Making Research Decisions

Making Research Decisions

1. Ch.1 - 8 -- As area sales manager for a company manufacturing and marketing outboard engines, you have been assigned the responsibility of conducting a research study to estimate the sales potential of your products in the domestic (U.S. or Canadian) market. Discuss key issues and concerns arising from the fact that you, the manager, are also the researcher.

A few key issues and concerns that will arise out of a manager/researcher role include the manager having to test his old ideas with new ones as he takes on the researcher role. With this in mind, a good test of the current ideas will be solely based on the manager who previously implemented them and can become one person opinionated. Secondly, as he takes on the researcher role, he will need to consider the corporate culture and political situations that develop in the organization and may seek ascendancy over his colleagues resulting in coalitions forming which can block his research or the findings of his research can become distorted for individual self-serving purposes. Lastly, the manager can become isolated during his finding because of the stress involved in researching reducing the effectiveness of the research and his normal duties as a manager.

2. Ch.1 - 10 -- Apply the principles in Exhibit 1-4 to the research scenario in question 8.

Clarifying the Research Question:

The research will need to be clearly defined and sharply delineated before taking any further steps. The question should include: scope, limitations, and precise specifications of the meanings off all words and terms significant to the research of sales potential of outboard engines in the United States and Canada. Without this doubts might be raised in minds of the report readers towards the researchers understanding of the question at hand.

Research Proposal:

The proposal should include the process of obtaining sales potential in Canada and the United Sates. Details should be sufficiently describes as to permit another researcher to repeat the research, except when secrecy is imposed. The proposal should reveal the sources of data, and means by which they were obtained.

Research Design Strategy:

The research should be designed to yield results that are objective as possible. When a sampling of the population is involved, the report should include evidence concerning the degree of representativeness of the sample. The research design should include safeguards against causing mental or physical harm to participants, and makes data integrity a first priority. Ethical issues and practice of behavior in society during population surveys should carefully guard the welfare of the participants against physical harm, psychological harm, exploitation, invasion of privacy, and loss of dignity.

Data Analysis and Interpretation:

The analysis of the data should be sufficiently adequate to reveal its significance and the methods of the analysis used should be appropriate. The validity and the reliability of the data should be checked carefully. Data should be classified in ways that assist the researcher to reach pertinent conclusions and clearly reveal the findings that lead to those conclusions. Interpretation of data should be comprehensive, easily understood by the decision maker, and organized so critical findings can be easily located.

Management Decision:

Decision based conclusions should be matched with details findings of the research. Conclusions should be confined to those justified by the data of the research and limited to those for which the data provide an adequate basis. Management decision should not be based on personal experiences and personal interpretations or data that was not subject to the controls of the research.

3. Ch. 3 - 6 -- You observe the following condition: "Our female sales representatives have lower customer defections than do our male sales representatives."

a. Propose the concepts and constructs you might use to study this phenomenon.

b. How might any of these concepts and/or constructs be related to explanatory hypotheses?

A.

Concepts - Vocabulary, appearance, voice tones, sales percentages, management, gender.

Constructs - Motivation, employee morale, emotions, customer morale, ethical standards, gender standards, work environment, leadership morale.

B. Explanatory hypothesis - the existence of, or change in, one variable causes or leads to an effect on the other variable. So the vocabulary, appearance, voice tone (stronger or softer voice tone), gender, management training of the individual is going to affect their sales. Sales percentages can be measured in the hypothesis and can cause an effect in gender if measured by male female gender percentages. The constructs that are effected and cannot be measured but have a impact on another variable such as sales percentages would be the motivation of the individual towards being in sales, the overall employee morale working for the company. The emotions between a man and women are scientifically proven to be different and can affect the performance of the individual. Customer morale towards gender, man or women interaction, can effect their decisions. The ethical standards of the man-women as an employee, and of the customer can affect sales percentages. The employee work environment can have an affect on their sales and the company leadership morale the employee is under can affect sales percentages.

4. Ch. 3 - 8 -- Identify and classify all the variables in the Army's dud shell research.

Dud shell - (DV),

Shell that can exploded (IV).

Contact person (EV).

Contact person behavior or actions (IVV).

5. Ch. 4 - 4 -- Confronted by low productivity, the president of Oaks International, Inc. asks a research company to study job satisfaction in the corporation.