RSCH Term Paper (2 Parts)
RSCH Term Paper (2 Parts)
RSCH Term Paper (2 Parts)
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):
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!
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).
Identify major common themes encountered in the selected literature sources. For each theme, create its own
subsection within the literature review.
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.
Identify the gaps in the literature and explain what needs to be done to move forward in your research.
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:
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.
Explain how would you acquire a snapshot of data relevant to your research question. Within the
snapshot, the data become effectively stationary.
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?
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?