Case study method is one of the methods of investigation. Originally case method was used in medicine. The physician used to maintain a record of treatment and health conditions of each patient. Each such record pertains to a ‘case’. The peculiarities of each ‘case’ are known as well as generalities of all cases together. The cause-effect relationship is established and exceptions there to are also noted down. The basic unit of case study is a case – a particular one of its kind. It may be a single business unit or a whole group of business units in an area or a single producer or a group of producers or a single consumer or a group of consumers and so on. When a group is involved, that group is treated as one unit, with whatever phenomenon found in one group member is taken as a phenomenon of the group as Continue reading
Business Research Techniques
Role of Business Research in Decision Making Process
One of the best methods of collecting information is carrying out research. When research is carried out explicitly for the purpose of running businesses, it is termed as “business research”. Business research, which is also commonly known as market research, is a process by which business relevant information is collected so as to ensure that the business operations are run intelligently. With the help of business research, existing businesses are able to keep in touch with the ever-changing consumer demands and expectations and adapt accordingly. Typically, business research is aimed at gaining information that is likely to make the business more successful. While running a business, there may arise some situations which may seem difficult and management face problems as to find a solution to them. In such cases, business research can be used to making confident decisions. Business research can help the management to answer questions regarding issues varying Continue reading
Sampling Methods in Research
Sampling is that part of statistical practice concerned with the selection of an unbiased or random subset of individual observations within a population of individuals intended to yield some knowledge about the population of concern, especially for the purposes of making predictions based on statistical inference. Sampling is an important aspect of data collection. There are two basic approaches to sampling: probabilistic and non-probabilistic sampling. A probability sampling scheme is one in which every unit in the population has a chance (greater than zero) of being selected in the sample, and this probability can be accurately determined. The combination of these traits makes it possible to produce unbiased estimates of population totals, by weighting sampled units according to their probability of selection. Example: We want to estimate the total income of adults living in a given street. We visit each household in that street, identify all adults living there, and Continue reading
Standard Error in Hypothesis Testing
The standard error is an indispensable tool in the kit of a researcher, because it is used in testing the validity of statistical hypothesis. The standard deviation of the sampling distribution of a statistic is called the standard error. The standard error is important in dealing with statistics (measures of samples) which are normally distributed. Here the use of the word “error” is justified in this connection by the fact that we usually regard the expected value to be true value and the divergence from it as error of estimation due to sampling fluctuations. The term standard error has a wider meaning than merely the standard deviation of simple sampling because of the following reasons; The standard error is mainly employed for testing the validity of a given hypothesis. Mostly two levels of significance (0.05 and 0.01) are used for testing the validity of hypotheses. At 0.05 level of significance, Continue reading
Interview Method of Data Collection in Research
Interview is one of the popular methods of research data collection. The term interview can be dissected into two terms as, ‘inter’ and ‘view’. The essence of interview is that one mind tries to read the other. The interviewer tries to assess the interviewed in terms of the aspects studied or issues analyzed. Purpose and Importance of Interview The main purpose of interview as a tool of data collection, is to gather data extensively and intensively. As Pauline.V Young pointed out that the objectives of the interview may be exchange of ideas and experiences, eliciting of information pertaining to a very wide range of data in which the interviewee may wish to rehearse his past, define his present and canvass his future possibilities. Thus, in brief, the objectives of interviewee are two fold: To exchange ideas and experience and To elicit information. The importance of interview may be known through Continue reading
Sampling Errors in Research
Error is defined as , “an act, assertion, or belief that unintentionally deviates from what is correct, right, or true”. In a business research process, there is sure to be some error in the results because there is the involvement of human intelligence and the use of sampling methods that may not be always accurate. The absolute value of the difference between an unbiased point estimate and the corresponding population parameter is known as a sampling error. It arises because the data is collected from a part, rather than the whole of the population. The sampling error can be more reliable by increasing the sample size. Sampling error is defined as the error that arises in a data collection process as a result of taking a sample from a population rather than using the whole population. Sampling error is one of two reasons for the difference between an estimate of Continue reading