Skills Development through Research: A Term Paper

You need to conduct some research related to your own interests or to serve the interests of some organization (employer/client/sponsor). Before you start writing a formal proposal, you (or your employer/client/sponsor) would like to gather some information about the problem as well as understand its importance.

Choose your research topic thoughtfully, as this assignment will be part of your term paper.

HERE ARE THE KEY PARTS OF THIS TERM PAPER (PART 1):

Title of your research
Make it intriguing – (BUT LESS THAN 120 CHARACTERS)

Introduction/Background
Provide a brief description of what the proposed research topic is about, why is it important and how you came to be interested in it.

Literature Review
The purpose of this assignment is to develop skills in finding and analyzing valid literary resources for your research.
The review should be written in an integral / synthetic style, and NOT as an annotated bibliography.

This part of your research proposal should be roughly 7-9 pages (excluding cover page and references) and written in paragraphs, report format. All citations and references for this course are to be done in the APA style.

Please note: Use in-text citations to reference all ideas, concepts, text, and data that are not your own. If you make a statement, back it up with a reference!
ï‚·Research a minimum of 15 relevant business-related literature sources (focus on material available in digital format only for this course). Carefully choose your 15 "keepers" that are clearly related to your study. (Note: you might need to find 30 to “keep” only 15).
ï‚·Identify major common themes encountered in the selected literature sources.  For each theme, create its own subsection within the literature review.  
ï‚·For each theme / subsection of the literature review, explain the opinions of the authors and show their similarities, differences, methods of acquisition of data, methods of data analysis and other pertinent information. State how the reviewed research results relate to your proposed study.
ï‚·Identify the gaps in the literature and explain what needs to be done to move forward in your research.

Statement of the Problem
Detail the problem that you are considering. Explain:  
ï‚·How are you defining and delimiting the specific area of the research?
ï‚·What is the gap that will be addressed by this research?
ï‚·What it is that you hope to learn by conducting this research?
ï‚·Discuss the anticipated outcomes and benefits to the researcher, the organization, or society.

Research Questions
Provide focused research questions for your planned research. Also provide a back-up question in case the first one does not pan out. Make sure you address the following questions:
ï‚·What is the scope of your research?
ï‚·Is the scope of your research question reasonable?

TERM PAPER PART 2: Statistics in Quantitative Methods
Due at the end of week 11 (Sunday midnight)

The purpose of the assignment is to develop skills associated with selecting and applying methods for data collection, stationary and time series data analysis and hypothesis testing.

Data collection
Identify the sources that will offer the information that you need to answer the research question (journals, books, internet resources, government documents, people, etc).  
1.What data do you plan to acquire to answer your research question? Why? What kinds of instruments, variables, materials, or sources will you use (i.e. will you use observations, surveys, interviews, case studies, focus groups, experiments, documents, media, data base searches, etc.)? If you plan to use mixed methods, will they be sequential, concurrent or transformative? Why?
2.List the kinds of data/information that you plan to collect (e.g. testimonials, statistics, business/government reports, other research data, audio/video recordings, etc.). Also, consider two or three alternative ways you could gather data/information for this research.
3.If you plan to use research participants, where will they come from? How will they be sampled? How many participants will you require? If you are not using research participants, who will you use as the target audience of your data? Who would most benefit from your research, and why?
4.Business research topics relate to events that develop in time.
ï‚·Explain how would you acquire a snapshot of data relevant to your research question. Within the snapshot, the data become effectively stationary.
ï‚·Consider the evolution of data with time. How would you acquire the time series data relevant to your research question?
5.What ethical issues will your research project present? What biases might you bring to the research and how will you address that bias?

Analysis of stationary data
1.What method will you choose to analyze the stationary data that you plan to collect?
2.Has this method of data analysis been applied in similar situations by other authors?  Include references and illustrations from the literature to show the advantages and disadvantages of the method.
3.Attach a worked out example of application of the method using simulated or previously published data.  
4.How will you validate your findings/conclusions?

Testing hypotheses
1.State you hypotheses.
2.Explain whether your hypotheses will be tested using frequentist or Bayesian approach, and justify the choice.  
3.Have similar hypotheses been tested by other authors?  Include references and illustrations from the literature.
4.Attach a worked out example of hypothesis testing using simulated or previously published data.  
5.How will you validate your findings/conclusions?

Analysis and forecasting of time series
1.What method will you choose to analyze and forecast the time series data that you plan to collect?
2.Have these methods of data analysis and forecasting been applied in similar situations by other authors?  Include references and illustrations from the literature to show their advantages and disadvantages.
3.Attach a worked out examples of analysis and forecasting using simulated or previously published data.  
4.How will you validate your findings/conclusions?