Reference no: EM1332622

Research costs resources, and resources are always scarce things in organizations. So allocating resources to research of any sort requires deciding that its results are potentially more valuable than the results that might be obtained by spending the resources on something else (such as advertising, or executive bonuses, etc.) Such decisions are problematical enough when the research is technical and the results potentially translatable into bottom-line dollars. But when we're talking about behavioral science research, tracing and quantifying possible results and relating them to organizational goals and priorities may be almost impossible.

1. What sort of justification can you offer as to why an organization -- any organization -- should expend resources on the kind of social/behavioral science research that you're learning about here?

2. A distinction is made between the general "research questions" that shape a study and the specific hypotheses it purports to test. Are there meaningful research questions (emphasis on "meaningful") that cannot be assessed through the process of operationalizing and testing hypotheses? If you believe that there are such questions, what might be an example of one (or more)? If you believe that there aren't, why not?

3. One of the so-called paradoxes of the science of the very small called quantum mechanics is the idea that it is the act of measurement itself that defines a phenomenon -- for example, an electron does not really exist until we undertake to measure either its position or speed (but not both). Let me pose the possibility that this really applies to behavioral science phenomena as well -- that is, the phenomena we purport to study are only defined in any meaningful terms by the measurements we apply to them. "Intelligence" is only what is measured by intelligence tests. A term such as "organizational commitment" has meaning only if you know what questions were asked of respondents to derive such a measure -- and has little if any meaning outside the context of those respondents.

Admittedly this is an extreme position - and I'm not posing it because I necessarily believe it in its full rigor - but it cannot be dismissed out of hand. To what degree do you support or oppose this idea? And if you think it's wrong, why? What alternative proposition(s) would you propose?

4. You're asked to choose one of two diverging paths to truth -- quantitative or qualitative. Which did you choose -- and why? What might you be giving up by not choosing the other path, if anything? Did your decision reflect a commitment one way or another, or simply a practical and/or situational determination about right now?

5. Research isn't much use if no one believes that you've found what you claim to have found. Why should people believe you? What arguments can you advance that your findings have credibility and/or value? What arguments could be advanced against your claims? How would you refute them?