The Research Process:

Elements of Research Design

CHAPTER 6

Chapter Objectives

Understand the different aspects relevant

to designing a research study.
Identify the scope of any given study and
the end use of the results.
Describe the type of investigation needed,
the study setting, the extent of researcher
interference, the unit of analysis, and the
time horizon of the study.
Identify which of the two, a causal or a
correlational study, would be more
appropriate in a given situation.
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The Research Design

In this step we need to design

the research in a way that the
requisite data can be gathered and
analyzed to arrive at a solution.
The research design was originally
presented in a simple manner in
the next Figure.
3

Research Design

.John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2009

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Purpose of the Study

Exploration
Description
Hypothesis Testing

Purpose of the Study

Exploratory study:

is undertaken when not much is

known about the situation at hand, or
no information is available on how
similar problems or research issues
have been solved in the past.

Example:

A service provider wants to know why

his customers are switching to other
.
service providers?

Purpose of the Study

Descriptive study:
is undertaken in order to ascertain and be able
to describe the characteristics of the variables
of interest in a situation.
Example:
A bank manager wants to have a profile of the
individuals who have loan payments
outstanding for 6 months and more. It would
include details of their average age, earnings,
nature of occupation, full-time/part-time
employment status, and the like. This might
help him to elicit further information or decide
7
right away on the types of individuals who

Purpose of the Study

Hypothesis testing:

Studies that engage in hypotheses

testing usually explain the nature of
certain relationships, or establish the
differences among groups or the
independence of two or more factors
in a situation.

Example:

A marketing manager wants to know

if the sales of the company will
increase if he doubles the advertising

Type of Investigation

Causal Study

it is necessary to establish a definitive

cause-and-effect relationship.

Correlational study

identification of the important factors

associated with the problem.

Study Setting

Contrived: artificial setting

Non-contrived: the natural

environment where work proceeds
normally

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Examples

A causal study question:

Does smoking cause cancer?
A correlational study question:
Are smoking and cancer related?
Or
Are smoking, drinking, and chewing
tobacco associated with cancer?
If so, which of these contributes most to
the variance in the dependent variable?
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Example: causal relationship

Fears of an earthquake predicted

recently in an area were a causal
of a number of crashes of some
houses in the area in order to be
eligible of insurance policy.

12

Example: correlational
relationship

Increases in interest rates and

property taxes, the recession, and
the predicted earthquake
considerably slowed down the
business of real state agents in the
country.

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Extent of Researcher
Interference
With the Study

The extent of interference by

the researcher with the normal
flow of work at the workplace has
a direct bearing on whether the
study undertaken is causal or
correlational.

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Extent of Researcher
Interference
With the Study

A correlational study is
conducted in the natural
environment of the organization
with minimum interference by the
researcher with the normal flow of
work.

15

Extent of Researcher
Interference
With the Study

In studies conducted to establish causeand-effect relationships, the researcher

tries to manipulate certain variables so
as to study the effects of such manipulation
on the dependent variable of interest.
In other words, the researcher deliberately
changes certain variables in the setting
and interferes with the events as they
normally occur in the organization.
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Minimal Interference

Example
A hospital administrator wants to
examine the relationship between
the perceived emotional support in
the system and the stress
experienced by the nursing staff. In
other words, she wants to do a
correlational study.
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Example (Cont.)

The researcher will collect data from the

nurses ( through a questionnaire) to
indicate how much emotional support
they get in the hospital and to what
extent they experience stress. By
correlating the two variables, the answer
is found.
In this case, beyond administering
a questionnaire to the nurses, the
researcher has not interfered with
the normal activities in the hospital.
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Moderate Interference

If the researcher wants to establish

a causal connection between the
emotional support in the hospital
and stress, or, wants to
demonstrate that if the nurses had
emotional support, this indeed
would cause them to experience
less stress.
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Moderate Interference

To test the cause-and-effect

relationship, the researcher will measure
the stress currently experienced by the
nurses in three wards in the hospital, and
then deliberately manipulate the extent
of emotional support given to the three
groups of nurses in the three wards for
perhaps a week, and measure the amount
of stress at the end of that period.
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Moderate Interference

For one group, the researcher will ensure

that a number of lab technicians and
doctors help and comfort the nurses when
they face stressful events.
For a second group of nurses in another
ward, the researcher might arrange for
them only a moderate amount of
emotional support and employing only the
lab technicians and excluding doctors.
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Moderate Interference

The third ward might operate without

any emotional support.
If the experimenters theory is
correct, then the reduction in the
stress levels before and after the 1week period should be greater for the
nurses in the first ward, moderate for
those in the second ward, and nil for
the nurses in the third ward.
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Moderate Interference

We find that not only does the researcher

collect data from nurses on their
experienced stress at two different points
in time, but also manipulated the
normal course of events by deliberately
changing the amount of emotional
support received by the nurses in two
wards, while leaving things in the third
ward unchanged.
Here, the researcher has interfered

more than minimally.

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Excessive Interference

Example
IF the researcher feels, after conducting the
previous experiments, that the results may not
be valid since other external factors might
have influenced the stress levels experience by
the nurses.
For example, during that particular
experimental week, the nurses in one or more
wards may not have experienced high levels
of stress because there were no serious illnesses
or deaths in the ward. Hence the emotional
support received might not be related to
the level of stresses experienced.
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Excessive Interference

The researcher want to make sure

that such external factors that
might affect the cause-andeffect relationship are
controlled.

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Controlling the External

factors

The researcher might take three groups of

medical students, put them in different
rooms, and confront all of them with the
same stressful task.
For example, he might ask them to
describe in detail, the surgical procedures
in performing surgery on a patient who has
not responded to chemotherapy and keep
asking them with more and more questions.
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Controlling the External

factors

Although all are exposed to the same

intensive questioning, one group might
get help from a doctor who voluntarily
offers clarifications and help when
students stumble.
In the second group, a doctor might be
nearby, but might offer clarifications and
help only if the group seeks it.
In the third group, there is no doctor
present and no help is available.
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Controlling the External

factors

In the above example, not only is the

support manipulated, but even the
setting in which this experiment is
conducted is artificial inasmuch as
the researcher has taken the subject
away from their normal environment
and put them in a totally different
setting.
The researcher has intervened
maximally with the normal setting, the
participants, and their duties.
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Excessive Interference

The extent of researcher interference

would depend on whether the study is
correlational or causal and also the
importance of establishing causal
relationship beyond any doubt.
Most organizational problems seldom
call for a causal study, except in some
market research areas.
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Study Setting: Contrived and

Noncontrived

Correlational studies are

conducted in noncontrived
settings (normal settings),
whereas most causal studies are
done in contrived settings.
Correlational studies done in
organizations are called field
studies.
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Study Setting: Contrived and

Noncontrived

Studies conducted to establish causeand-effect relationship using the same

natural environment in which
employees normally function are called
field experiments.
Experiments done to establish causeand- effect relationship in a contrived
environment and strictly controlled are
called lab experiments.
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Example: Field Study

A bank manager wants to analyze the

relationship between interest rates and
bank deposit patterns of clients.
The researcher tries to correlate the
two by looking at deposits into different
kinds of accounts (such as savings,
certificates of deposit, and interestbearing checking accounts) as interest
rates changed.
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Example: Field Study

This is a field study where the bank

manager has taken the balances in
various types of accounts and
correlated them to the changes in
interest rates.
Research here is done in a
noncontrived setting with no
interference with the normal work
routine.
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Example: Field Experiment

The bank manager now wants to

determine the cause-and-effect
relationship between interest
rate and the inducements it offers
to clients to save and deposit
money in the bank. The researcher
selects four branches within 60/km
radius for the experiment.
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Example: Field Experiment

For 1 week only, he advertises the annual

rate for new certificates of deposit received
during that week. The interest rate would
be 9% in one branch, 8% in another,
and 10% in the third. In the fourth
branch, the interest rate remains
unchanged at 5%. Within the week, the
researcher would be able to determine the
effects, if any, of interest rates on deposit
mobilization.
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Example: Field Experiment

This example would be a field experiment

since nothing but the interest rate is
manipulated, with all activities occurring in
the normal and natural work environment.
Hopefully, all four branches chosen
would be compatible in size, number of
depositors, deposit patterns, and the like,
so that the interest-savings
relationships are influenced by some
third factor.
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Example: Lab Experiment

To be sure about the true relationship

between the interest rate and deposits, the
researcher could create an artificial
environment by choosing, for instance, 40
students who are all business majors in
their final year of study and in the same
age. The researcher splits the students into
four groups and give each one of them
$1000, which they are told they might buy
their needs or save for the future, or both.
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Example: Lab Experiment

The researcher offers them interest on what
they save as followings:
6% on savings for group 1.
8% for group 2.
9% for group 3.
1% for group 4 ( the old rate of interest).
Here, the researcher has created an artificial
laboratory environment and has
manipulated the interest rates for savings.
He also chosen subjects with similar
backgrounds.
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Population to be Studied

Unit of analysis:

Individuals
Dyads
Groups
Organizations
Cultures

.
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Unit of Analysis: Individual

If the researcher focuses on how

to raise the motivational levels of
employees, then we are
interested in individual
employees in the organization.
Here the unit of analysis is the
individual (the data will be
gathered from each individual).
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Unit of Analysis: Dyads

If the researcher is interested in

studying two-person interaction,
then several two-person groups
also known as dyads, will
become the unit of analysis
( analysis of husband-wife, and
supervisor-subordinate
relationships at the work place.
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Unit of Analysis
Groups as a unit of analysis
Organizations as a unit of
analysis
Cultures as a unit of
analysis

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Example: Individuals as The

Unit of Analysis

The Chief Financial Officer of a

manufacturing company wants to know
how many of the staff would be interested
in attending a 3-day seminar on making
appropriate investment decisions.
Data will have to be collected from each
individual staff member and the unit of
analysis is individual.
The unit of analysis is the individual.
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Example: Dyads as the Unit of

Analysis

A human resources manager wants

to first identify the number of
employees in three departments of
the organization who are in
mentoring relationships, and then
find out what the jointly perceived
benefits of such a relationship are.
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Example: Dyads as the Unit of

Analysis

Once the mentor and the mentored pairs

are identified, their joint perceptions can be
obtained by treating each pair as one unit.
If the manager wants data from a sample of
10 pairs, he will have to deal with 20
individuals, a pair at a time. The
information obtained from each pair will be
a data point for subsequent analysis.
Thus, the unit of analysis is the dyad.
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Example: Groups as Unit of

Analysis

A manager wants to see the patterns of

usage of the newly installed Information
System (IS) by the production, sales, and
operations personnel.
Here three groups of personnel are involved
and information on the number of times the
IS is used by each member in each of the
three groups as well as other relevant
issues will be collected and analyzed.
Here the unit of analysis is the group.
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Example: Divisions as the Unit

of Analysis

Johnson & Johnson company wants to see

which of its various divisions (soap,
shampoo, body oil, etc.) have made profits
of over 12% during the current year.
Here, the profits of each of the divisions
will be examined and the information
aggregated across the various
geographical units of the division.
The unit of analysis will be the
division, at which level the data will
be aggregated.
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Example: Industry as the Unit

of Analysis

An employment survey specialist wants to

see the proportion of the workforce
employed by the health care,
transportation, and manufacturing
industries.
The researcher has to aggregate the data
relating to each of the subunits
comprised in each of the industries and
report the proportions of the workforce
employed at the industry level.
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Example: Industry as the Unit

of Analysis

The health care industry, for instance,

includes hospitals, nursing homes, small
and large clinics, and other health care
providing facilities.
The data from these subunits will have to
be aggregated to see how many employees
are employed by the heath care industry.
This will need to be done for each of the
other industries.
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Example: Countries as the

Unit of Analysis

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of

a multinational corporation wants to
know the profits made during the past
5 years by each of the subsidiaries in
England, Germany, and France. It is
possible that there are many regional
offices of these subsidiaries in each of
these countries.
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Example: Countries as the

Unit of Analysis

The profits of the various regional

centers for each country have to
be aggregated and the profits for
each country for the past 5 years
provided to the CFO.
The data will now have to be
aggregated at the country
level.
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Time Horizon

Cross-sectional studies
Snapshot of constructs at a single point in time
Use of representative sample
Multiple cross-sectional studies
Constructs measured at multiple points in time
Use of different sample
Longitudinal studies
Constructs measured at multiple points in time
Use of same sample = a true panel
.
52

Time Horizon: Cross-Sectional

Versus Longitudinal Studies
Example
Data were collected from stock
brokers between April and June of
last year to study their concerns in
a turbulent stock market.
Data has to be collected at one
point in time. It is a crosssectional design.
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Time Horizon: Cross-Sectional

Versus Longitudinal Studies
Example

A drug company desirous of investing

in research for a new headache pill
conducted a survey among headachy
people to see how many of them would
be interested in trying the new pill.
This is a one-shot or cross-sectional
study to assess the likely demand for
the new product.

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Time Horizon: Cross-Sectional

Versus Longitudinal Studies

Longitudinal Studies
Studying people or phenomena at
more than one point in time in order
to answer the research question.
Because data are gathered at two
different points in time, the study is
not cross-sectional kind, but is carried
longitudinally across a period of time.
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Example

A marketing manager is interested in

tracing the pattern of sales of a
particular product in four different
regions of the country on a quarterly
basis for the next 2 years.
Since the data are collected several
times to answer the same issue, the
study falls under the longitudinal
category.
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Time Horizon: Cross-Sectional

Versus Longitudinal Studies

Longitudinal studies take more time and

effort and cost more than cross-sectional
studies. However, well-planned longitudinal
studies could help to identify cause-and-effect
relationships.
For example, one could study the sales
volume of a product before and after an
advertisement, and provided other
environmental changes have not impacted on
the results, one could attribute the increase in
the sales volume, if any, to the advertisement.
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Exercise
A supervisor thinks that the low
efficiency of the machine tool operators
is directly linked to the high level of
fumes emitted in the workshop. He
would like to prove this to his
supervisor through a research study.
1. Would this be a causal or a
correlational study? Why?

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Exercise
2. Is this an exploratory, descriptive, or
hypothesis-testing (analytical or
predictive) study? Why?
3. What kind of study would this be: field
study, lab experiment, or field
experiment? Why?
4. What would be the unit of analysis?
Why?
5. Would this be a cross-section or a
longitudinal study? Why?
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Answers to the Exercise

1.

2.

This would be a causal study because the

operator wants to prove to the supervisor that
the fumes are causing operators to be low in
their efficiency. In other words, the machine
tool operator is trying to establish the fact
that fumes cause low efficiency in workers.
This is an analytical study because the
machine tool operator wants to establish that
fumes cause low efficiency and convince his
workshop supervisor through such analysis
(i.e. establish cause and effect
relationship).
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Answers to the Exercise

3.

4.

This would be a field experiment. Though the

study would be set up in the natural environment
of the workers where the work is normally done,
the amount of fumes will have to be manipulated
while other factors such as atmospheric pressure
may have to be controlled. Because of the
location of the study, it will be a field experiment.
The unit of analysis would be the individual
operators. The data will be collected with respect
to each operator and then the conclusions will be
made as to whether the operators are less
efficient because of the fumes emitted in the
workshop.
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Answers to the Exercise

5.

This would be a longitudinal study

because data will be gathered at more
than one point in time. First, the efficiency
of the operators would be assessed at a
given rate of fume emission. Then the
fumes emitted would be manipulated to
varying degrees, and at each
manipulation, the efficiency of the workers
would again be assessed to confirm that
the high rate of fume emission causes a
drop in operators efficiency.
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Answers to the Exercise

6.

This would be a longitudinal study

because data will be gathered at more
than one point in time. First, the efficiency
of the operators would be assessed at a
given rate of fume emission. Then the
fumes emitted would be manipulated to
varying degrees, and at each
manipulation, the efficiency of the workers
would again be assessed to confirm that
the high rate of fume emission causes a
drop in operators efficiency.
63