Research methods for business and management - Essay Example

In a good research, the abstract should represent what the research entails. The abstract provides an adequate summery of the research in term of the used literature, the methodology, findings, analysis techniques, and an aspect of conclusion with respect to the research findings. The introduction introduced the entire research and shows what the researcher intends to do through research questions and objectives. The article, “Factors influencing the transition to university service mathematics: part 2 a qualitative study,” by Miriam Liston and John O’Donoghue, is a research whose abstract is clear as it specifies the type of study as qualitative.

It also clarifies what the researchers intended to find out. The study in the article was carried out to establish the influence of effective variables, role of mathematics conceptions, and students’ approaches to learning (COHEN, MANION, and MORRISON 2000). The abstract also indicate the placement of the research study by pointing out that the study was done at the University of Limerick, in the service mathematics transition. The abstract explains further the nature of the study as a follow-up to an earlier study, which was quantitative.

It goes further to point out the focus group as part of the methodology (LEEDY and ORMROD 2001). Other sections of the research, which are pointed out in the abstract is the tools used in data collection. The Abstracts points out the major sections but fails to introduce the research findings (Center for Civic Partnerships 2007). The research findings are critical at this section for the readers to follow up how the researchers got into the given conclusion. It only indicates what the findings and the respective consequences would enable the researchers to envisage the possibility of future problems as far as Ireland mathematic education is concerned (LISTON and O’DONOGHUE 2010).

The introduction section introduces the research context in an inadequate way. The introduction connects the abstract by further indicating that the study is a follow-up research to an earlier conducted quantitative study. It repeats some aspects of the abstract such as the location where the study was conducted, the focus group, and time of the study without providing future elaborations on the same research aspects (Crossman 2013). The problem is however elaborated as being the “The Mathematics Problem,” in which case students fail in mathematics thus facing problems to pursue mathematics courses and careens as their of choices.

The introduction lacks the respective research question. This aspect could make the research lost somewhere within the research process. The researchers introduce a case of worrying findings specifically from recent reports, which in contrast should have been placed in the literature review section. The introduction indicates the uniqueness and originality of the research. The thesis statement is also indicated but it hardly addresses what the research intends to do adequately. The researchers indicate that the qualitative aspect of the study with respect to the previously conducted quantitative research helps the researchers to determine the strengths as well as the depths of the affected variables’