 instructor. 4. A copy of your scenario from MGT1000/MGT1003. Please make sure you keep a copy of all documents submitted to your instructor. Also, you should make sure you keep all of your drafts and research from your MGT1000/MGT1003 in a safe place as you will need this in MGT1006. Please take a moment to review the scoring rubric for this project to ensure you understand the criteria for how your project will be graded.
IMPORTANT: You will not be permitted to take the MGT1006 capstone course that you need in order to graduate unless this project receives a passing grade and you receive a passing grade on other course requirements. Please see your instructor immediately if you do not have either your MGT1000 or MGT1003 project.
Research Project Assignment Receiving F Grade
Your Research Project Assignment will be scored by a rubric. If your Research Project Assignment does not receive a passing score, you will receive a failing grade for the class. However, your instructor may recommend you for intersession assistance if he/she determines that you have grasped the essential concepts of the course, as demonstrated by adequate progress in other assessments performed in the course. The cost of this intersession assistance is $135 for two tutoring sessions. In order to qualify for this assistance, you will need to sign a contract that explains the requirements in detail along with a submittal date that is prior to the beginning of the following term. The maximum grade that you can receive if you go through the tutoring sessions and submit a passing project is a “C” grade. A Failing Research Project Assignment that has been revised will not be accepted unless the student has demonstrated fulfillment of the contract.
Part I: The Issue: You must have the following information in this section:
1. In your own words, summarize the scenario and identify the problems within the scenario. Provide some background information.
2. Justify why it is an important issue for managers and supervisors to be knowledgeable about and the consequences of failing to handle the issue timely and appropriately.
3. Restate your conclusion from your secondary research.
Part II: Research Purpose: What is the purpose of the research you will be conducting? Are you further exploring evidence you found as a result of conducting your secondary research? Are you discovering information about what other groups think concerning your project? Are you hoping to support the information that you found? Research can be done for a variety of reasons and purposes. Use creativity in thinking about how you can support or refute your secondary research.
Part III: Hypothesis and Survey Design: State your hypothesis. What do you think you will find as the result of your research?
Design your research experiment: From understanding the various ways that you can conduct research select one or more methods. In this project, you must develop a survey, but you can also select and use additional research methods. Identify the population that you have selected for research and specific characteristics of this population. Explain in detail the process of creating your survey – For example: how was your sample frame selected, what did you have to do to create the online survey, explain how you collected and organized your data, what types of questions did you use, what are the advantages/disadvantages of the question type you chose, etc. You must use all of the required statistical terminologies as outlined in the Additional Required Information section below. See the Survey Design section below on help with composing your survey questions
Part IV: Summary of Data — Charts and Graphs: Summarize your data in charts and graphs for each survey question asked. Describe your findings using statistical methods such as frequency distributions, mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and identify four links between collected data. You must calculate the mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and five-number summary for at least one question. The calculations and formulas must be attached to your report and referred to in your paper as Exhibit A. Reminder: In order to use the mean and standard deviation your response categories must be numerical, not categorical. To fulfill this requirement, a good question to use is “What is your age?” You must use all of the required statistical terminologies as outlined in the Additional Required Information section below.
Interpret your data: What do the measures indicate? What did you learn from the data? Were there any trends or relationships you observed? For example: Analyze your population’s demographic characteristics. Your discussion should explain whether or not your population is accurately represented in your data. Show how your standard deviation, five-number summary, mean, and median calculations apply to the age demographic. Hint: Apply the 68—95—99.7 Rule (Chapter 13 in your textbook) for normal distributions to your data.
Part V: Conclusion: Summarize what you have found; does the information you collected support what you expected to find. How did you consider the opinion of others? Does your hypothesis support or refute your point of view? Do you think that your findings are accurate or could there be bias involved or other problems that could influence both the accuracy and reliability of the data? For example, in reviewing your survey, were your response variables to questions designed thoroughly enough to cover a broad range of potential preferences of individuals.
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Survey Design
General Information:
1. Your survey must contain a minimum of five (5) demographic questions and five (5) categorical questions (scenario/topic related questions).
2. There must be a minimum of four (4) possible responses for each multiple-choice question. If you use “All of the above” or “None of the above” you must have four (4) other responses for your participants to choose from. You are limited to one (1) yes/no response question OR one (1) true/false response question.
3. If you are using an online survey website that allows you to create questions where the respondent can choose multiple response answers, you need to ensure that your question allows for this. You should also ensure that ALL of your survey questions are required to be answered.
4. You must proofread your survey to ensure that your introduction, questions, and response variables are grammatically correct, and have no spelling, capitalization, or punctuation errors.
Survey Questions:
1. You need to be creative in developing your survey questions to ensure that they are designed to give you data to help support your hypothesis.
2. Make sure your survey questions match your research objectives. When developing your questions, ask yourself these two questions: How does this question relate to my scenario? How does this question relate to the decision I made in my secondary research project?
3. Try to develop an ability to think like your potential respondents. If you can effectively consider how your research participants will interpret and react to each question on your survey, then your resulting data is likely to provide useful information.
4. Use language that is understandable to the type of respondents whom you are targeting. Consider the age of your respondents, their educational level, and any other relevant cultural characteristics of your respondents when deciding how to phrase your questions.
5. Avoid biased questions. This type of question may contain biased terminology or are worded in such a way that they are slanted to a particular answer. Your questions should be neutral so that the respondent can think their own thoughts about the question.
6. Feel free to use open-ended questions (a person can answer any way they want). Keep in mind that this type of question can be hard and time-consuming to analyze. However, you may get some good ideas from the responses that can help make your project more interesting.
7. Organize your survey questions in a logical sequence. For example, put all of your demographic questions first; then, put your topic questions in order from a general topic question to a more specific topic question sequence.
Survey Question Answers:
1. Make sure you have the most common answers available.
2. Try to avoid neutral answers (such as “don’t care” or “don’t know”) because people may choose them so they don’t have to think about the answer.
3. It can be helpful to have an “other” category in case none of the choices are satisfactory for the person answering the question.
4. Make sure each question is set up so you will be able to present the answers the way you want. Example: Having 5-6 response categories makes a nice display for a bar graph or pie chart; having more than six response categories can make for unsightly, confusing graphs, especially pie charts.
Survey Responses:
1. You must have a minimum of twenty-five (25) responses to your survey.
2. You must prepare a graph exhibiting the results for each question in your survey.
Additional Required Information
Your project MUST contain the following statistical terminology