STA630 GDB Solution Fall October 2012
Concept to be tested: Type and use of Research
Sara works in a renowned FMCG company as an HR manager where she handles recruitment, selection of employees, and other HR functions. Her major area is training and development of employees where she develops training modules and conducts training sessions. Sara is also doing her MS in HRM and she is up to start her research project however she has completed her course work successfully. Her supervisor has asked her to do research work which carries significance. After thinking rigorously she has decided to work on effectiveness of training program. An intensive literature review has enabled her to define the concept “effectiveness”.
At beginning, in order to describe and explore the effects of training program on employees, Sara thought to collect data from different organizations which conduct training for its employees to examine impact of training. After discussing with supervisor, he guided her to take data from her own organization to deeply examine the impact of training on employees. Sara found it something easy and worthy. She specially designed a training session on presentation skills to check the effectiveness of this training program among employees. She selected a sample and took data before training session and after training session. She developed a structured questionnaire to measure the effectiveness of training session – knowledge, skills and understanding of employees. Sara also observed how effectively employees practiced learning throughout the session and kept a record.
1. Which type(s) of research strategy is/are employed in this case? Support your answer with logic.
SOLUTION:
Exploratory research is a type of research conducted for a problem that has not been clearly defined and Quantitative research refers to the systematic empirical investigation of social phenomena via statistical, mathematical or computational techniques So this is exploratory research as well as it is quantitative research. The results of exploratory research are not usually useful for decision-making. if we collect data through a questionnaire it can be either qualitative or quantitative. but initially it will be quantitative research some times followed by qualitative research.
