RESEARCH METHODS 2
Research Methods
RESEARCH METHODS
1. What is your research question?
What is the influence of music on worker’s productivity?
2. What is your hypothesis or hypotheses? What is the null hypothesis?
A hypothesis is a shrewd guess, an assumption, explanation, an informed judgment or inference that is professionally adopted to explain facts or conditions or to guide one on how to attack the problem. A hypothesis helps the study in suggesting prediction, explaining outcome and in guiding the investigation to provide a focus. There are two types of hypotheses commonly used in research namely Alternative hypothesis and Null hypothesis. An alternative hypothesis is stated in the positive form indicating the direction or kind of relationship expected. It is concept oriented. For this research the alternative hypothesis is:
· Music improves productivity in the work environment.
The null hypothesis is justified where prior knowledge or findings are lacking, and where there is no basis for predicting the probable direction or relationship. It is a negative form of the hypothesis that the phenomenon has occurred out of chance, hence non-directional. In this research the null hypothesis is:
· Music does not improve productivity in the workplace.
3. How many participants would you like to use and why? What are the inclusion characteristics, i.e., what must they have in order to be included in your study (for example, gender, diagnosis, age, personality traits, etc.)? Are there any exclusion characteristics, i.e. are there certain characteristics that would exclude them from being in your study? Does the sample need to be diverse? Why or why not?
For this research, the number of participants will be twenty. Ten men and ten women and they all must be at least 21 years and above. These individuals will be subjected to different working conditions and their performances observed in those different areas. There will be no need of any exclusion characteristics from the participants.
4. What sampling technique will be used to collect your sample? What population does your sample generalize to?
A study may target a large area or a large group of items to be studied. The entire group or persons or set of objects and events to be studied is called population. The most important aspect is that the population must possess all the characteristics (variables) the researcher is interested in. Given that the researcher cannot be everywhere at once or take every possible viewpoint at the same time, the researcher needs to get to the general population through a sample. A sample is a group of people, or records or a number of observations from a larger population. The process of selecting the sample for the study is called sampling. For this research, I am going to use random sampling. This procedure ensures that each unit of the sample is chosen on the basis of a chance to avoid sampling bias. A sampling bias occurs where researcher has not carefully selected the samples that are expected to represent the general target population, resulting in negative impact on the study findings.
5. What are the variables in your study?
Variables are quality, properties or characteristics of persons, things or situation that change or vary such as age, sex (male/female), education (university, secondary, primary), size, weight, height, etc. In research variables are classified into two types namely:
Independent Variables: A variable that influences other variables, i.e. the intervention performed to see change/outcome in the variables proposed as being dependent on it. It is the presumed effect. Provide operational definitions for each variable. The independent variable will be music in this research.
Dependent Variables: A variable predicted/explained. It reflects the effects or response to the independent variable (appears, disappears, diminishes or increases). The dependent variable in this research will be workers’ productivity (Scandura, & Williams, 2000).
6. How will you measure each variable? Discuss the reliability and validity of these measures in general terms.
The variables will be measured by counting the achievement the workers make on their works as they work in different areas with music and without music.
7. What technique will be used for data collection (e.g., observation, survey, interview, archival, etc.)?
Archival and observational techniques will be used in the research. To confirm the results, interviews and questionnaires will also be needed.
8. What type of research design is being used?
I intend to use both qualitative and quantitative research designs. Qualitative research is a systematic, subjective approach used to describe life experiences and give them meaning. Quantitative research is defined as a “formal, objective, rigorous, systematic process for generating information about the world” (Neuman, 2005).
9. Briefly, discuss the procedure that would be followed when conducting the research.
· The research will be conducted as per the phases outlined below:
· Problem identification
· Formulation of research objectives/questions
· Formulation of research hypothesis and/or assumptions
· Literature review/what has been done on the topic
· Research design: scope and methods (where, when and how)
· Data collection: instruments, measurements, sampling frame.
· Data analysis: description of results
· Data interpretation: discussions and inferences
· Conclusions: implications of research findings, conclusions, and recommendations
10. What are some POTENTIAL ethical issues? How might they be addressed?
Sometime when better results are needed, the participants must not be aware that they are being used in a research, and this is sometime unethical and may result in litigation (Creswell, 2002).
References
Neuman, W. L. (2005). Social research methods: Quantitative and qualitative approaches (Vol. 13, pp. 26-28). Boston, MA: Allyn and bacon.
Peffers, K., Tuunanen, T., Rothenberger, M. A., & Chatterjee, S. (2007). A design science research methodology for information systems research.Journal of management information systems, 24(3), 45-77.
Scandura, T. A., & Williams, E. A. (2000). Research methodology in management: Current practices, trends, and implications for future research.Academy of Management journal, 43(6), 1248-1264.
Creswell, J. W. (2002). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative. New Jersey: Upper Saddle River.