Research Methods - BAD 84112

Department of Management and Information Systems

Kent State University

Spring 2009

Instructor       

Dr. Al Guiffrida

Office:               A-411 Business Administration Building

Office Hours:    Tues 2:00 – 6:30; Wed 1:30 – 3:00 and by appointment

Telephone:        (330) 672-1158

E-mail:              aguiffri@kent.edu

Note: The best way to contact the instructor is to use email.

Course Objectives

Our course is a doctoral seminar on applied research methods. The goal is to expose you to a portfolio of research methodologies and techniques that will help you in the completion of your doctoral research program. The course objectives are:

1) To help students formulate a research problem and develop testable research hypotheses.

2) To help students develop research skills by learning the different research methods and techniques.

At the end of the course, students should be able to conduct meaningful and high quality research in their own field and be comfortable with how to plan, design, and conduct experiments efficiently and effectively, and to analyze the resulting data to obtain objective conclusions. This skill based will be accomplished using formal lectures by the course instructor, mini-lectures presented by students enrolled in the class and discussion of readings selected from the literature.

Course Notes and Textbook

Textbook: there is no required textbook.

A collection of articles (in PDF format) will be posted to Vista for student use.

Class lecture slides (power point) notes will be distributed in hardcopy and/or electronic form throughout the course.

Course Prerequisites and Enrollment Requirements

Doctoral Standing in the KSU School of Business

Familiarity with a statistics package (SPSS, SAS or similar)

Knowledge of how to use the research databases from the KSU library. We will routinely use JSTOR and the E-Journal Finder (among others) during the course.

Enrollment/Withdrawal: Students have responsibility to ensure they are properly enrolled in classes.  You are advised to review your official class schedule (using Student Tools/Flashfast) during the first two weeks of the semester to ensure you are properly enrolled in this class and section.  Should you find an error in your class schedule, you have until Friday January 30, 2009 to correct the error in your class schedule. If registration errors are not corrected by this date and you continue to attend and participate in classes for which you are not officially enrolled, you are advised now that you will not receive a grade at the conclusion of the semester for any class in which you are not properly registered.

For the Spring 2009 semester, the course withdrawal deadline is Sunday, April 5, 2009. Withdrawal before the deadline results in a “W” on the official transcript; after the deadline a grade must be calculated and reported.

Grading Policy

Grades will be based on three attributes: (1) graded computer based assignments, (2) student mini-lectures and (3) the quality of your class room discussion. Each attributed is equally weighted.

Academic Integrity

We will follow the University Policy on Academic Integrity.  Academic honesty: Cheating means to misrepresent the source, nature, or other conditions of your academic work (e.g., tests, quizzes, papers, projects, homework assignments) so as to get undeserved credit. The use of intellectual property of others without giving them appropriate credit is a serious academic offence. It is the University’s policy that cheating or plagiarism result in receiving a failing grade (0 points) for the work or course. Repeat offences may result in dismissal from the University.

Students with disabilities

University policy 3342-3-18 requires that students with disabilities be provided reasonable accommodations to ensure their equal access to course content.  If you have a documented disability and require accommodations, please contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester to make arrangements for necessary classroom adjustments.  Please note, you must first verify your eligibility for these through the Student Accessibility Services (contact 330-672-3391 or visit www.kent.edu/sas for more information on registration procedures).

Course Topics (subject to revision)

a) Ch1 Introduction and Ch2 The Principles of Experimentation Illustrated by a Psycho-Physical Experiment, from The Design of Experiments, by Ronald A. Fisher, 1949; pages 1-25.

b) Ch 2 Introduction to the Fisher Logic, from Designing Experiments and Analyzing Data: A Model Comparison Perspective, by Scott E. Maxwell and Harold, D. Delaney, 2000, pages 37-56.

a) Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs – chapter handout

b) Inadequate Designs and Design Criteria – chapter handout

c) Factorial Models – handouts

d) Multiple Comparison Methods – handouts

e) Orthogonal Polynomials - handouts

a) Freund, J. E. and Perles, B. M. (1993). Observations on the Definition of P-values, Teaching Statistics, 15(1), 8-9.

b) Cowles, M. and Davis, C. (1982). On the Origins of the 0.05 Level of Statistical Significance, American Psychologist, 37(5), 553-558.

c) Cohen, J. (1992) “A Power Primer”, Psychological Bulletin, 112(1), 155-159.

d) Koele, P. (1982) “Calculating Power in Analysis of Variance”, Psychological Bulletin, 92(2), 513-516.

e) Power calculators – handouts

a) Handouts

a) Measurement and Scientific Inquiry,  Ch 2, Measurement, Design and Analysis An Integrated Approach, E. J. Pedhazur and L. P. Schmelkin, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, 1991.

b) On the Theory of Scales of Measurement, S. S. Stevens, Science, 103(2684), 1946.

c) Reliability, Ch 27 Foundations of Behavioral Research, F. N. Kerlinger and H. B. Lee, Foundations of Behavior Research, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 2000.

d) Validity, Ch 28, Foundations of Behavioral Research, F. N. Kerlinger and H. B. Lee, 2002.

e) “Construct Validity in Psychological Tests”, L. J. Cronbach and P. E. Meehl, Psychological Bulletin, 52(4), 1955, 281-302

f) Cronbach Alpha Tutorial – Handout

a) Models for Categorical Data

b) Introduction to Path Analysis

c) Response Surface Methodology