Week Three Learning Team Reflection

Week Three Learning Team Reflection
Why and how do we conduct business research? This week in Business Research topics were the purpose of business research; developing appropriate research questions and hypothesis, and identifying dependent and independent variables. Week three has given us a better understanding of how to conduct business research. There are several purposes for business research. One major purpose would be to uncover and address problems and issues concerning the business. Another purpose is to improve strategies and tactics of the business. With business research one could define the strategies, and tactics, monitor them, and refine them. Business research is also used to help increase the knowledge and understanding of the various fields of management (Cooper & Schindler, 2011). Developing the appropriate research questions and hypothesis is crucial in the research process as the well thought out questions will focus the researcher’s attention to the most pertinent aspects of the issue, opportunity or dilemma. Poorly defined questions may cause the research to go in misguided and irrelevant directions. Although there are many types of questions that management can pose during the research process, there are four basic categories of research questions contained in what is known as the management-research question hierarchy (Cooper & Schindler, 2011). These categorical questions are management, research, investigative, and measurement. Each will focus the researcher’s efforts onto a specific aspect of the dilemma. In research, a proposition is a statement made concerning an observable phenomena that can be deemed true or false. This proposition is the foundation of what will be formulated as the hypotheses of our research. The hypotheses are of a tentative and conjectural nature (Cooper & Schindler, 2011). In the hypotheses we assign variables to a given case. There are four types of hypotheses. They are descriptive,