Interactive Syllabus

Methodology 1

Info

This is an introductory course and has no specific prerequisites. Students are expected to be able to read and write in English in the area of their dissertation.

The course provides an introduction to understanding and doing empirical research with people as the primary source of data in business context. It aims to provide a common working foundation to graduates of various fields which substantially differ in the their research methods curriculum. The course explicitly does not cover econometric research.
The aim of the course is to introduce students to the basic components of research planning and execution including:

awareness of the advantages of the scientific method and of the range of research types/traditions,
ethical issues in research,
specifying the purpose and focus of a research project, the research question,
building the theoretical framework based on a critical literature review,
formulation of hypotheses,
selecting and specifying an appropriate research design including experimental and correlational designs,
selecting/developing valid and reliable methods of data collection including interviews, surveys, observations, and psychometric scales,
sampling,
elements of quantitative and qualitative data processing and analysis, and
reporting research.

At the and of the course students will have a realistic knowledge of all the basic components of empirical research with people in the business context. They will be able to write a successful simple research proposal, know how to carry out a study based on the proposal, analyse and write up the results. As a consequence they will be more competent research consumers and critical peers.

Textbook

The textbook is Sekaran, U. & Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business : a skill-building approach. 7th Ed. Wiley.

All core course information can be found in the syllabus of the course in the IS MU.

Attendance

Attendance is not mandatory but recommended. Although the curriculum sticks to the textbook as much as possible the discussions during the meetings allow to make it more meaningful for each student's particular course of study. Without discussing how the various research-methods issues relate to one's dissertation plans the course may appear superficial and boring. Thus is specifically true for students who do not plan to collect any data from people for their dissertation (or papers that compose it).

Consultations

I will be available after each lecture for online consultations at https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=jezek@fss.muni.cz

Course credits

To pass the course students must submit a research proposal related to their dissertation topic and pass a written exam. The research proposal will be evaluated on a scale accepted-not accepted with the possibility to resubmit a corrected version. The written exam will consist of short open-ended questions and multiple-choice questions. The grading scale will be the following >=90% A, 89-83% B, 82 - 75% C, 74 - 68% D, 67 - 60 % E, less than 60% F.

The final test has 20 questions, which implies the following cutpoints for individual grades: >=18, 17, 15, 13, 12.

Project proposal

Open

Chapter contains:

Study text

Introduction

Open

Chapter contains:

Study Materials

Study text

Teacher recommends to study from 21/9/2021 to 27/9/2021.

Research question and theoretical framework