The Research Process step 6: Elements of Research Design

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The Research Processstep 6 Elements of Research
Design

• CHAPTER 6

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Chapter Objectives

• Understand the different aspects relevant to
  designing a research study.
• Identify the scope of any given study and the end
  use of the results.
• Describe the type of investigation needed, the
  study setting, the extent of researcher
  interference, the unit of analysis, and the time
  horizon of the study.
• Identify which of the two, a causal or a
  correlational study, would be more appropriate in
  a given situation.

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The Research Design

• In this step we need to design the research in a
  way that the requisite data can be gathered and
  analyzed to arrive at a solution.
• The research design was originally presented in a
  simple manner in box 6 of Figure 6.1.

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Figure 6.1
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Figure 6.2 The Various Issues Involved in the
Research Design
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Purpose of The Study

• The Nature of Studies
• Exploratory Study
• Descriptive Study
• Hypothesis Testing (Analytical and Predictive)
• Case Study Analysis

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Exploratory Study

• Exploratory Study is undertaken when not much is
  known about the situation at hand, or no
  information is available on how similar problems
  or research issues have been solved in the past.

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Example 6.1

• The manager of a multinational corporation is
  curious to know if the work ethic values of
  employees working in Prince Hassan Industrial
  City would be different from those of Americans.
• That city is a small city, and no information
  about the ethic values of its workers.
• Also, the work ethic values mean be different
  to people in different cultures.

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Example 6.1 (Cont.)

• The best way to study the above situation is by
  conducting an exploratory study, by interviewing
  the employees in organizations in Irbid area.

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Descriptive Study

• Is undertaken in order to ascertain and be able
  to describe the characteristics of the variables
  of interest in a situation.

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Descriptive Study

• In addition, descriptive studies are undertaken
  in organizations to learn about and describe the
  characteristics of a group of employees, as for
  example, the age, education level, job status,
  and length of service.

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Example 6.2

• A bank manager wants to have a profile of the
  individuals who have loan payments outstanding
  for 6 months and more.
• This profile would include details of their
  average age, earnings, nature of occupation,
  full-time/ part-time employment status, and the
  like.
• The above information might help the manager
  to decide right away on the types of individuals
  who should be made ineligible for loans in the
  future.

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Example 6.4

• A marketing manager might want to develop a
  pricing, sales, distribution, and advertising
  strategy for his product.
• The manager might ask for information
  regarding the competitors, with respect to the
  following
• 1. the percentage of companies who have prices
  higher and lower than the industry norm.
• 2. the percentage of competitors hiring
  in-house staff to handle sales and those who use
  independent agents.

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Example 6.4 (Cont.)

• 3. percentage of sales groups organized by
  product line, by accounts, and by region.
• 4. the types of distribution channels used and
  the percentage of customers using each.
• 5. percentage of competitors spending more
  dollars on advertising/promotion than the firm
  and those spending less.
• 6. Percentage of those using the web to sell the
  product.

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Hypotheses Testing

• Studies that engage in hypotheses testing usually
  explain the nature of certain relationships, or
  establish the differences among groups or the
  independence of two or more factors in a
  situation.
• Hypotheses testing is undertaken to explain the
  variance in the dependent variable or to predict
  organizational outcomes.

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Example 6.5

• A marketing manager wants to know if the sales of
  the company will increase if he doubles the
  advertising dollars.
• Here, the manager would like to know the nature
  of the relationship between advertising and sales
  by testing the hypothesis
• If advertising is increased, then sales will
  also go up.

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Case Study Analysis

• Case studies involve in-depth, contextual
  analyses of matters relating to similar
  situations in other organizations.
• Case studies, as a problem solving technique, are
  not frequently resorted to in organizations
  because findings the same type of problem in
  another comparable setting is difficult due to
  the reluctance of the companies to reveal their
  problems.

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Case Study Analysis

• Case studies that are qualitative in nature are,
  however, useful in applying solutions to current
  problems based on past problem-solving
  experiences.
• Also, case studies are useful in understanding
  certain phenomena, and generating further
  theories for empirical testing.

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Type of Investigation Causal versus Correlational

• A causal study Is an inquiry to know the cause
  of one or more problems.
• A correlational study Is an inquiry to know the
  important variables associated with the problem.

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Example 6.9

• A causal study question
• Does smoking cause cancer?
• A correlational study question
• Are smoking and cancer related?
• Or
• Are smoking, drinking, and chewing
  tobacco associated with cancer?
• If so, which of these contributes most to the
  variance in the dependent variable?

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Example 6.10

• Fears of an earthquake predicted recently in an
  area were a causal of a number of crashes of some
  houses in the area in order to be eligible of
  insurance policy.

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Example 6.11

• Increases in interest rates and property taxes,
  the recession, and the predicted earthquake
  considerably slowed down the business of real
  state agents in the country.

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Extent of Researcher InterferenceWith the Study

• The extent of interference by the researcher with
  the normal flow of work at the workplace has a
  direct bearing on whether the study undertaken is
  causal or correlational.

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Extent of Researcher InterferenceWith the Study

• A correlational study is conducted in the natural
  environment of the organization with minimum
  interference by the researcher with the normal
  flow of work.

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Extent of Researcher InterferenceWith the Study

• In studies conducted to establish
  cause-and-effect relationships, the researcher
  tries to manipulate certain variables so as to
  study the effects of such manipulation on the
  dependent variable of interest.
• In other words, the researcher deliberately
  changes certain variables in the setting and
  interferes with the events as they normally occur
  in the organization.

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Minimal Interference

• Example 6.12
• A hospital administrator wants to examine the
  relationship between the perceived emotional
  support in the system and the stress experienced
  by the nursing staff. In other words, she wants
  to do a correlational study.

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Example 6.12 (Cont.)

• The researcher will collect data from the nurses
  ( through a questionnaire) to indicate how much
  emotional support they get in the hospital and to
  what extent they experience stress. By
  correlating the two variables, the answer is
  found.
• In this case, beyond administering a
  questionnaire to the nurses, the researcher has
  not interfered with the normal activities in the
  hospital.

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Moderate Interference

• If the researcher wants to establish a causal
  connection between the emotional support in the
  hospital and stress, or, wants to demonstrate
  that if the nurses had emotional support, this
  indeed would cause them to experience less stress.

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Moderate Interference

• To test the cause-and-effect relationship, the
  researcher will measure the stress currently
  experienced by the nurses in three wards in the
  hospital, and then deliberately manipulate the
  extent of emotional support given to the three
  groups of nurses in the three wards for perhaps a
  week, and measure the amount of stress at the end
  of that period.

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Moderate Interference

• For one group, the researcher will ensure that a
  number of lab technicians and doctors help and
  comfort the nurses when they face stressful
  events.
• For a second group of nurses in another ward, the
  researcher might arrange for them only a moderate
  amount of emotional support and employing only
  the lab technicians and excluding doctors.

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Moderate Interference

• The third ward might operate without any
  emotional support.
• If the experimenters theory is correct, then the
  reduction in the stress levels before and after
  the 1-week period should be greater for the
  nurses in the first ward, moderate for those in
  the second ward, and nil for the nurses in the
  third ward.

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Moderate Interference

• We find that not only does the researcher collect
  data from nurses on their experienced stress at
  two different points in time, but also
  manipulated the normal course of events by
  deliberately changing the amount of emotional
  support received by the nurses in two wards,
  while leaving things in the third ward unchanged.
• Here, the researcher has interfered more than
  minimally.

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Excessive Interference

• Example 6.14
• IF the researcher feels, after conducting the
  previous experiments, that the results may not be
  valid since other external factors might have
  influenced the stress levels experience by the
  nurses.
• For example, during that particular experimental
  week, the nurses in one or more wards may not
  have experienced high levels of stress because
  there were no serious illnesses or deaths in the
  ward. Hence the emotional support received might
  not be related to the level of stresses
  experienced.

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Excessive Interference

• The researcher want to make sure that such
  external factors that might affect the
  cause-and-effect relationship are controlled.

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Controlling the External factors

• The researcher might take three groups of medical
  students, put them in different rooms, and
  confront all of them with the same stressful
  task.
• For example, he might ask them to describe in
  detail, the surgical procedures in performing
  surgery on a patient who has not responded to
  chemotherapy and keep asking them with more and
  more questions.

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Controlling the External factors

• Although all are exposed to the same intensive
  questioning, one group might get help from a
  doctor who voluntarily offers clarifications and
  help when students stumble.
• In the second group, a doctor might be nearby,
  but might offer clarifications and help only if
  the group seeks it.
• In the third group, there is no doctor present
  and no help is available.

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Controlling the External factors

• In the above example, not only is the support
  manipulated, but even the setting in which this
  experiment is conducted is artificial inasmuch as
  the researcher has taken the subject away from
  their normal environment and put them in a
  totally different setting.
• The researcher has intervened maximally with the
  normal setting, the participants, and their
  duties.

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Excessive Interference

• The extent of researcher interference would
  depend on whether the study is correlational or
  causal and also the importance of establishing
  causal relationship beyond any doubt.
• Most organizational problems seldom call for a
  causal study, except in some market research
  areas.

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Study Setting Contrived and Noncontrived

• Correlational studies are conducted in
  noncontrived settings (normal settings), whereas
  most causal studies are done in contrived
  settings.
• Correlational studies done in organizations are
  called field studies.

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Study Setting Contrived and Noncontrived

• Studies conducted to establish cause-and-effect
  relationship using the same natural environment
  in which employees normally function are called
  field experiments.
• Experiments done to establish cause-and- effect
  relationship in a contrived environment and
  strictly controlled are called lab experiments.

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Example 6.15 Field Study

• A bank manager wants to analyze the relationship
  between interest rates and bank deposit patterns
  of clients.
• The researcher tries to correlate the two by
  looking at deposits into different kinds of
  accounts (such as savings, certificates of
  deposit, and interest-bearing checking accounts)
  as interest rates changed.

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Example 6.15 Field Study

• This is a field study where the bank manager has
  taken the balances in various types of accounts
  and correlated them to the changes in interest
  rates.
• Research here is done in a noncontrived setting
  with no interference with the normal work routine.

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Example 6.16 Field Experiment

• The bank manager now wants to determine the
  cause-and-effect relationship between interest
  rate and the inducements it offers to clients to
  save and deposit money in the bank. The
  researcher selects four branches within 60/km
  radius for the experiment.

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Example 6.16 Field Experiment

• For 1 week only, he advertises the annual rate
  for new certificates of deposit received during
  that week. The interest rate would be 9 in one
  branch, 8 in another, and 10 in the third. In
  the fourth branch, the interest rate remains
  unchanged at 5. Within the week, the researcher
  would be able to determine the effects, if any,
  of interest rates on deposit mobilization.

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Example 6.16 Field Experiment

• This example would be a field experiment since
  nothing but the interest rate is manipulated,
  with all activities occurring in the normal and
  natural work environment.
• Hopefully, all four branches chosen would be
  compatible in size, number of depositors, deposit
  patterns, and the like, so that the
  interest-savings relationships are influenced by
  some third factor.

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Example 6.17 Lab Experiment

• To be sure about the true relationship between
  the interest rate and deposits, the researcher
  could create an artificial environment by
  choosing, for instance, 40 students who are all
  business majors in their final year of study and
  in the same age. The researcher splits the
  students into four groups and give each one of
  them 1000, which they are told they might buy
  their needs or save for the future, or both.

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Example 6.17 Lab Experiment

• The researcher offers them interest on what
  they save as followings
• 6 on savings for group 1.
• 8 for group 2.
• 9 for group 3.
• 1 for group 4 ( the old rate of interest).
• Here, the researcher has created an artificial
  laboratory environment and has manipulated the
  interest rates for savings. He also chosen
  subjects with similar backgrounds.

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Unit of Analysis

• The unit of analysis refers to the level of
  aggregation of the data collected during the
  subsequent data analysis.
• Individual
• Dyads
• Groups
• Organizations
• Cultures

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Unit of Analysis Individual

• If the researcher focuses on how to raise the
  motivational levels of employees, then we are
  interested in individual employees in the
  organization. Here the unit of analysis is the
  individual (the data will be gathered from each
  individual).

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Unit of Analysis Dyads

• If the researcher is interested in studying
  two-person interaction, then several two-person
  groups also known as dyads, will become the unit
  of analysis ( analysis of husband-wife, and
  supervisor-subordinate relationships at the work
  place.

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Unit of Analysis

• Groups as a unit of analysis
• Organizations as a unit of analysis
• Cultures as a unit of analysis

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Example 6.18 Individuals as The Unit of Analysis

• The Chief Financial Officer of a manufacturing
  company wants to know how many of the staff would
  be interested in attending a 3-day seminar on
  making appropriate investment decisions.
• Data will have to be collected from each
  individual staff member and the unit of analysis
  is individual.
• The unit of analysis is the individual.

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Example 6.19 Dyads as the Unit of Analysis

• A human resources manager wants to first identify
  the number of employees in three departments of
  the organization who are in mentoring
  relationships, and then find out what the jointly
  perceived benefits of such a relationship are.

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Example 6.19 Dyads as the Unit of Analysis

• Once the mentor and the mentored pairs are
  identified, their joint perceptions can be
  obtained by treating each pair as one unit.
• If the manager wants data from a sample of 10
  pairs, he will have to deal with 20 individuals,
  a pair at a time. The information obtained from
  each pair will be a data point for subsequent
  analysis.
• Thus, the unit of analysis is the dyad.

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Example 6.20 Groups as Unit of Analysis

• A manager wants to see the patterns of usage of
  the newly installed Information System (IS) by
  the production, sales, and operations personnel.
• Here three groups of personnel are involved and
  information on the number of times the IS is used
  by each member in each of the three groups as
  well as other relevant issues will be collected
  and analyzed.
• Here the unit of analysis is the group.

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Example 6.21 Divisions as the Unit of Analysis

• Johnson Johnson company wants to see which of
  its various divisions (soap, shampoo, body oil,
  etc.) have made profits of over 12 during the
  current year.
• Here, the profits of each of the divisions will
  be examined and the information aggregated across
  the various geographical units of the division.
• The unit of analysis will be the division, at
  which level the data will be aggregated.

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Example 6.22 Industry as the Unit of Analysis

• An employment survey specialist wants to see the
  proportion of the workforce employed by the
  health care, transportation, and manufacturing
  industries.
• The researcher has to aggregate the data relating
  to each of the subunits comprised in each of the
  industries and report the proportions of the
  workforce employed at the industry level.

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Example 6.22 Industry as the Unit of Analysis

• The health care industry, for instance, includes
  hospitals, nursing homes, small and large
  clinics, and other health care providing
  facilities.
• The data from these subunits will have to be
  aggregated to see how many employees are employed
  by the heath care industry.
• This will need to be done for each of the other
  industries.

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Example 6.23 Countries as the Unit of Analysis

• The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of a
  multinational corporation wants to know the
  profits made during the past 5 years by each of
  the subsidiaries in England, Germany, and France.
  It is possible that there are many regional
  offices of these subsidiaries in each of these
  countries.

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Example 6.23 Countries as the Unit of Analysis

• The profits of the various regional centers for
  each country have to be aggregated and the
  profits for each country for the past 5 years
  provided to the CFO.
• The data will now have to be aggregated at the
  country level.

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Time Horizon Cross-Sectional Versus Longitudinal
Studies

• Cross-Sectional Studies
• A study can be done in which data are gathered
  just once, perhaps over a period of days or weeks
  or months, in order to answer a research question.

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Time Horizon Cross-Sectional Versus Longitudinal
Studies

• Example 6.24
• Data were collected from stock brokers between
  April and June of last year to study their
  concerns in a turbulent stock market.
• Data has to be collected at one point in time. It
  is a cross-sectional design.

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Time Horizon Cross-Sectional Versus Longitudinal
Studies

• Example 6.25
• A drug company desirous of investing in
  research for a new headache pill conducted a
  survey among headachy people to see how many of
  them would be interested in trying the new pill.
• This is a one-shot or cross-sectional study to
  assess the likely demand for the new product.

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Time Horizon Cross-Sectional Versus Longitudinal
Studies

• Longitudinal Studies
• Studying people or phenomena at more than one
  point in time in order to answer the research
  question.
• Because data are gathered at two different
  points in time, the study is not cross-sectional
  kind, but is carried longitudinally across a
  period of time.

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Example 6.27

• A marketing manager is interested in tracing the
  pattern of sales of a particular product in four
  different regions of the country on a quarterly
  basis for the next 2 years.
• Since the data are collected several times to
  answer the same issue, the study falls under the
  longitudinal category.

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Time Horizon Cross-Sectional Versus Longitudinal
Studies

• Longitudinal studies take more time and effort
  and cost more than cross-sectional studies.
  However, will-planned longitudinal studies could
  help to identify cause-and-effect relationships.
• For example, one could study the sales volume of
  a product before and after an advertisement, and
  provided other environmental changes have not
  impacted on the results, one could attribute the
  increase in the sales volume, if any, to the
  advertisement.

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Exercise 6.1

• A supervisor thinks that the low efficiency of
  the machine tool operators is directly linked to
  the high level of fumes emitted in the workshop.
  He would like to prove this to his supervisor
  through a research study.
• 1. Would this be a causal or a correlational
  study? Why?

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Exercise 6.1

• 2. Is this an exploratory, descriptive, or
  hypothesis-testing (analytical or predictive)
  study? Why?
• 3. What kind of study would this be field
  study, lab experiment, or field experiment? Why?
• 4. What would be the unit of analysis? Why?
• 5. Would this be a cross-section or a
  longitudinal study? Why?

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Exercise 6.1

• Answers
• This would be a causal study because the operator
  wants to prove to the supervisor that the fumes
  are causing operators to be low in their
  efficiency. In other words, the machine tool
  operator is trying to establish the fact that
  fumes cause low efficiency in workers.
• This is an analytical study because the machine
  tool operator wants to establish that fumes cause
  low efficiency and convince his workshop
  supervisor through such analysis (i.e. establish
  cause and effect relationship).

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Exercise 6.1

• This would be a field experiment. Though the
  study would be set up in the natural environment
  of the workers where the work is normally done,
  the amount of fumes will have to be manipulated
  while other factors such as atmospheric pressure
  may have to be controlled. Because of the
  location of the study, it will be a field
  experiment.
• The unit of analysis would be the individual
  operators. The data will be collected with
  respect to each operator and then the conclusions
  will be made as to whether the operators are less
  efficient because of the fumes emitted in the
  workshop.

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Exercise 6.1

• This would be a longitudinal study because data
  will be gathered at more than one point in time.
  First, the efficiency of the operators would be
  assessed at a given rate of fume emission. Then
  the fumes emitted would be manipulated to varying
  degrees, and at each manipulation, the efficiency
  of the workers would again be assessed to confirm
  that the high rate of fume emission causes a drop
  in operators efficiency.

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Exercise 6.1

1. This would be a longitudinal study because data
   will be gathered at more than one point in time.
   First, the efficiency of the operators would be
   assessed at a given rate of fume emission. Then
   the fumes emitted would be manipulated to varying
   degrees, and at each manipulation, the efficiency
   of the workers would again be assessed to confirm
   that the high rate of fume emission causes a drop
   in operators efficiency.