The Research Process

Formulate & Clarify Your Research Topic

Critically Review The Literature

Choose Research Paradigm/Approach and Strategy

Negotiate Access & Address Ethical Issues

Plan Data Collection and Collect Data Using One or More of:

(i) Sampling (ii) Secondary Data (iii) Observations (iv) Interviews (v) Questionnaires

Analyze Your Data Using One or Both of:

(i) Quantitative Methods (ii) Qualitative Methods (iii) Mixed Methods

Forward Planning
Write Your Thesis Report

Reflection & Revision Prepare & Appear for Viva

Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2009

Brainstorming exercise

• Think about problems that you observe/encounter in

day-day-day business/finance administration.
Sources of Research Ideas
• Everyday experience and observations
• Classroom discussions & deliveries/ coursework
• Textbooks (literature reviews)
• Problems that people confront
• Evaluation of other’s research works (Research
Discussions- Future Research)
• Replication
• Reading daily news
• Evaluation of Theories (eg. Skinner or Piaget)
• Curiosity
• Controversies surrounding us
• Organizations and other people
Selecting a Topic
Ability to develop a good research topic is an important
skill.
• Brainstorm for ideas
• Choose a topic that will enable you to read and
understand the literature
• Ensure that the topic is manageable & that materials
are available
• Make a list of keywords
• Be flexible
• Define your topic as focused research questions
• Research and read more about your topic
• Formulate a research statement
Selecting a Research Topic
Four principles guide topic selection:

1. Personally interesting
2. Practical and Feasible
• Available population
• Can be investigated (measurable)
3. Important
• worthwhile
4. Ethical
• The study will cause no harm
Think of Who, What, When, Where and Why
• Why did you choose the topic? What interests you about it? Do
you have an opinion about the issues involved?

• Who are the information provides on this topic? Who might

publish information about it? Who is affected by the topic? Do
you know of organisations/institutions affiliated with the topic?

• When is/was your topic important? Is it a current event or a

historical issue? Do you want to compare your topic by time
period?

• What are the major questions for this topic? Is there a debate
about the topic? Are there a range of issues and viewpoints to
consider?

• Where is your topic important: at the local, national or

international level? Are there specific places affected by the
topic?
Criteria of a Good Research
• Systematic: research should be structured with specified
steps to be taken in a specified sequence in accordance
with the well-defined set of rules
• Logical: research should be guided by the rules of
logical reasoning
• Empirical: research should be related basically to one or
more aspects of a real situation and deals with concrete
data that provides a basis for external validity research
results
• Replicable: research should be verifiable by replicating
the study and thereby building a sound basis for
decisions
Criteria of good research

• Purpose should be clearly defined

• Common concepts to be used
• Explain procedure clearly - for continuity
• Results should be as objective as possible
• Report with frankness- Acknowledge, procedural
flaws
• Limitations of the study
• Appropriate statistical test of significance
• Justify conclusions with data
Activity

• What are your research interests?

• Identify others who share your interests.
• Use the 4 guiding principles and apply them to your
own areas of research interest.
1. How is the area personally interesting?
2. Is the area practical and feasible to study?
3. Is the are important to study?
4. Is it ethical to conduct a study in this area?
Problem Distillation

• The process of refining the question or idea into a

problem and making it sufficiently specific so that it
is amenable to investigation

• This process should lead to the development of a

“statement of the problem” that is clear, concise,
and definitive
Generating Research idea (s)
More frequently used techniques for generating &
refining research ideas

Rational Thinking Creative Thinking

• Examining your own • Keeping a notebook of

strengths & interests ideas
• Looking at past project • Exploring personal
titles preferences using past
• Discussion projects
• Searching the literature • Relevance trees
• Scanning the media • Brainstorming
Refining Research Ideas
• Now, you will, probably, have heaps of ideas
• But they are still raw…
• They need to be polished, refined, finetuned…
• How do you do that???
• Refining Research Ideas
• The Delphi technique
• The preliminary study
• Integrating ideas
• ‘working up and narrowing down’
The Delphi Techniques
• This involves using a group of people who are either
involved or interested in the research idea to
generate and choose a more specific research idea.
To use this technique, you need:
1. Brief the members about the research idea;
2. each member generates up to 3 specific research
ideas based on the idea that has been described,
independently [they can be asked for justification
for their ideas]
3. collect the research ideas and distribute them to all
members of the group;
4. Individuals comment on the research ideas and
revise their own contributions in light of what
others have said;
5. Repeat the process until a consensus is reached
Attributes of a good research topic

• Relates to your capability

• Exciting for you
• Financially manageable
• Doable (in terms of given time frame)
• Accessible data
Research Topics to be Avoided

• Topics that are over researched on

• Too Controversial Subjects (especially for
beginning/average researchers)
• Too Narrow or too Vague
• Formulating a problem which involves merely a
comparison of two or more sets of data
• Topics for which the answer can be simply ’Yes’ or
’No’