Summary Business Research methods Master Business Administration
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Course
Business Research Methods (Y50740)
Institution
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven)
Full summary of all classes Business Research Methods given by prof Martine Cools and prof Kathleen Cleeren in academic year . Passed during first examination period.
Business Research Methods
Inhoudsopgave
Advice for theoretical part of paper ............................................................................................................ 7
Abstract................................................................................................................................................................ 7
How to write the abstract? ............................................................................................................................. 7
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 7
How to write your introduction? .................................................................................................................... 8
Literature review .................................................................................................................................................. 8
Reporting ......................................................................................................................................................... 9
Theory ........................................................................................................................................................... 10
Plagiarism .......................................................................................................................................................... 10
Qualitative Research in Management ........................................................................................................ 10
Description of qualitative research .................................................................................................................... 10
Two broad research paradigms ......................................................................................................................... 10
Types of qualitative studies ............................................................................................................................... 11
Theory-building qualitative studies.................................................................................................................... 11
Approaching qualitative research ...................................................................................................................... 11
All of these approaches require .................................................................................................................... 11
Designing a qualitative study............................................................................................................................. 12
Purpose ......................................................................................................................................................... 12
Conceptual context ....................................................................................................................................... 12
Research questions ....................................................................................................................................... 12
Methods ........................................................................................................................................................ 12
Sampling ........................................................................................................................................................ 13
Quality in qualitative research ...................................................................................................................... 13
Case studies........................................................................................................................................................ 14
Surveys versus case studies .......................................................................................................................... 14
Experiments versus case studies .................................................................................................................. 14
Methodological guidance.............................................................................................................................. 14
Qualitative data analysis........................................................................................................................... 17
Coding ................................................................................................................................................................ 17
Coding scheme ................................................................................................................................................... 18
Build an efficient node hierarchy (Nvivo) ........................................................................................................... 18
Analysis of your data.......................................................................................................................................... 18
Miles & Huberman (1998).................................................................................................................................. 19
Grounded theory ................................................................................................................................................ 21
In sum ................................................................................................................................................................. 21
Experimental design ................................................................................................................................. 41
Experiments ....................................................................................................................................................... 41
Manipulations .................................................................................................................................................... 42
Classical experiment .......................................................................................................................................... 42
More complex types ........................................................................................................................................... 43
Between subjects vs within subjects manipulation ........................................................................................... 43
Research with one or more variables ................................................................................................................ 43
Manipulation and theory ................................................................................................................................... 44
Quasi-experimental design ................................................................................................................................ 45
Homogenous / heterogenous sampling of participants .................................................................................... 45
Homogenous / heterogenous items................................................................................................................... 45
Data gathering ................................................................................................................................................... 45
Analysis of experimental data ........................................................................................................................... 45
Scientific quality of the experiment ................................................................................................................... 46
Vignette studies ................................................................................................................................................. 46
Scenarios vignette studies ............................................................................................................................ 46
Points of attention for vignette studies ........................................................................................................ 47
An example from management control............................................................................................................. 47
Background ................................................................................................................................................... 47
Identifying the relevant variables ................................................................................................................. 48
Identifying treatments to be applied & protocol to apply them .................................................................. 48
Theory and hypotheses ................................................................................................................................. 48
Main effect of information accuracy ............................................................................................................ 48
Main effect of accountability ........................................................................................................................ 48
Interaction of information accuracy & accountability .................................................................................. 49
Identifying experimental scenario and experimental design ....................................................................... 49
2 x 2 between-subjects design ...................................................................................................................... 49
Descriptive statistics ..................................................................................................................................... 50
Testing differences between groups ............................................................................................................ 50
One-way ANOVA ........................................................................................................................................... 51
Assumptions ANOVA ..................................................................................................................................... 51
Factorial ANOVA............................................................................................................................................ 52
Linear regression analysis ......................................................................................................................... 53
Linear regression versus logistic regression? ..................................................................................................... 53
Linear regression versus ANOVA........................................................................................................................ 53
When to use linear regressions? – Exercises...................................................................................................... 54
Creating dummy variables ................................................................................................................................. 54
Example linear regression .................................................................................................................................. 55
Linear regression in STATA................................................................................................................................. 56
Model diagnostics – Steps ................................................................................................................................. 57
Assumption 1: causality ................................................................................................................................ 57
Assumption 2: all relevant variables ............................................................................................................. 57
3
, Assumption 6: residuals need to be independent, normally distributed, homoscedastic, without
autocorrelation ............................................................................................................................................. 58
Assumption 8: Multicollinearity .................................................................................................................... 60
Assumption 9: no extreme observations ..................................................................................................... 61
Step 2: check meaningfulness of model ............................................................................................................. 61
Step 3: interpret the coefficient of each independent variable separately ....................................................... 62
Model comparison approach ............................................................................................................................. 63
Moderator and mediator .......................................................................................................................... 65
Relevance ........................................................................................................................................................... 65
What is moderation? ......................................................................................................................................... 66
Example of moderation...................................................................................................................................... 66
How to test for moderation? ............................................................................................................................. 67
Exersice: which effects are moderators? ........................................................................................................... 68
What is mediation? ............................................................................................................................................ 69
An example of mediation ................................................................................................................................... 70
How to test for mediation? ................................................................................................................................ 71
Conditions for mediation ................................................................................................................................... 71
Full versus partial mediation.............................................................................................................................. 71
Testing for mediation: an example .................................................................................................................... 72
Regression 1: independent on mediator ...................................................................................................... 72
Regression 2: independent on dependent ................................................................................................... 72
Regression 3: mediator on dependent ......................................................................................................... 72
Regression 4: independent and mediator on dependent ............................................................................ 73
Measuring mediation .................................................................................................................................... 74
Criticism on Baron and Kenny ....................................................................................................................... 74
Sobel test....................................................................................................................................................... 74
Bootstrapping................................................................................................................................................ 75
How to conduct indirect effects in STATA? .................................................................................................. 75
Moderated mediation ........................................................................................................................................ 76
Multiple mediators............................................................................................................................................. 76
Exercise: moderator or mediator? ................................................................................................................ 77
Logistic regression .................................................................................................................................... 78
When to use? ..................................................................................................................................................... 78
Linear regression not appropriate ..................................................................................................................... 78
Logistic regression.............................................................................................................................................. 79
Logistic model .................................................................................................................................................... 79
Estimation of the model ..................................................................................................................................... 79
Example logistic regression................................................................................................................................ 79
Categorical variables into dummy variables ................................................................................................. 80
Logistic regression in STATA.......................................................................................................................... 81
Determining the reference category .................................................................................................................. 81
Reference categories.......................................................................................................................................... 82
Logistic regression in STATA .............................................................................................................................. 82
4
, Diagnostics ......................................................................................................................................................... 83
Step 2: Check ‘meaningfulness’ of model (model fit) ................................................................................... 85
Step 3: Interpret coefficients of each independent variable ........................................................................ 87
Panel data ................................................................................................................................................ 89
Different types of data ....................................................................................................................................... 89
Panel data .......................................................................................................................................................... 89
Example panel data ........................................................................................................................................... 90
Different methods to deal with panel data ....................................................................................................... 90
Pooled OLS .................................................................................................................................................... 91
Fixed-effects estimation................................................................................................................................ 91
Pooled OLS versus fixed effects .................................................................................................................... 92
Fixed effects estimation in Stata ................................................................................................................... 92
Random effects estimation ........................................................................................................................... 94
Random effects estimation in Stata .............................................................................................................. 95
Fixed effects or random effects.......................................................................................................................... 96
Hausman test ................................................................................................................................................ 96
Hausman test in Stata ................................................................................................................................... 96
Factor analysis.......................................................................................................................................... 97
Exploratory versus confirmatory FA................................................................................................................... 97
Conditions of FA ................................................................................................................................................. 97
Running FA in 5 steps ......................................................................................................................................... 98
Example.............................................................................................................................................................. 98
Exercise ............................................................................................................................................................ 109
5
,6
,Advice for theoretical part of paper
Components of the scientific paper:
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Literature review
• Determination of the research hypotheses
• Research method
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• References
(Don’t forget to add a reference list when sending a draft to your supervisor. It’s useful for
the supervisor to see where you got your information from.)
Abstract
This is a very short summary of the paper. It’s important that the abstract speaks for itself.
This means that there is no additional information needed to understand what is explained
in the abstract. An abstract typically has a word limit (e.g. max 100 words, 150 words).
Required components:
• Problem statement
• Approach/method
• Results
• Conclusions and implications
Don’t include details in the abstract.
How to write the abstract?
Only start writing the abstract after writing the full paper. Then consider all the different
parts of your paper:
• Introduction
• Literature review
• Research method
• Results with discussion
• Conclusion
Summarize what’s in the paper for each part with 1 sentence.
Introduction
7
,The introduction and the abstract are not the same. The introduction is usually longer than
the abstract. In the introduction less details of the conclusion are included.
Goals of the introduction:
• Situate the study
• Present the research problem
• Describe the solution proposed in the paper
Several questions need to be answered in the introduction:
• What is the background of the study?
• What is the importance of the study?
• Which problem is tackled?
• How is it tackled?
• How is the research delineated?
o Scope?
o Limitations?
o Assumptions?
How to write your introduction?
Situating the study:
• Include the importance of the research domain
• Go from general to more specific
• Refer to previous important research
Presenting the research problem:
• Point at the research gap OR
• Bring up a question OR
• Question previous research OR
• Follow a previous research line
Describing the solution proposed in the paper
• Clarify the goals of the study
• Explain which methods that were used
• Give an overview of the most relevant findings
• Give an overview of the structure of the paper
Literature review
This is more than just a synthesis of existing literature.
Goals:
• Structure the existing literature
• Evaluate the existing literature
• Situate your work in the existing literature
The literature review consists of:
• Execution
8
, • Reporting
For example: A study has been done in the US or UK and we want to do the same study in
Belgium. But is this relevant? Because these countries differ in many ways. A reason why it
would be relevant is that in Belgium there are a lot of SME’s compared to the US, where
there are more large companies. We can do a study on SME’s in Belgium.
Potential sources:
• Articles published in academic journals
• Books
• Press articles
• Proceedings of conferences
• Google Scholar
• SSRN (has a lot of up to date papers)
Be careful with referring to someone’s master’s thesis. Avoid referring to courses, slides,
handbooks,…
How to prepare the literature review?:
• Clearly understand the research topic/theme
• Make a list of relevant key words
• Search for relevant published articles through electronic sources
• Select the articles that are most relevant
• Repeat this process until you hardly find any other interesting reference
• Use the list of keywords for non-published but potentially highly relevant
material/research
An additional source can be the reference list of the articles you deem relevant.
Point of attention:
• Do not try to read everything to include in your literature review
• Try to make a framework for your literature search during the research and reading
process
• Keep track of all your searches (research diary) and a list of all relevant references!!
Reporting
Structure the relevant literature based on relevant parameters like underlying theories,
methods used, reasoning followed,… Be critical in the discussion and include good
arguments. And finally show in which sense your research can make a contribution.
Avoid:
• Pure description of articles
• Only including articles that fit your argumentation. Give articles from both sides of an
argument.
9
, Theory
The theory is the starting point for a research process. You don’t need to come up with your
own theory. It’s important to use a theory that fits your research. The point is not to use as
many theories as possible. And identify relevant variables.
Plagiarism
Do not copy literal parts of work from someone else, make literal translations,…
Qualitative Research in Management
Description of qualitative research
Here we try to understand how people/organizations act and how they attach meaning to
events. The evidence comes from interaction with people. The knowledge accumulation is
done by conducting research in or close to a natural setting.
Two broad research paradigms
Quantitative research
This type of research is more about numbers. And this type of research has a deductive
approach. You start with a theory and gather data to proof or disproof this theory.
Quantitative research is based on logical positivism and modernism.
Qualitative research
This is more in depth. People usually have more ability to say what they think and say how
they want to say something. Qualitative research usually has less respondents. This research
takes and inductive approach. You start with data and want to make a theory out of that.
This is based on post positivism and post modernism.
Logical positivism:
• Social scientist borrowed methods from physical and life scientists
• Counting and measuring subjects
• Methods prevailed until 1960’s
• Researcher-centered approach
Post positivism:
• Social scientists began to reexamine assumptions about positivism, adopted concepts
and methods from anthropology
• Concerned with watching, listening, talking with subjects
• Participant-centered approach (more centered about people)
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