Research Methods

PROPERTY RESEARCH – ECON 3003

ASSIGNMENT ONE

Task One

The following answers have been derived from Chapters 2 and 3 in the textbook Business Research Methods 2nd Edition by Anthony James Veal.

1. Identify the five key ethical issues with regards to all research.

Business ethics are a moral code that people conducting any sort of business are obligated to follow. Ethical actions are extremely important when conducting research, and extend beyond traditional ethical considerations such as honesty and integrity.

The first of which is harm to a research subject, where their health or safety may be put at risk for the sake of an experiment. It is also crucial to understand that harm does not need to be physical, and harm can be done when an individual’s privacy has been breached or by generating falsified results from the research. Subjects should also participate based on informed consent.

Free choice is regarded as an additional ethical issue, and is against research being conducted against an individual’s will.

Research should also not be conducted by a researcher who is incompetent as they may cause harm to the subjects or to a lesser extent, completing the research incorrectly resulting in inaccurate findings, wasting time and other resources.

Plagiarism is a major component of ethical research and falls in to the traditional ethical consideration of honesty. A researcher who uses foreign data or ideas without acknowledgement or consent may be deemed unethical if it is not appropriate.

Finally, the generation of falsified results is deemed to be unethical and can lead to a business being publicly scrutinized resulting in a loss of integrity.

After considering the above, one is able to appreciate the fact that ethical research plays a significant role in the planning and execution of all research projects (Veal 2005, 71–72).

2. Explain two differences between a conceptual framework and concept mapping.

It is fitting that perhaps the most important factor of a research project is also the most difficult to develop and implement, and a conceptual framework is more often than not the weakest component in the majority of research proposals.

As the name states, a conceptual framework involves concepts, with a few examples being communication, organisational commitment and job satisfaction. The conceptual framework comes into play as it indicates how the researcher views the concepts involved in the research and their relationships with one another, and the development of a conceptual framework involves four elements which are depicted below.

Once a conceptual framework has been established, a concept map is then developed in order to explore the relationships between the different concepts in a visualized manner. In essence, a concept map is fundamentally a tool allowing for the development of a conceptual framework. They pull together and make visible particular theories and break them down in a manner that is extremely effective (Veal 2005, 50-53).

3. In research what is a key difference between deduction and induction?

Induction and deduction are two different reasoning strategies. In other words, they are two different ways to figure out the solution to a problem. Below is a model of the research process in relation to induction and deduction.

When dealing with induction, the research will always begin with the observation and description of data. The next step is to analyse the data in an attempt to find patterns and draw conclusions that will eventually lead to a hypothesis or theory. To put it simply, Induction is the logical process of arriving at a conclusion based on premises you assume to be true.

On the other hand, deductive research involves reaching a conclusion based on a premise you know to be true, by providing a possible explanation via a hypothesis and then collecting data and analysing this data to verify or cancel out the supposition.

Therefore, the primary point of difference between the two can be summed up as deductive research follows a path of logical progression of general