Course Outline

Master of Business administration (MBA)

MBA 4th Batch; Session: 2012-13; Section: B
Department of Accounting & Information Systems
Jagannath University, Dhaka
Course Description:
Course Code: 5204
Title: Applied Business Methodology
Credit Point: 03
Total Marks: 100
Class Schedule: Monday and Wednesday at 2.20pm to 3.50pm
Course Teacher:
A.N.M. Asaduzzaman Fakir
Assistant Professor
Department of Accounting & Information Systems
Jagannath University, Dhaka.
Email: asaduzzamanfakir@gmail.com
Faculty Room No. 305, Academic Building (New)
Counseling Hour: Wednesday from 11.30am to 12.30pm
Marks Distribution:
Issues
Class Attendance
Quiz , Class Test and Assignment
Research Practical
Midterm
Semester Final
Total

Marks
10
05
05
20
60
100

Guidelines:
Students have to carry on a practical research (Demo) project as guided by in group or
individual during the semester and submit the report accordingly.
Quiz, Class Test, Assignment Midterm Exam and Research Project Schedule will be
announced later.
Note: For greater interest you are asked not to come at my room and ask your problem at any
time as you find easy. For any problem or query you have following options:
1. If problems are more or less course related ask me during the class, mostly if it is
about general query or problem.
2. Meet me at my counseling hour.
3. You can send your message to me at my email; I will try my best to reply them.
4. Your Class Representative (CR) can phone me any time (preferable before 10pm); I
will try my best to answer them.

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Course Objective:
The objective of the course is to acquaint students with advanced critical aspects of research
process so that they can justify their design and data use to confirm the research outcome.
After completing the course, the students are expected to be prepared to undertake a research
project independently as well as publish the same in research journals.
CH.
NO.

DETAILED CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Definition of Research
Types of Research
Internal Vs External Research
Ethics & Business Research
Negotiating Access and Research Ethics
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
Hallmarks of Scientific Research
Building Blocks of Science in Research
Hypothetico-deductive Method
Research Paradigm
Some Terminologies in Research
Understanding Research Philosophies and
Approaches
FORMULATING & CARRYING OUT
RESEARCH AND RESEARCH PROCESS
Observation
Preliminary Data Gathering
Problem Definition
Theoretical Framework
Generation of Hypothesis
Research Design
Data Collection Analysis and Interpretation
Deduction

CRITICALLY REVIEWING THE

LITERATURE
The Critical Review
Stages of Literature Review
Planning Literature Search Strategy
Conducting Literature Search
Obtaining and Evaluating the Literature
Recording the Literature and Plagiarism
MEASUREMENT
How to Measure Variables
Operational Definition: Dimensions and
Elements
Scales
Frequently Used Scaling Techniques

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CLASSES

1&2

REFERENCES

Uma Sekaran
Stephen Isaac

3,4&5

Uma Sekaran
Coopers

6&7

Uma Sekaran

8&9

Uma Sekaran
& Slides

10&11

Uma Sekaran

RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

Goodness of Measures
Stability of Measures
Internal Consistency of Measures
Content Validity
Criterion-Related Validity
Construct Validity
Internal and External Validity
OTHER ISSUES IN RESEARCH
Data Collection Methods
Sampling
Data Analysis & Interpretation

RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Definition
Purpose
Standard Requirement (Outline)
Evaluation of Proposal
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Factors to Consider While Writing
Improving Odds
A Good and Rejected Research Proposal

10

PREPARING AND PUBLISHING A

RESEARCH FINDING
Typical Format of a Journal Article
Writing Research Reports
Turning Research into Publications
SOME STATISTICAL TERMS AND
TESTS
Descriptive Statistics
Frequencies
Central Tendency and Dispersions
Mean, Median and Mode
Range, Variance, Standard Deviation and
Inter quartile Range
Inferential Statistics
Pearson Correlation
Chai-Square Test
ANOVA
Multiple Regression Analysis
Other Multivariate Tests and Analysis
MANOVA
Discriminant Analysis
Factor Analysis, Cluster Analysis and
Multidimensional Scaling
Analysis of Qualitative Data
Page 3 of 4

12&13

Uma Sekaran

14

Uma Sekaran

15,16&17

Slides

18

Uma Sekaran

19&20

Uma Sekaran

Text Book:
Sekaran, Uma (2006). Research Methods For Business: A Skill Building Approach. John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Reference Books:
Cooper, Donald. R., Schindler, Pamela. S. (2006). Business Research Methods.
McGraw Hill Publishing Company, UK
Isaac, Stephen., Michael, William. B. (1995). Handbook in Research and Evaluation :
For Education and the Behavioral Sciences. Longman Publishers USA
Malcolm, Smith (2004). Research Methods in Accounting. SAGE Publication Ltd
Zikmund, William.G., Barry, J. Babin., Jon, C. Carr. (2003). Business Research
Methods. Thomson/South-Western

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