Chapter 3

Learning Objectives
After completing Chapter 3 you should be able to:.
1. Develop a good problem statement.
2. Develop a research proposal.
Dr. Mohamed AbouelmagdResearch Methodology

Problems Vs Symptoms of Problems
It is very important that Symptoms of problems are not defined as the real problem.
For instance, a manager might have tried to decrease employee turnover (the best people are leaving
the organization) by increasing wages, but with little success.
Here the real problem may be something else such as the low motivation of employees who feel they
do not have enough control over their work.
The high turnover rate may merely be a symptom of the deep‐rooted motivational problem.
Under these conditions, in the long run, a higher salary will not affect employees ’ intentions to leave

Problem Root Cause
to get to the root cause of a problem (via preliminary research). Developed by the Japanese industrialist Sakichi Toyota,
the idea is to keep asking “Why?” until the most basic cause is arrived at.
Let’s go back to our example to illustrate this approach.
My best employees are leaving the organization
Why? Because they are not satisfied with their jobs.
Why? Because they do not find a challenge in their jobs.
Why? Because they do not have control over their work.
Why? Because they do not have a lot of influence over planning, executing, and evaluating the work they do.
Why? Because we have been reluctant to delegate.

Problem Statement
First Step
• Identification of the broad management Problem
Second Step
• Preliminary Research
Third Step
• Definition of the Research Problem

1. Identification of The Broad Management Problem
Identification of a research problem is the first and most important step in research process
broad area is selected and then broad topic narrowed down to a specific one sentence statement of
the problem .
It is very difficult and challenging and needs lots of time

Examples of Problems
• Staff turnover is higher than anticipated.
• The current instrument for the assessment of potential employees for management positions is imperfect.
• Minority group members in organizations are not advancing in their careers.
• The newly installed information system is not being used by the managers for whom it was primarily designed.
• The introduction of flexible work hours has created more problems than it has solved.
• Young workers in the organization show low levels of commitment to the organization.

2. Preliminary Research
Once we have identified the broad problem area Preliminary Research should help the researcher
to gain a better understanding of the problem and to narrow the problem down to a researchable
topic for study.
Preliminary research should help the researcher to find answers to questions such as:
• What is the problem?
• Why does the problem exist?
• Is the problem important?
• What are the benefits of solving the problem?”

Nature of information to be gathered for
Background information on the organization
• The origin and history of the company
• Size in terms of employees, assets, or both.
• Charter – purpose and ideology.
• Location – regional, national, or other.
• Resources – human and others.
• Financial position during the previous five to ten years, and relevant financial data.
• Information on structural factors
• Information on the management philosophy.

3. Defining The Problem Statement
A good problem statement includes both a statement of the following
• Research objective(s)
• The research question(s)
For instance, a manager might be interested in determining the factors that
increase employee commitment to the organization , since an increase in employee commitment may translate into
lower staff turnover, less absenteeism, and increased performance levels, all of which will benefit the organization.
The purpose or objective of the study thus explains why the study is being done.
The statement of the research objective(s) should be brief

Examples of Research objectives
• To find out what motivates consumers to buy a product online.
• To study the effect of leadership style on employees ’job satisfaction.
• To investigate the relationship between capital structure and profitability of the firm.
• To establish success factors regarding the adoption and use of information systems.
• To determine the optimal price for a product.
• To investigate the influence of the in‐store shopping environment on impulse buying.
• To establish the determinants of employee involvement.
• To understand the causes of employee absence.

• To find out what motivates consumers to buy a product online.
• To study the effect of leadership style on employees ’job satisfaction.
• To investigate the relationship between capital structure and profitability of the firm.
• To establish success factors regarding the adoption and use of information systems.
• To determine the optimal price for a product.
• To investigate the influence of the in‐store shopping environment on impulse buying.
• To understand the causes of employee absence.

Well-defined research questions
• How has the new packaging affected the sales of the product?
• Has the new advertising message resulted in enhanced recall?
• How do price and quality rate on consumers’ evaluation of products?
• Is the effect of participative budgeting on performance moderated by control systems?
• Does better automation lead to greater asset investment per dollar of output?
• Does expansion of international operations result in an enhancement of the firm’s image and value?
• What are the effects of downsizing on the long range growth patterns of companies?
• What are the specific factors to be considered in creating a data warehouse for a manufacturing company?

Problem
Problem statement
Research objectives Research questions
Frequent and long delays may
translate into much frustration
among airline passengers, to
switching behavior, and to
negative word‐of‐mouth
communication. These feelings
and behaviors eventually have
negative effects on the
performance and the
profitability
of the firm.
The purpose of this study are:
1. To identify the factors that
influence the passengers ’
waiting experience
2. To investigate the possible
impact of waiting on
customer satisfaction and
service evaluations.
1. What are the factors that affect the perceived
waiting experience of airline passengers and to
what extent do these factors affect the
perception of waiting times?
2. What are the affective consequences of waiting
and how does affect mediate the relationship
between waiting and service evaluations?
3. How do situational variables (such as filled time)
influence customer reactions to the waiting
experience?

The Research Proposal
Before any research study is undertaken, there should be an agreement between the person who authorizes the
study and the researcher as to the problem to be investigated, the methodology to be used, the duration of the
study, and its cost.
This ensures that there are no misunderstandings or frustrations later for either party. This is usually accomplished
through a research proposal, which the researcher submits and gets approved by the sponsor,
who issues a letter of authorization to proceed with the study.

Research Proposal
Dr. Mohamed Abouelmagd 16

Definition
 A research proposal is a document proposing a research
project
 A research proposal is a paper you write to show others
that you have a project to investigate
 Your research project proposal will also help you develop
your project carefully and fully

At the beginning
 As with writing a regular academic paper, research proposals are generally
organized the same way throughout most social science disciplines.
 Proposals vary between ten and twenty-five pages in length.

At the beginning
A good place to begin is to ask yourself a series of questions:
• What do I want to study?
• Why is the topic important?
• How is it significant within the subject areas covered in my class?
• What problems will it help solve?
• How does it build upon [and hopefully go beyond] research already conducted
on the topic?
• What exactly should I plan to do, and can I get it done in the time available?

At the beginning
In general, a compelling research proposal should document your knowledge of the topic and
demonstrate your enthusiasm for conducting the study.
Approach it with the intention of leaving your readers feeling like …..
"Wow, that's an exciting idea and I can’t wait to see how it turns out!"

Title
• At the beginning stage, you should choose an interesting topic to investigate.
• Once you’ve chosen your topic, try to make your title catchy and relevant.
• It may sound unbelievable, but a carefully chosen title can do half the job of
persuading of your audience.

Abstract
 Next, every research proposal needs an abstract. This part of your paper has a very
limited word count, typically between 100 and 300 words.
 Such a short word count means that you should take this stage even more seriously
– it isn’t easy to convince your research committee in just a few lines!
 What should you include in your research proposal abstract?
 Explain the primary problem you want to explore and tell why it’s important.
 What benefits can your investigation bring?
 Think about this while choosing a topic and writing your abstract.

Introduction
In the real world of higher education, a research proposal is most often written by scholars
seeking grant funding for a research project or it's the first step in getting approval to
write a doctoral dissertation.
Treat your introduction as the initial pitch of an idea or a thorough examination of the
significance of a research problem.
After reading the introduction, your readers should not only have an understanding of
what you want to do, but they should also be able to gain a sense of your passion for the
topic and be excited about the study's possible outcomes.
* Note that most proposals do not include an abstract [summary] before the introduction.

Introduction
Think about your introduction as a narrative written in one to three paragraphs that succinctly
answers the following four questions:
• What is the central research problem?
• What is the topic of study related to that problem?
• What methods should be used to analyze the research problem?
• Why this is important research, what is its significance, and why should someone reading the
proposal care about the outcomes of the proposed study?

Background and Significance
This section can be melded into your introduction or you can create a separate section to help with the
organization and narrative flow of your proposal.
This is where you explain the context of your proposal and describe in detail why it's important.
Approach writing this section with the thought that you can’t assume your readers will know as much about
the research problem as you do.
*Note that this section is not an essay going over everything you have learned about the topic; instead, you
must choose what is relevant to help explain the goals for your study.

To that end, while there are no hard and fast rules, you should attempt to address some or all of the
following key points:
• State the research problem and give a more detailed explanation about the purpose of the study
than what you stated in the introduction. This is particularly important if the problem is complex or
multifaceted.
• Present the rationale of your proposed study and clearly indicate why it is worth doing. Answer the
"So What? question [i.e., why should anyone care].

• Describe the major issues or problems to be addressed by your research. Be sure to note how
your proposed study builds on previous assumptions about the research problem.
• Explain how you plan to go about conducting your research. Clearly identify the key sources
you intend to use and explain how they will contribute to your analysis of the topic.
• Set the boundaries of your proposed research in order to provide a clear focus. Where
appropriate, state not only what you will study, but what is excluded from the study.
• If necessary, provide definitions of key concepts or terms.

Literature Review
A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular
issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical
evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews
are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular
topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.

Purpose of a literature review
• Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being studied.
• Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
• Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies.
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort.
• Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research.
• Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important].

Frame the proposal's literature review
Five C’s of writing a literature review:
• Cite, so as to keep the primary focus on the literature pertinent to your research problem.
• Compare the various arguments, theories, methodologies, and findings expressed in the literature:
what do the authors agree on? Who applies similar approaches to analyzing the research problem?
• Contrast the various arguments, themes, methodologies, approaches, and controversies expressed in
the literature: what are the major areas of disagreement, controversy, or debate?

Frame the proposal's literature review
• Critique the literature: Which arguments are more persuasive, and why? Which approaches, findings,
methodologies seem most reliable, valid, or appropriate, and why? Pay attention to the verbs you use
to describe what an author says/does [e.g., asserts, demonstrates, argues, etc.].
• Connect the literature to your own area of research and investigation: how does your own work draw
upon, depart from, synthesize, or add a new perspective to what has been said in the literature?

Research Design and Methods
This section must be well-written and logically organized because you are not actually doing the research,
yet, your reader must have confidence that it is worth pursuing.
The reader will never have a study outcome from which to evaluate whether your methodological
choices were the correct ones.
Thus, the objective here is to convince the reader that your overall research design and methods of
analysis will correctly address the problem and that the methods will provide the means to effectively
interpret the potential results.
Your design and methods should be unmistakably tied to the specific aims of your study.

Describe the overall research design by building upon and drawing examples from your review of the literature.
Consider not only methods that other researchers have used but methods of data gathering that have not been
used but perhaps could be.
Be specific about the methodological approaches you plan to undertake to obtain information, the techniques
you would use to analyze the data, and the tests of external validity to which you commit yourself [i.e., the
trustworthiness by which you can generalize from your study to other people, places, events, and/or periods of
time].

When describing the methods you will use, be sure to cover the following:
• Specify the research operations you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results of these operations
in relation to the research problem. Don't just describe what you intend to achieve from applying the methods
you choose, but state how you will spend your time while applying these methods [e.g., coding text from
interviews to find statements about the need to change school curriculum; running a regression to determine if
there is a relationship between campaign advertising on social media sites and election outcomes in Europe].

• Keep in mind that a methodology is not just a list of tasks; it is an argument as to why these tasks add
up to the best way to investigate the research problem. This is an important point because the mere
listing of tasks to be performed does not demonstrate that, collectively, they effectively address the
research problem. Be sure you explain this.
• Anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers and pitfalls in carrying out your research design and
explain how you plan to address them. No method is perfect so you need to describe where you believe
challenges may exist in obtaining data or accessing information. It's always better to acknowledge this
than to have it brought up by your reader.

Preliminary Suppositions and Implications
Just because you don't have to actually conduct the study and analyze the results, doesn't mean you can skip talking about the
analytical process and potential implications.
The purpose of this section is to argue how and in what ways you believe your research will refine, revise, or extend existing
knowledge in the subject area under investigation.
Depending on the aims and objectives of your study, describe how the anticipated results will impact future scholarly research,
theory, practice, forms of interventions, or policymaking. Note that such discussions may have either substantive [a potential
new policy], theoretical [a potential new understanding], or methodological [a potential new way of analyzing] significance.

Just because you don't have to actually conduct the study and analyze the results, doesn't
mean you can skip talking about the analytical process and potential implications.
The purpose of this section is to argue how and in what ways you believe your research will
refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the subject area under investigation.

Depending on the aims and objectives of your study, describe how the anticipated results will impact future
scholarly research, theory, practice, forms of interventions, or policymaking. Note that such discussions
may have either substantive [a potential new policy], theoretical [a potential new understanding], or
methodological [a potential new way of analyzing] significance.

When thinking about the potential implications of your study, ask the following questions:
• What might the results mean in regards to the theoretical framework that underpins the study?
• What suggestions for subsequent research could arise from the potential outcomes of the study?
• What will the results mean to practitioners in the natural settings of their workplace?
• Will the results influence programs, methods, and/or forms of intervention?

• How might the results contribute to the solution of social, economic, or other types of problems?
• Will the results influence policy decisions?
• In what way do individuals or groups benefit should your study be pursued?
• What will be improved or changed as a result of the proposed research?
• How will the results of the study be implemented, and what innovations will come about?

Conclusion
The conclusion reiterates the importance or significance of your proposal and provides a brief
summary of the entire study. This section should be only one or two paragraphs long, emphasizing
why the research problem is worth investigating, why your research study is unique, and how it
should advance existing knowledge.?

Conclusion
Someone reading this section should come away with an understanding of:
• Why the study should be done.
• The specific purpose of the study and the research questions it attempts to answer.
• The decision to why the research design and methods used where chosen over other options.
• The potential implications emerging from your proposed study of the research problem.
• A sense of how your study fits within the broader scholarship about the research problem.

Citations
• As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used in composing your proposal. In a
standard research proposal, this section can take two forms, so consult with your professor about which
one is preferred.
• References -- lists only the literature that you actually used or cited in your proposal.
• Bibliography -- lists everything you used or cited in your proposal, with additional citations to any key
sources relevant to understanding the research problem.

Citations
• In either case, this section should testify to the fact that you did enough preparatory work to make sure
the project will complement and not duplicate the efforts of other researchers. Start a new page and use
the heading "References" or "Bibliography" centered at the top of the page. Cited works should always
use a standard format that follows the writing style advised by the discipline of your course [i.e.,
education=APA; history=Chicago, etc] or that is preferred by your professor. This section normally does
not count towards the total page length of your research proposal

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Chapter 3