Empirical Research Methods

Faculty of Business Management and Social Sciences

Version 17.0 of 05/27/2019

22M0601

Empirical Research Methods

International Business and Management (Master) (M.A.)

4

The module aims to enable students to select appropriate empirical research methods, correctly and efficiently apply these methods, and critically evaluate their own and other researchers results.

• 1. Background:
• 1.1. Theory of science,
• 1.2. The research process
  1.3 Quantitative and qualitative approaches to research
• 1.4. Observational and experimental research
• 2. Study planning:
• 2.1. Developing research questions
• 2.2. Reviewing the literature
• 3. Data collection:
• 3.1. Research designs,
• 3.2. Survey and questionnaire development
• 3.3. Quality criteria
• 3.4. Sampling and access to the field
• 4. Qualitatitve data analysis:
• 4.1. Content analysis after Mayring
• 4.2. Grounded theory
• 5. Quantitative data analysis:
• 5.1. Descriptive statistics visualizations,
• 5.2. Bivariate significance tests,
• 5.3. Multivariate tests
• 5.4. Application using software (e.g. R or SPSS)

Knowledge Broadening
The students know the major approaches to empirical research and the principle phases in which research takes place. They have developed a differentiated, view on scientific knowledge and findings from empirical studies.
Knowledge Deepening
The students know central principles of empirical research, terminology and conventions according to different major approaches.
Instrumental Skills and Competences
The students develop the competence to select, apply, and critically acclaim empirical research methods and results that are relevant to their research questions.
Communicative Skills and Competences
The students are able to identify and clarify a research question. They are able to coordinate a research project, communicate their results and critically acclaim results reported by others.
Systemic Skills and Competences
The students develop a principle understanding for the gathering, preparing, interpreting and presentation of data. The students are able to access the advantages and limits of novel methods for data collection, and analysis.

Lectures, exercises, case studies, self-study, eLearning, supervised empirical research project

none

Markovic-Bredthauer, Danijela

Faatz, Andreas

5

Chapman, C. N. (2015). R for Marketing Research and Analytics (2015th ed.). New York, NY: Springer.

Field, A. (2013). Discovering Statistics Using SPSS (4th Edition.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications Ltd.

Field, A., & Miles, J. (2012). Discovering Statistics Using R. London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications Ltd.

Flick, U. (2014). An Introduction to Qualitative Research (5th edition.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications Ltd.

McClave, J. T., Benson, P. G., & Sincich, T. L. (2013). Statistics for Business and Economics: Pearson New International Edition (12th ed.). Pearson.

• Two-Hour Written Examination
• Viva Voce
• Portfolio exam

none

1 Term

Only Winter Term

English