EDB 9080: Quant Methods 1

Group Research Paper Guidelines

Satish Nargundkar

1. In the report, begin with an introduction – typically something that motivates the study – one paragraph each on answering the following: why is this topic area of any importance, what in general have people studied, what are some gaps in the literature, and what is your research question for your study.

2. Write a literature review chapter. Here, you go into the literature in a bit more depth. For this term paper, cite at least 15 research papers, with some details as to what they did. This should lead you to your specific hypotheses. You can state the alternate hypotheses (what relationships you expect to see among the different constructs).

3. Methodology: This is the chapter where you talk about data and analysis.

What data would you collect – what is the dependent variable, if any; what are the independent variables; what are moderating variables, if any; what are some control variables. How would you collect the data? How much data would you collect (sample size)? How would you ensure that the data are valid?

What analyses would you perform? At a minimum, you would do univariate analysis to understand each variable, and then depending on your hypotheses, you would talk about what analysis would be performed to test those hypotheses.

4. What contribution do you expect the research to make to either theory or practice or both?