Name: Bülent Güzel
Home Institution: Yildiz Technical University
Course Overview
In the modern practice of management it is essential that managers should be capable to conduct research projects and evaluate the validity and reliability of research projects done by others, such as internal and external consultants, research and advertising agencies, industry organizations, governments, and SIGs.
In such situations where managerial decision-making is based on research done by others, a good grasp of research methods equips managers to evaluate and apply research effectively. The course is composed of the following modules:
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course students will learn the concepts of meaning, knowledge, truth, critical thinking, analyzing vs. synthesizing, causation vs. correlation, hypothesis vs. theory and scientific methods through the history of science.
By the end of this course students will learn how an organizational problem is translated into a research question, how to distinguish between various types of research purposes, such as exploratory, descriptive and causal, how to differentiate descriptive statistics and inferential statistics, and what is validity and reliability in research and hypothesis testing.
By the end of this course students should be able to formulate hypotheses based on a conceptual model and learn how variables are operationalized and measured and how the relatedness between variables does reflect in the stated hypotheses.
Students will also learn the various data collection methods for secondary (internal and external) and primary data, and how to present their results and recommendations, in the form of a research report.
Course Content
Introduction to scientific theory.
Introduction to research and scientific investigation.
Defining a Management Problem and asking Research Questions; Research Purpose: Exploratory, Descriptive and Causal.
Exploratory Research: Internal and External Search of Secondary Data, conducting literature review, focus group interviews.
Developing a conceptual framework: Stating the hypotheses about the population of interest.
Data collection methods for Descriptive and Experimental (Causal) Research.
Operationalizing and measuring variables.
Survey Questionnaire design.
Measurement scaling: validity and reliability.
Elements of Inferential Statistics, Sampling: Design and Procedures.
Quantitative data analysis – overview.
Writing a research report.
Instructional Method
This course will use a wide array of teaching techniques including lectures, class discussions, debates, independent and group research. Students will be expected to participate actively in the class discussions.
Required Course Materials
Reading material will be provided before the lectures.
Assessment
Final exam 30 points
Research Project Design 30 points
Pop-up quizzes (min. 4) 30 points
Class Participation 10 points
TOTAL 100 points