Quantitative Methods In Business Research: In-Text Referencing, Essay, Variables, And Ethics.

The Importance of In-Text Referencing in Business Research

Discuss About The Quantitative Methods In Business Research.

Plagiarism constitutes as conduct in which a particular copyright material or idea which has been produced by someone else is used by an individual without mentioning the source and thus indicating the material as self. For the following reasons, it is required that one must avoid plagiarism.

• Provide incentive to individuals and researchers for creating new ideas, research and knowledge
• Give acknowledgement to the underlying effort put in by the original creator
• Also, expression of ideas through paraphrasing leads to enhanced understanding and hence fosters learning.

The requirement of the in-text referencing arises for highlighting those ideas or content that have been taken from someone else and also provide credit to the original creator. Even though a bibliography at the end may acknowledge the various sources, but the in-text referencing allows the reader to be made aware of the specific material used for producing specific texts. Also, the verification of the text is also aided since the examiner or user can actually verify whether the given source does highlight what is mentioned in the text. Besides, in text referencing also provides option to the examiner or user to study about a particular aspect in detail by referring to the source.

I) As per Done (2018, p.7), the experience of studying in a university is comparable to attending a smorgasbord restaurant.

ii) “To have a good experience at a smorgasbord restaurant, you need to get out of your chair.” (Done, 2018. p.7)

Daff, L., De Lange, P. and Jackling, B. (2012) A Comparison of Generic Skills and Emotional Intelligence in Accounting Education, Issues in Accounting Education, 27(3), pp.627-64

An appropriate exploratory question based on the given scenario is as follows.

“What are the main issues or problem that the workers encounter on account of new time keeping system introduction?”

1. An appropriate causal question based on the given scenario is as follows.

“What is the impact of the time spent by workers on the model on the warranty claims amount?”

1. An appropriate descriptive question based on the given scenario is as follows.

“Does the warranty claims encountered for the two models (i.e. Deluxe and Standard) highlight any significant difference?”

In research, deductive approach indicates the approach where the starting reasoning is more general and then it moves to specific conclusions being drawn. Therefore, premises are used for deriving the conclusions. The use of this approach is quite common for testing of existing theories. Also, deductive approach is often used with quantitative research i.e. where there is data that can be utilised for testing the hypothesis that are derived from an underlying theory. Also, there is a close association between positivism and deductive approach considering the tendency to carry out experiments for drawing conclusions (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015, p. 69-70).

Quantitative Research Approaches and Deductive Reasoning

Inducti approach refers to a methodology where the specific acts as the starting point of the reasoning which then is used to derive a more general conclusion. Hence, this approach is more suitable for theory producing rather than testing the same. As a result, the inductive approach is usually associated with qualitative research which is inclined towards being exploratory and not descriptive in nature.  Inductive approach is closely related to constructivism which aims to understand the derivation of meanings based on human experiences. In this, the main objective is to build theory and not to test the same. This approach has gained immense popularity in the social sciences since deductive approach based scientific experiments is not of much use in such subjects (Flick, 2015, p. 83-86).

• Since there does not exist a single defined time frame, hence the given choices cannot be compared. For example, some choices consider frequency of visit in monthly terms while the others consider the same in weekly terms. Further, there are certain options that do not refer to any particular time frame and thus are ambiguous.
• The wording used for the options is inappropriate as these can potentially cause confusion owing to not being self-explanatory. The use of various phrases (for instance, several times, very often, few times) seems confusing owing to the subjective meanings which would lead to a lower reliability. Hence, it makes sense that the visit frequency should be expressed in numerical terms to avoid any confusion and thereby allow the respondents to answer the questionnaire with more clarity and conviction.

The question design is not appropriate given the scenario as a mechanism to highlight the relative frequency for the highlighted reasons for visiting library is missing. The various options also lack prudent designing thus leading to duplication. This is quite apparent from the two choices one dealing with books borrowing and other with books returning. If one of the above happens, then it is logical to conclude that the other happens, and hence it makes sense to club these two into one choice. Considering that for the given survey, a respondent may highlight majority of the boxes, the relative importance of the reasons remained uncaptured. Hence, the relative importance needs to be brought out for the reasons by allowing the respondent to provide ranks in decreasing frequency to only those options which are valid.

Independent Variable – This is the variable which does not depend on other variables. As a result in various experiments, there is alteration of independent variable and the effect on the dependent variable is captured. As a result, the independent variable tends to act as the reason for bringing about change in the dependent variable (Hillier, 2016, p. 37).

Dependent Variable – This refers to the variable which tends to be driven by independent variable. For experiments, this variable is used to measure the outcome when the independent variable changes. Hence, this highlights the variable which the researcher tends to measure in the experiments (Flick, 2015, p. 68).

Control Variable – This refers to the variable that remains constant in the experiment so as to allow the researcher to analyse the dependent and independent variable relationship. Since variations in the control variable can impact the experimental results, hence this variable is held unchanged so that any effect in the dependent variable is only due to independent variable related changes. Hence, the control variable during the experiment is not of primary interest considering it is not altered (Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman, 2011, p. 65).

Inductive Reasoning in Qualitative Research

Gender and ethics education/training (absence or presence) are the two independent variable deployed in the models. However, one model also uses another independent variable that highlights the association interaction effect between gender and ethics education (Wang and Calvano, 2015).

For the models used, there are only two dependent variables that are highlighted below (Wang and Calvano, 2015).

• Moral Judgement
• Personal Ethical Perspectives

H₁ has indeed been written in the form of a directional hypothesis. This is apparent from the fact that the hypothesis predicts the same which is being backed by the literature cited i.e. moral judgement instances tend to be higher for females in comparison with males (Flick, 2015, p. 109).

H₂ is expressed in alternate form which is apparent from the fact that the hypothesis which captured the researcher’s prediction is true and represents that ethical training to undergraduate students allow them to make more moral judgements in situations where ethical dilemmas are involved (Wang and Calvano, 2015).

In H₃, the interaction word refers to the fact that the simultaneous acting of the two independent variables in the form of gender and ethics training tends to produce results which deviate from the total sum of the above mentioned two variables. Therefore, it becomes obvious that an interaction effect is involved which has been taken into account (Wang and Calvano, 2015).

The treatment and control groups have been used for elimination of the extraneous variable impact so that the effect of the selected treatment can be measured. For the given situation, there are multiple sources besides ethics training that can impact the moral judgement. Thus, the use of control group acts as a reliable reference point for objectively determining the impact of ethics training (Wang and Calvano, 2015).

The participant testing is carried out after the treatment only in case of “post-test only design”. For the study under consideration, control group and treatment group are used. Ethics training is provided only to the treatment group and the intervention impact is then measured by comparing with the control group so as to reveal the ethics training impact on moral judgement.

• There is the possibility of drop out for participants and the associated chance cannot be determined.
• There may be compromise of external validity considering that complete isolation of treatment and control group is not there.
• Since there is a possibility of the treatment and control group not being equivalent, hence assignment bias may be present

A potential problem that arises from the experiment stretching over several weeks is that the control group and treatment group participants would not remain isolated and interactions between these groups may have adverse impact on the validity. Further, over time, it is also a concern that equivalence of the two groups may not remain and hence adversely impact validity. Additionally, there could be potential drop outs leads to further non-equivalence between the groups and leading to adverse impact on validity.

• Availability of a tested measure whose usage is quite easy
• Could potentially result in higher result validity
• Leads to improvement in existing literature and removal of shortcomings of studies carried out in past

• The measure used could potentially be unsuitable in the context applied by the researcher or for the objective he/she aims to use.
• Use of faulty measure in the past studies could lead to continuation of the same mistake.
• Since it is a convenient option, hence development of better measures may be hampered.

• The enrolment status linked to business and society course
• All premeasures were absence thus ensuring that the study objective is known as otherwise there may be impact on the responses.

There is impact of gender on ethical decision making considering that on average females took more ethical decisions in situations involving ethical dilemmas in comparison to males. The result is supported by the literature available which highlights that females tend to have greater empathy in comparison with males. For non-business decision, the ethics training role has been rather insignificant. However, for business decisions, the results indicate that higher incidence of ethical decision making is exhibited by males having ethics training while for the females, there is a decrease in ethical decision making after receiving the ethics training (Wang and Calvano, 2015).

Meta-analysis is helpful in presenting the results of various studies in a combined form. The need for meta-analysis emerges as different studies on the same topic may lead to different interpretations of similar observations. Thus, based on the underlying consistency in the findings, it makes sense to combine the research data obtained from a host of studies which may highlight the significance or insignificance of a given treatment. This tends to improve the study validity owing to existence of a strong support from relevant empirical studies on the topic of research (Hair et. al. 2015, p.148-15)

References

Eriksson, P. and Kovalainen, A. (2015) Quantitative methods in business research. 3rd ed. London: Sage Publications.

Flick, U. (2015) Introducing research methodology: A beginner's guide to doing a research project. 4th ed. New York: Sage Publications.

Hair, J. F., Wolfinbarger, M., Money, A. H., Samouel, P., and Page, M. J. (2015) Essentials of business research methods. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.

Hastie, T., Tibshirani, R. and Friedman, J. (2011) The Elements of Statistical Learning. 4th ed. New York: Springer Publications.

Hillier, F. (2016) Introduction to Operations Research 6th ed. New York: McGraw Hill Publications.

Wang, L.C. and Calvano, L. (2015) Is Business Ethics Education Effective? An Analysis of Gender, Personal Ethical Perspectives, and Moral Judgment, Journal of Business Ethics, 126(4), pp.591-60