Wilson Business Periodicals Database
What should you be looking for in the books and articles to be used for
your research reports? Most students it seems will begin their research project by hopping
on the Internet with a key word or two and browsing awhile. Once they find some
appropriate articles they try and splice them together to make a well suited report that
matches their original idea or proposal to the professor. This is easy to do because
there's a LOT of stuff out there on the web.
Unfortunately...it's the wrong way to do it.First of all there are five approaches to go
about developing the information for your report.
Type 1:
The historical approach.
Like you did in high school. You define the topic with a lot of help from the
encyclopedia, plus other types of books or articles which portray the evolution of an idea
and then followed it historically to the present. Examples could include the progress of
technology (e.g. the PC), certain types of legislation, or management theory, etc.
Type 2:
The
Normative approach.
In this case you are trying to develop your ideas along what is considered
"normal" in a domestic or foreign society or situation. You are looking for
opinions and research that supports the norms of that culture. For example: Hypothesis:
Women are denied access to top management positions in the U.S. because of deep-seated
male biases. If you disagree with that statement, your job is to research the opinions of
learned social leaders about the behavior of American males in organizations regarding the
advancement of women.
And prove your point, according to the standards or norms of that society.
Type 3:
The Behavioral approach.
Many people are not swayed by the opinions of others and insist on seeing the facts in the
case. These "facts" theoretically speak for themselves because they are
quantitatively based. That is, we can prove our point with statistics (keeping in mind the
old adage that there are: "...lies, damn lies, and statistics.").
The primary question here is how the survey instruments/data have been created, applied
and interpreted.
Type 4:
The Survey approach.
This approach is basically, a comprehensive, annotated bibliography that seeks to identify
all of the relevant information on a particular topic. For example, Ph.D. dissertations
must give comprehensive surveys of the research in their (narrow) area.
Type 5:
The Contingency approach.
More than likely, this is what you envision as your research report. That is a combination
of the first four approaches...contingent on what you find! The more far-sighted students
on the other hand will try and build a research model that focuses on using all of the
approaches, if that's the intent, but to the degree determined by the student researcher.
For example: In the hypothesis cited in the Normative Approach, one should look for
behavioral statistics which support the normative position. That is, opinions which have
the strength of empirical (tested) evidence.
This can be followed up by trends (historical evidence) and supported by published experts
in the field (survey evidence).
The degree to which you apply these approaches is the art versus the science of report
writing.
Along with these approaches one should keep in mind the sources of
information. Books for example, may cover the topic comprehensively, but could be
considered outdated almost before they are published (look at the bibliography and see the
dates listed for the publications).
Articles on the other hand, can be selected to be as contemporary as possible (it's
always useful to determine when the opinions and statistics of these articles were in fact
obtained by the author...it could be a recent article with relatively old information).
One of the means for establishing quality in the research is either by using books from
known publishing houses and articles from refereed journals (that is a committee of
experts employed by the editor to review submissions by authors in an anonymous process).
The bottom line is this. The quality of the research report will depend on the student's
ability to establish a solid hypothesis and support that hypothesis with quality
information from web sites, books, articles, interviews, brochures, etc. that can be
recovered...it does little good to write a terrific report, but provide a bibliography
that contains
web sites where the database is of questionable quality or so large that the orginal
information cannot be found. Sort of like having a fascinating person whom you sat next to
on the plane...that you'd like to meet again...give you their business card with their
last name on it and nothing more.
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