Reference no: EM132589017

Qualitative Trial Project: Instructions

Congratulations on being accepted for this trial project! You were selected based upon your credentials and our belief that you may be a good fit for what our firm is looking for. This document contains instructions for completing the trial project. Please read this full set of directions before beginning the project. If you have any questions, please send us an email and we will reply promptly.
Expectations for Doctoral Research and Writing

Throughout your time at our consulting firm, you would create, analyze, and critique clients' academic writing. Doctoral research involves critiquing and analyzing qualitative methodologies and results, looking for research gaps, and selecting theoretical frameworks. For an undergraduate essay or a professional white paper, researchers often work deductively, beginning with an idea and then find sources to support their argument. The doctoral researcher, however, works inductively, critically examining studies, discussing their findings conceptually, analyzing what the findings mean, and bringing in other examples as needed to build a theoretically rich foundation for a study. When working on this trial project, please keep this distinction in mind, as thinking, researching, and writing at the doctoral level is a requirement for this position.

Instructions for the Trial Project

For this assignment, you'll be creating an annotated bibliography, outline, and section of a literature review. What follows here are comprehensive instructions for each of these three elements of the trial project.

Annotated bibliography. In order to complete this component of the trial project, please do the steps below. Please note, too, that a sample entry can be found in the Trial Project- Samples document:

1. Conduct research on the topic of the study. Because what is required for this trial is only a portion of what would be done for a full-length literature review, please be sure to restrict your search to only those sources that bear directly on (i.e., share variables with) the current study. You will be assessed in part on how effectively you restrict the scope of your search to fit the requirements of this assignment. You should find at least 15 sources.

2. Construct the annotated bibliography. Please provide entries for each of the sources you found in step 1. Each entry should consist of an APA-style references list citation for the source and an annotation. Each annotation should be between 150 and 250 words in length, be written in past tense, and consist of the following:
a. A statement of background,

b. The purpose of the study,

c. Information about methodology, such as the research design and the number of participants,
d. Key findings and conclusions, and

e. Discussion of implications and/or limitations of the study.

Outline. For this step, please use all of the sources that you included in your annotated bibliography, and structure them into a cohesive whole. Because the doctoral researcher works inductively, you should begin with the studies. From this foundation, please complete the following steps:

1. Group studies on the same variables and that reach similar conclusions together into broad categories. A good example of this may be found in the sample outline in the Trial Project-Samples document, where you will see the level 3 heading Organizational leadership and employee performance. In all, 15 sources in the literature review sample outline fit within this broad category.

2. Group studies within broad categories into narrower subcategories. Because each section should have both focus and movement, please divide any sections with a large number of studies into smaller groups. In the sample outline, you will find two subcategories: Importance of leader behavior to employee performance and Different leadership styles to influence positive performance. Here, the 15 studies that fit into the broader category (level 3 heading) are divided into two groups, one with six studies and the other with nine studies. Please note that it is likely that you will need to divide subsections into even smaller subsections, so please move through this iterative process until each section has an appropriately narrow focus.

3. Develop the outline to convey the structure you've devised. Please use the sample outline section as a model to complete this work, and please note that reference to a study should contain an appropriately formatted in-text citation along with a brief statement of the information from that study relevant to the section in which it appears.

Literature review. For this step, please transform the outline you've created into a section of a literature review. The resulting work should be at least five pages in length. Please note that a normal, full-length literature review will have at least 40 pages. In completing this work, please do the following:

1. Start paragraphs with strong, ideas-focused claims that make explicit the organizational work you did in the outline. Please also craft substantive transitions that guide the reader between ideas, both within and among paragraphs.

2. Develop a discussion of each study that provides information about its purpose, methods, and conclusions.

3. Discuss limitations as they help to develop your argument in favor of the study, and directly explore contradictions, inconsistencies, and gaps in the research to help make this argument, as well.