Course Description:
This is an advanced-level course in Research Methods designed to provide postgraduate students with the foundations needed to undertake qualitative scholarly research in social science disciplines. The course also offers students the opportunity to begin research on their thesis and dissertation by providing clear and holistic guidance on how to generate and refine a research idea into a clear and unmistakable research topic with relevant, specific, measurable and realistic objectives or research questions. Specifically, the course will cover topics such as what is research? Why do we conduct research? How to generate research ideas, how to evaluate research topics, how to plan a research, the sources of knowledge and the process of critically reviewing the relevant literature, the theory of Knowledge, the philosophy and ethics of research. Others topics to be covered in this course shall include: the research process as it relates to conceptualization and design of appropriate research methodology to achieve the desired research objectives, techniques of data collection and analysis, and drafting and writing a research report. This Course will be learner-centred and therefore shall use a combination of strategies such as assignments, proposal development, seminar presentations, and hands-on practice with statistical packages to achieve the intended goal.
Course Learning Outcomes
At the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Outline and explain the types of research and the reasons for carrying out research
- Develop
a research proposal that communicates clearly the research problem, research
question(s)/hypotheses, research objectives and methodology
- Explain the various research paradigms and
approaches
- Define key terms such as epistemology, ontology
and axiology and explain their relevance to business research
- Explain the relevance of philosophical
perspectives such as positivism, realism, pragmatism, interpretivism,
objectivism and constructionism in business research
- Explain
the ethical obligations of a researcher towards respondents or research
participants and vice versa and why such
obligations must be observed
- Undertake
a critical review of theoretical and empirical literature
- Plan a primary data
collection procedure that will assure both reliability and validity of the
data
- Explain the suitability of the various qualitative sampling techniques for different types of research
- Prepare Qualitative data collected for analysis
- Examine Qualitative research approaches