Chapter 2

SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION

Arranged By: Prof. Syed hussnain shah

THE HALLMARKS OF SCIENCE

Purposiveness
Rigor
Testability
Replicability
Precision and Confidence
Objectivity
Generalizability
Parsimony

Arranged By: Prof. Syed hussnain shah

 Purposiveness
• The research has
– Definitive aim and purpose.
– E.g in case of increased employee commitment
will result in lower turnover, absenteeism and
increased performance.
– Over all benefiting the organization.

Arranged By: Prof. Syed hussnain shah

 Rigor
• Degree of correctness
– Theory and theorization is correct
– Sound methodology
– Data is sufficient or true representation of
population
– Data is unbiased

Arranged By: Prof. Syed hussnain shah

 Testability
• To convert the relationship in the form of
testable hypothesis so that it could be tested
statistically.
– Exp chi2, t-test, chow test, regression analysis, F-
test, paired t-test etc..

Arranged By: Prof. Syed hussnain shah

 Replicability

• The research should be replicable so that the

body of knowledge can be increased giving us
confidence in results estimated by different
studies testing the same hypothesis and are
different cross section of organizations.

Arranged By: Prof. Syed hussnain shah

 Precision and Confidence

• Results should be error less and unbiased

matching reality.
– Precision: the closeness of the findings to
―reality‖ based on a sample. In other words,
precision reflects the degree of accuracy or
exactitude of the results on the basis of the
sample.
– Confidence: how much we are confident that our
results or estimates are correct. (p value<0.05)

Arranged By: Prof. Syed hussnain shah

 Objectivity
• Objectivity vs. Subjectivity
– The conclusion should be based on actual findings
and should not be subject to emotional and
personal opinions.
– Non data based conclusions are dangerous to
organizations stability in decision making

Arranged By: Prof. Syed hussnain shah

 Generalizability
• The result findings of one organizations can be
applied to other similar organizations.
– In case of applied research this may not be the
case due to specific problem situation but still it is
valuable to same identical firm in the industry.

Arranged By: Prof. Syed hussnain shah

 Parsimony
• Simplicity in explaining the phenomena or
problems that occur, and in generating
solutions for the problems, is always preferred
to complex research frame- works that
consider an unmanageable number of factors.

Arranged By: Prof. Syed hussnain shah

 Deduction and Induction
• Deduction: is the process by which we arrive
at a reasoned conclusion by logical
generalization of a known fact.
– OR The process of drawing from logical analysis an
inference that purports to be conclusive is called
deduction
• Induction: on the other hand, is a process
where we observe certain phenomena and on
this basis arrive at conclusions.
Arranged By: Prof. Syed hussnain shah
 THE HYPOTHETICO-DEDUCTIVE
METHOD
• 1. Observation
• 2. Preliminary information gathering
• 3. Theory formulation
– integrate all the information to conceptualized and
test.
• 4. Hypothesizing
• 5. Further scientific data collection
• 6. Data analysis
• 7. Deduction

Arranged By: Prof. Syed hussnain shah