Research Design and Analysis Exercise Part

Part I: Introduction and Overview

There are a number of user-friendly, ôpracticalö texts dedicated to the subject of research methodologies. Many such texts, including that of Bailey (1990), are oriented toward a specific field or discipline. In the case of Bailey (1990), it is social research that serves as the focus of his discussion. Conversely, Davis (1996), in his description of research methodologies and design, directs his analysis toward the needs of business researchers.

Despite these differences in focus, the vast majority of texts written on the subject of research contain contents that are, with regard to methodology, remarkably similar. This is because, as Leedy and Ormrod (2001) have noted, regardless of its focus research is a systematic process of collecting and analyzing information or data in order to increase understanding of the phenomenon with which the researcher is concerned. Formal research, or research in which one intentionally sets out to enhance understanding of a phenomenon, typically has eight distinct characteristics:

. Research originates with a question or problem

. Research requires a clear articulation of a goal

. Research follows a specific plan or procedure

. Research divides the principal problem into

. Research is guided by the specific research problem,

. Research accepts certain critical assumptions

. . .
tistics are based on certain assumptions about the nature of the population being studied. Nonparametric statistics do not proceed from any such assumptions. The descriptive statistics addressed by Leedy and Ormrod (2001) include points of central tendency (Means, Medians, and Modes) as well as measures of variation such as dispersion or deviation. Measures of relationship obtained by correlation are also descriptive statistics that allow the researcher to determine the direction and strength of a relationship. Inferential statistics described by Leedy and Ormrod (2001) help to estimate or predict population parameters from sample statistics. Included in these statistics are such techniques as t-tests, chi squares, and analyses of variance. The researchers also address hypothesis testing and the various types of hypotheses that are available. Here, they provide a listing of the statistical procedures that can be used in hypothesis testing with respect to both parametric and nonparametric statistics. As noted above, Leedy and Ormrod (2001) tend in this discussion, to simply describe the statistical procedure and its application without giving the reader much in the way of information on how the statistic is computed or
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Approximate Word count = 9377
Approximate Pages = 38 (250 words per page)

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