Quantitative Research Method - Literature review Example

Article Critique College: Article Critique Quantitative research method is one of the most superior methods that scholars prefer to utilize to avoid personal bias and to compute measured quantities from which amicable conclusions can be made. Unlike qualitative methods that suffer from subjectivity, quantitative methods rely on quantitative data that is less subject to personal opinions. The efficiency of statistical methods depends on the specific methods one applies, the data collection process, analysis and the way the results are interpreted to come up with the final conclusions. The way all the stages of the research are coordinated determines the viability of the research and the conclusions developed in this project. Different quantitative methods require different require different data analysis approaches, and this affects the accuracy of any particular method. Also, different quantitative methods vary differently in terms of complexity and the type of data they can handle. More important is that the findings of the research be validated, the analysis methods be efficient and the discussion of the research test the hypothesis developed in the initial stages of the research. An article critique of three quantitative researches applying different research techniques will help point out the possible strengths and weaknesses that may exist at the stages of these researches. Barrick and Zimmerman (2009), in their research, ‘Hiring for Retention and Performance’, conducted a quantitative research to investigate the relationship between employee performance and a wide range of characteristics that can be measured at the time prior to their hiring. The main aim of the research was to investigate the impact of employee behaviour in the previous employment, their knowledge of other employees, their duration of stay in the previous employment and their emotional stability affected their confidence and performance on the new job. The purpose of this research is important for the human resource managers who need to hire the best performers for their organization. The ability of the human resource to choose the best workers for their organization determines the worker productivity, and hence the organizational performance. The problem of human resource managers is that at the time of hiring there is little candidate information from which they can the select the employees. This research helps managers to make a more appropriate hiring decision from the information that they can access at the time of the interview. On this ground, it is possible to regard the foundation of this research strong and crucial for many organizations today. The literature review is a critical part of the study that seeks to evaluate the research that exists within this field of practice, defines the work of the author more precisely and identifies the literature gap. The purpose of any research is to close a gap on literature. In this research Barrick and Zimmerman (2009) identified that the vast research has focussed on how the pre-hire predictors influence the employee performance by identifying that there is shortage of research that focuses on how the human resource managers can use the bio-data to predict the performance of the employee after recruitment. The endeavour of the research team identify the literature gap makes their research superior. The literature review elaborates the work of many authors to identify the concessions and the disparities that exist within the previous researches. This research contributes to the theory that exists in the literature from which the human resource managers base their decision making at the time of hiring. Barrick and Zimmerman (2009) employed a quantitative methodology to synthesise the conclusions of this research. They applied a multi-regression approach to compute the z-score, the mean and the standard deviation in a wide range of data. The z-score analysis is important in analysing a multi-variable data especially when there are many statistical variables. The choice of this method is a wise choice as it gives the researchers the opportunity to evaluate a wide range of factors that influence decision making at the time of hiring. Secondly, the team uses the correlational methods to draw the relationship between the candidate’s bio-data and their performance and retention after employment. The interpretation of the z-score is in line with the conclusions that the two researchers derived from the research. Low correlational values were interpreted to mean a low connection between employee performance while a high figure was used to imply a strong relation of the specific variable and the performance of employee after 6 months of hiring. The strong dependence of the conclusion on the final statistical results satisfies the conditions for a thorough research. Bakiev (2013) engaged on a quantitative research to deduce the relationship between the interpersonal trust in the work environment and the perceived organizational performance. The main focus of the research is to identify the strategy that can be used to streamline operations within the police department. This research seems to be concerned with the development of human resource capital towards streamlining the problems of security crisis that is present today in the society. The government in any country endeavours to ensure that the public is safe from rivals and that the government achieves the highest efficiency in maintaining social cohesion within its team of police. Therefore, this research based its hypothesis on the fact that trust and loyalty within the police can strengthen team work and provide support for security reinforcement. The literature review stage is critical for any research as its helps to identify the variables that constrain the research, analyse the previous research and identify the literature gaps that pin points the society problems. Bakiev (2013), in his literature review, identified the worker trust, the organizational behaviour and worker performance. This is a crucial step in any literature as its helps to clarify the path that the research will follow. In addition, it is a wise decision for the author to identify that a lot of researches have ignored the police bodies and have focussed more on income generating organizations. By supporting his argument with a wide range of literature, it becomes easier to clarify the direction of the research and to identify his contribution to the scarce literature that covers the police as functional organizations. Bakiev (2013) utilizes the structural equation modelling method (SEM) of statistical study to analyse his information. One of the advantages of this method is that it is superior in developing the relationship between variables in a multivariate analysis. Since his research considers more than two variables, his wise choice of this method helps him to analyse data. The strength of this research lies on the ability of the researcher to conduct a primary study in the field involving a systematic selection of the sample population from the Kyrgyzstan police departments. The ability to choose uniform representation of the sample reduces bias in the final results. However, the weakness of the research emanates from its dependence on questionnaires for the data collection. While this method may be cheap and easier, it is subject to low turnout. For this study, the turnout of 265 respondents out of 400 can be regarded as quite low, and may affect the accuracy of the research. The research utilized the Alpha score and the correlational factor analysis to analyse the information. The high values of the correlation, above 0.5, is consistent with his conclusion that confirms the hypothesis that the interpersonal trust is directly proportional the organizational performance. Dalal, Lam, Weiss, Welch & Huli (2009) researched on the way in which the within-person behaviour is related to the organizational performance. The within-person behaviour has a direct relationship to the work output for every employee. The performance of the employees is crucial for the human resource managers as it is tied closely to the work output, and hence the profitability of the organization. The literature review identifies that there is shortage of literature covering the within-person aspect of the employees that recent scholars consider crucial in streamlining organizational behaviour. The weakness in this research lays in its complexity and inability to provide a clear and cohesive definition of the variables under investigation. The literature review stage should be utilized to clarify the research topic and to give a direction to the particular research. Dalal et al. (2009) fail to exploit this opportunity to clarify the path of the research. Although they are able to identify a real life problem, this weakness adds redundancy in this research. Dalal et al. (2009) conducted two parallel studies to observe the natural behaviour of the employees at the natural work place. The organization surveyed 48 employees from a software development company and required each employee to fill a survey form. In the first study, the employees did not receive any payment for survey. In the second study, the sample group was paid for the same kind of service. From a critical point of view, this kind of approach was strong since the first study acted as a control experiment. The observation method was superior since it provides natural findings that are obtained in a natural working environment. Therefore, this information is unbiased and is not influenced by personal reactions. However, since the research focused on one specific organization, it reduces the ability of this research being generalized for all organizations. Lastly, the team used the Experiment sampling method (ESM) to analyse the results of the findings. This method is particularly superior in surveying human behaviour and analyse quantitative information regarding the same. The ANOVA test method was crucial in determining the relationship between the employee behaviour at different conditions of work. The ANOVA variance analysis was used to measure the difference between the control and the experimental design between the two primary studies. The great variance between the results of the two studies is depicted in the final conclusion that states that the within-person of the employee is crucial for their performance. This consistency between the findings and the conclusions of the study makes this research a strong Launchpad for streamlining organizational behaviour within organizations. Therefore, this research is a great contribution to the literature gap that has ignored the role of employee motivation and development to organizational performance. A close observation of the three researches shows that quantitative research is superior in providing unbiased information; the information collected is not influenced by the opinions of the sample population. Particularly, specific methods of research are associated with quantitative studies. The observations, questionnaires and surveys are all possible methods that can be used to collect statistical information that can be analysed through quantitative techniques. One of the most important aspects of research is to be able to design the best methods that collect the information that quantizes the desired variables. For instance, the closed ended, unlike open ended questionnaires, are used to collect statistical data. Additionally, the analysis methods used depends on the specific information that require to be analysed. For instance, in the research of Bakiev (2013), the correlational method was used to measure the relationship between the interpersonal trust and the organizational performance. On the other hand, Dalal et al. (2009) uses the ANOVA test to measure the difference between two scenarios. The work of these authors seems to be satisfactory as far as the selection of the data analysis methods is concerned. As far as the literature review is concerned Barrick and Zimmerman (2009) and Bakiev (2013) seem to have a strong literature review. In their literature review, they clearly focus on the variables relating to their study and appropriately define the topic of their study. Additionally, they are able to identify the literature gap that exists within this field. This is important for problem development as it sets out clearly the intentions of the research and shows the nature of the problem they intend to solve. However, the literature review by Dalal et al. shows a weakness in definition of the variables of the research focus. The writer does not precisely describe the concept of within-person context and this makes it is quite difficult to synthesise the problem of the research. Failing to define the variables of the research and to cover the literature that surrounds the subject makes the research lack cohesiveness and the taste of a strong research. Therefore, it would be recommendable for Dalal et al. (2009) to define the major focus of the study to inject efficiency in the research development. Since the literature review is pivotal to the research, a weak literature analysis introduces inefficiency in the research. Another critical part of the research is the data collection stage as it influences the accuracy of the research, which is crucial if the research is to be dependable. The data collection techniques, the sample selection criteria, and the sample turn out influence the accuracy of the research outcome. Various data collection methods have different efficiencies in gathering data for statistical analysis. For instance, Bakiev (2013) used questionnaires to collect data, a method that yields a low population response. He managed to obtain a response of 265 out 400 surveys, which amounts to about 65% turnout. On the other hand, the research by Dalal et al (2009) was more efficient as they were able to obtain volunteers for the observation method. In addition, this method is more accurate as the research professionals collect only the relevant data. On the other hand, the observation method is more involving and limits the accessibility of the sample population. For instance, the research by Dalal et al. focussed only on one institution making the results subjective and less likely to hold for more than one organization. The research by Barrick and Zimmerman (2009) focussed on various organizations making it reasonable to generalize the results, conclusions and the recommendation to the vast population. The ability to provide results that can be generalized for a great population is critical for every researcher who intends to solve the problems of the society. In conclusion, research design is an important part of the scholars as researches are meant to address emerging problems in the society and business environment, and to provide strategies to solve the problem. On this note, any research must address a unique problem in its field of focus and provide an approach to solve the problem. The researches by Dalal et al. (2009), Barrick and Zimmerman (2009), and Bakiev (2013) solve major problems evolving in the social aspect of the organization. They use quantitative approach to solve problems related to organizational performance and its relationship with the human capital. The strengths and weakness of these researches emanate either from the literature coverage, the data collection approaches, problem identification and the linkage of the findings with the conclusion. Although most of them seem to develop a clear and concrete literature review, Dalal et al. (2009) seems to ignore clarity and conciseness in defining the main focus of the study. Notably, different collection methods have a varying degree of accuracy, complexity and efficiency. For instance, the survey method, unlike the questionnaire, is more efficient but more complex. Therefore, while designing a research, one should focus on all aspects of the research as they add to the final efficiency of the research. References Bakiev, E. (2013). The Influence of Interpersonal Trust and Organizational Commitment on Perceived Organizational Performance. Journal of Applied Economics & Business Research, 3(3), 166-180. Barrick, M. R., & Zimmerman, R. D. (2009). Hiring for retention and performance. Human Resource Management, 48(2), 183-206. Dalal, R. S., Lam, H., Weiss, H. M., Welch, E. R., & Hulin, C. L. (2009). A Within-Person Approach To Work Behaviour And Performance: Concurrent And Lagged Citizenship-Counterproductivity Associations, And Dynamic Relationships With Affect And Overall Job Performance. Academy Of Management Journal, 52(5), 1051-1066. doi:10.5465/AMJ.2009.44636148 Read More