Given the prevalence of information about business organizations and issues in the media and the wealth of data available, students need to be aware that despite with the obvious strengths of such data, there are also limitations. They should pay particular attention to developing the necessary research skills that will allow them to work with relevant sources in a manner that ensures meaningful insights.
Below you can find a checklist of important things that you should bear in mind when undertaking primary and secondary source research in business management, whether for an extended essay, the internal assessment written commentary (SL) or research project (HL), the extended response questions or in-class assignments.
- Keep careful records of all the work you do so that you can return to it later. This is especially important in ensuring that you will be able to correctly cite sources and references.
- Seek your teacher’s advice earlier rather than later. Discussing the stages of your research with them will help to ensure that you remain on task and focused on the requirements and criteria.
- Design a focused research question that meets the requirements of the task and provides sufficient scope. In business management, appropriate research questions are most often forward-looking and targeted at an issue still relevant for the business organization or situation examined rather than descriptive of something already finished.
- Build a context for your research with basic reading about and “around” your topic. In business management, it is also important to attempt to identify early on the tools, techniques and theories that you wish to use and your reasons for using them.
- Be discriminating in your choice of websites; look for trustworthy organizations and academic sources. Wikipedia may be one starting point for your research but should be consulted primarily for an overview of the topic that needs to be validated against other sources. The reference lists of Wikipedia articles are often helpful for locating further reading.
- Instead of copying down or summarizing what you are reading, try to break down your research question into smaller questions and write down preliminary answers to these as you read. As your research and thinking progresses, start fitting the information together in the form of reasoned arguments.
- Write down potentially useful quotes, with full references.
- Even if you paraphrase works in your notes, ensure that these are also referenced correctly.
- Support any argument you make with evidence. Remember to also pay particular attention to evidence that might refute your emerging arguments!
- In business management, attempt to choose interviewees that are the most relevant stakeholders for your research question. Often, but not always, these are company managers.
- Plan your interview questions beforehand, relating these closely to your research question. Include both closed and open-ended questions, with weight on the latter. Avoid biased questions. Be flexible and, as appropriate, ask additional or slightly adjusted questions as the interview unfolds, and discuss emerging thoughts with your interviewee.
- Allow your interviewee to speak, encourage them to expand on interesting points, and show—also through non-verbal communication—that you are interested in their answers.
- If possible, record your interview, as it is difficult to take good notes while interviewing. Remember to ask permission before doing so.
- After the interview, type up the recording. Consider which new arguments emerge from the interview and what kind of evidence the interview provides for your existing arguments.
- You may include quotes from the interview in your assignment. While a full transcript of the interview is most often not needed in your appendix, keep a copy of this for future reference or if authenticity needs to be checked.
- Keep your questionnaire as short and easy to answer as possible. Include both closed and open-ended questions, with weight on the former.
- Make sure that the questions are unbiased and unambiguous, avoiding jargon and technical language, and that they address your research question. If you are uncertain about this, you may wish to pilot your questionnaire with a few respondents.
- Consult with your teacher on how many, and what kind of, respondents you should target your questionnaire to. This helps to ensure the relevance of the responses.
- To increase the response rate, make it easy for your respondents to complete and return the questionnaire.
- After you have received the responses, decide how you are going to analyse them. Both qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis may be possible. Consider which new arguments emerge from the responses and what kind of evidence they provide for your existing arguments.
- It is likely you will want to include data or qualitative responses from the questionnaire in your assignment. It is often relevant to include an uncompleted questionnaire as an appendix to your study.
Analysing and presenting results
- How you analyse and present your research results depends very much on the type of assignment you are working on. If it is an assessment task, make sure to read carefully the assessment criteria for the task before you start to write.
- For all types of assignments, it is important that you keep your research question in mind at all times when you are analysing and presenting your results. Also, ensure that the business tools, techniques and theories you identified are well integrated with the rest of your research results.
- Explain your arguments and your evidence for them clearly.
- Evaluate your results and what they mean.
- You must acknowledge all of your sources according to a standard style of referencing. For assessment tasks, please check what the minimum requirements are for submission to the IB. You will find this information in the “Diploma Programme” section of the Business management guide.