Research Design as a Glue that Holds the Entire Project Together as One - Assignment Example

Full topic and Section # of Research Designs A research design is basically the glue that holds the entire project together as one. It amalgamates all the different parts of the research into one; it determines to structure of the research project. All the different components; samples, design questionnaires, treatments and programs, and methods of assignment, all are put into a proper order to answer the research design. 1. Case histories have been instrumental in making the students understand the various situations they are faced in different organizational and institutional environments. They are real life or assumed scenarios of any situation in which the readers are asked to access and understand the real problem in that situation and then to implement the best possible way to solve that problem. Case studies or case histories can be used to effectively study behavior of many individuals. Case histories are real life situations therefore; others can take the lead and try not to make the same mistakes again as the ones made in the case history. Another example would be that they can be used to evaluation of the people who have the similar kind of personalities like Type A, and Type B and Type C present will react in different situations. So companies and organizations can use these cases to understand how different kinds of people will react in similar situations. For example, if there is a case history present about how a type personality person will react when faced with failure, it can be used to estimate how others will the same personality traits will be reacting in similar situations. 2. Meta-analysis and traditional literature reviews are two different research techniques. Meta-analysis is used to analyze a wide variety of questions by amalgamating and summarizing and reviewing of a previous quantitative research. Certain parts of the research already done are entered into a database where it is analyzed to give another comprehensive view of the research. In the database, all the similar kind of information is gathered to give a common review that might be difficult to interpret meaningfully. Traditional literature review on the other hand, provides an overview of the research findings done by an individual. It is written by actually examining a body of published work and writing a critical ceremony of the body of the text. Literature reviews are usually used to put up different policies forward and indicate future research directions. One of the major advantages of traditional review is that if properly done by an expert, valuable unique insight can be developed. The traditional literature review has a major drawback that it can be subjected to unintentional bias from the author. Meta-analysis has this strength that information is fed into a database which is void of any unintentional bias from anybody. Meta-analysis that has been studied was about how the workplace environment can help shape behaviors and attitudes of employees in an organization. The analysis said that there was a definite new kind of culture present in today’s world which is different from the traditional work environment where the employees are more informed about their rights and regulations and therefore, are more demanding about their needs and wants. There is a definite gold star definition present among the employees who think they are the best in the lot therefore they deserve the best treatment in the organization. As competition grows, it is mandatory upon the organizational management to implement such a kind of culture that helps the informed employee of today otherwise they have other means. The method used by meta-analysis was to combine various studies about the relationship between workplace environment and attitudes of an employee and putting them together. 3. The designing of the questionnaire can be termed as the most important and crucial element for both the students and the professionals working in this field in marketing research. The research objectives that are needed to be fulfilled are should be clearly defined beforehand. The nature of the expected responses should be defined before hand so that there is no confusion in the end what-so-ever about the interpretation of the answers. Another mistake that shouldn’t be made is that all the questions should in one way or the other contribute towards the objective of the whole research. There should definitely be a neutral option extending towards either extremity that is positive and negative. It should be kept in mind that the subjects are normal individuals that are not usually equipped with high vocabulary therefore the construction of sentences should be done without using any technical words or specifications that might be incomprehensive for the common man. The list of the possible responses should be inclusive of all the possible answers of the individual that might be answering the question. The research question should be formulated in such a way that is should be catering to just one question at a time so that researcher understands that exact question the respondent is catering too. If too many questions are asked in a single one, the researcher will have a problem in understanding which questions is being answered. A type of scale or index should be developed according to which the responses to the questionnaire should be formulated. 4. One-factor experiment is one of the basic types of experiment that uses only one variable factor to realize the change in the other factor that is present. In other words, one factor is in the hands of the researcher while he or she studies that effect of that variable on the other variable. For example we can use this one factor experiment to use the difference temperature brings to the pressure of a gas. A number of factors can result in the variation of the result. These factors are the countless unmeasured variables and these unmeasured variables cause deviation we term as random errors. One factor experiment to test the effect of drugging on learning can be developed by introducing a group which consists of all the people who do not drink usually and make them study. Changes in their speed of learning can be gauged after every 1 hour. The purpose of this group is to help measuring the learning ability so that they can serve as the rule bar for the other group. Another group is asked to study by introducing to them a drug before the start of the studying process. This group is also asked to complete their learning processes and their efficiency is gauged after every 1 hour. The purpose of making them study is to understand the effects of drug on learning if any. Their performance when measured on a scale with the results of the first group as being the rule-bar for the second group, the effect of introduction of drug on learning can be easily gauged. There might be a number of other reasons involved in the process that might inhibit or exhibit the results however, the overall picture will be more than enough to let you know if there is a deviation from the normal learning efficiency or not. 5. The pretest-post test design when implemented in a true spirit of its design, will allow a to the point assessment of the technological interference that occurs before and after two points in time. In simpler words, it means that the before and after effects of a change that takes place is studied and estimated. There are simple steps to the pretest-posttest design. You first need to decide about which of the learning outcomes are of interest to you so that you are able to capture and understand the various measures that are needed to capture them. Then one needs to randomly assign students to different groups or participants to different groups and administer the pretest. After the administration one needs to introduce the technological interference to the experimental group and control the comparison action to the other group. Then you need to administer the post test and then analyze the differences. A wide variety of pretest-posttest designs are usually available. The limitations realted to this kind of research design are that it is extremely mandatory that the observations that are taken from the experiment are independent. Therefore the research should make it completely sure that the control or comparison groups are not exposed to the technological interference or change in different intensities and the participants should strictly not be allowed to communicate with each other about their experiences. Also there is another limitation that if the participants in the group are not very different in nature or ways that are not controllable by the experiment as that might cause a serious flaw in the judgment and the end result of the experiment. It has been seen that children are too easily persuaded by pretest designs. If you administer the pretest and in the posttest conduct an identical posttest, the group will do better in the second one due to practice. However, if the posttest is similar and not identical, they will perform poorly because of proactive interference by the technological interference and change that was administered. 6. In single participant designs, all the experimentation is conducted on a single human being. This can be termed as a disaster as an opinion of one human being cant be generalized to be used for all the other human beings that are present on the face of this planet. This is one huge disadvantage of single participant design that there can hardly be any generalization. However, looking at the picture from another view, you realize that by conducting all the experiments on the same person, one limits the unwanted variables that are present when more and more people are introduced and to an extent the answers of one individual can be generalized for a certain kinds of ethnic group or a society. Therefore, that person withholds in him valuable information about his beliefs and value systems and his way of going about things which might be very similar to the people he ethnically or culturally identifies with. One of the advantages of using this kind of experiment is when few participants are available. It is also useful when a lot of time is required for training the participant. The disadvantage can be that there can hardly be any generalization to other categories of people with confidence. 7. A very important research that can be conducted is why women are paid less in today’s world for the same kind of work when compared to men. This is a kind of social barrier that has been present between the two genders since the dawn of mankind, and still is present. Therefore, it can be termed as a useful research. References Glass, G. V. (1976). Primary, Secondary and meta analysis of research. Educational Researcher. Paul E. Spector. (1981). Research Designs. Sage. Smith, M. L., Glass, G. V., & Miller, T. I. (1980).  The benefits of psychotherapy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wolf, F. M. (1986). Meta-analysis: Quantitative methods for research synthesis. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. 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