MBR Notes

Nature of Variables

 Observed
- Measurable
 Unobserved
- Not measurable
Types of Variables
 Qualitative
- Used for theory development
 Quantification
- Used to theory testing on an already existing theory
Scale of Variable
 Nominal
- No ranking
- No stage is fulfilled
- Examples, race, hair color, gender (there’s no ranking
 Ordinal
- Ranking or rating
- Ascending and descending
- E.g., grades
 Ratio
- Can be divided
- Zero is meaningful
- Satisfies all condition (A&D, + & -, / and x)
- E.g., weight
 Interval
- Zero is not meaningful
- Can go down to negative
- Satisfies (A&D, + & -)
- E.g., temperature
Role of Variable

 Dependent variable: a variable that respond to a change in another variable.

 Independent: a variable not influenced by any other variable
 Mediating: a variable that explains the relationships between two variables.
- Job satisfaction v workload (stress would be a mediating variable as more workload leads to
more stress then reduced satisfaction)
- If indirect > direct, then a mediating variable exists
 Moderating: a variable that affects the direction or strength of the relationship.
- Gender, stress and health status (gender is a moderating variable as because of it, the
relationship may have different strength of direction)
- Income and expenses (gender influencing the amount of expenses)
  Extraneous: any variable which you aren’t investigating that can potentially affect the outcomes.
- If all extraneous variables are controlled, it’s easier to observe
 Controlling: variable that is held constant in a research study.
 Confounding: a third variable that influences both dependent and independent variable
- For example, expenses and savings, gender is the confounding variable
- Time of day or temperature can also be an example.
 Dichotomous: have only two options/answers
 Multichotomies: have multiple two options/answers
 Dummy variable: a variable that takes values of 0 and 1, where the values indicate the presence
or absence. Makes one variable a reference variable.

Business Research: can be described as a systematic organized effort, scientific inquiry to investigating
work setting with the purpose of finding answers or solution.

 The application of the scientific method is searching for the truth about business phenomena.
These activities include defining business problems, defining generating and evaluating ideas,
monitoring performing and understanding business processes.

Key points

- Logical series of steps to finding on conclusion

- As within an organization, a business researcher can be referred to as a marketing researcher
or organization researcher.

Factors that affect business research

1. Time constraint
2. Availability of data
3. Nature of decision
- Day to day operations
- Tactical, short term
- Strategic, long term
4. Benefit v. cost

Managerial value of business research

1. Product oriented research (technicians, technology, engineers)

2. Production oriented research (research and development, handling)
3. Market oriented research (attitudes, awareness)
4. Evaluation research (govt. example, measurement purposes)
5. Performance monetary research (profit, goals specific)
Internal research: collecting data and information from within your business using employee survey
analyses of sales, data and customer feedback.

- Adv: internal team better chance of accepting

- Requires less time to adjust to org. structure
- Chances to implement results are higher.
- Disadv: stereotypical way of looking at the organization and problem
- Scope of powerful employees to influence the team and misrepresent results

External research: involves gathering information from outside your business using market surveys to
gain insights.

Ethical conduct: Ethical conduct should be reflected in behavior of researchers who conducts the
investigation and the participants who provide data, analysis etc.

 The first and comprehensive objective – to guard/protect human participants, their dignity, rights
and welfare.
 The second objective – to make sure that research is directed in a manner that assists welfares of
persons, groups and/or civilization as a whole.
 The third objective – to inspect particular research events and schemes for their ethical reliability

Theoretical framework