Business Research Methods syllabus

Business Research Methods

• 1 Introduction (8 LHs)

  • Research meaning, features and scientific process
  • Basic versus applied research
  • Positivism versus interpretivism
  • Business research and decisions
  • Research ethics
• 2 Literature Searching and Theoretical Framework (5 LHs)

  • Literature-survey purposes, steps and internet search
  • Theoretical framework and research problem
  • Objectives and hypotheses
  • Deduction and induction
• 3 Research Design (5 LHs)

  • Design concepts
  • Descriptive, correlational, causal-comparative and experimental designs
  • Case study, ethnography and grounded theory
• 4 Measurement, Scaling and Sampling (8 LHs)

  • Variables and nominal/ordinal/interval/ratio scales
  • Attitude scale construction: rank, semantic differential and Likert
  • Validity, reliability and measurement problems
  • Probability and non-probability sampling
  • Sampling errors and sample size
• 5 Data Collection and Analysis (12 LHs)

  • Secondary and primary data sources
  • Questionnaires and interviews
  • Observation methods
  • Tables, diagrams and graphs
  • Descriptive/inferential statistics
  • Qualitative collection and content, narrative, discourse and grounded-theory analysis
  • Chi-square tests
• 6 Research Proposal and Report Writing (10 LHs)

  • Topic selection and proposal structure
  • Report process, writing and layout
  • APA citations and references
  • Good-report essentials