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Mba724 s4 2 writing up the final report
- 3. The literature review is probably the hardest section to write. You’ve spent quite some time on it
and have accumulated some good materials. However, there’s still plenty of room for improvement
in all groups.
First of all, be selective about what you review. As we’ve learned in this class, commercial materials
are usually not considered research because of their self‐serving purposes. Someone’s opinion (e.g.,
Dr. Chung said Giant Eagle is the largest grocery store in the world!) is also not research, unless it’s
substantiated with good evidence. As a researcher, your job is to build new scientific evidence
based on previous scientific research. Follow Joe Best’s advice. Always make sure the research you
cite is of good quality and free of obvious self‐serving biases. How do you do that? You need to
examine their methodology carefully and make sure it meets the same rigor that you are expected
to produce in this class.
You all know by now that the lit review is not just a list of facts. Then what is it? This may sound
counterintuitive – with the lit review you’re summarizing other people’s work, but in fact the lit
review is ALL about you. Why? Because this is your project, your paper, your research. You’re
reviewing prior lit for a very selfish goal: You want to build a case for your own agenda! So don’t let
it become a laundry list of other people’s accomplishment. Make it your story!
Specifically, you need to use prior work to explain why your research question is important. You
also need to synthesize prior work in a way that convince people that your hypotheses make sense.
For example, if I hypothesize that women work harder than men, I have to summarize prior
literature and research findings in a way that convince the reader that I will very likely find a
correlation between gender and number of work hours. Remember, you’re graded on the logical
integrity of your arguments, and the quality of the evidence you use to support your arguments.
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- 5. The results section is where you tell people what you found with the data you collected.
This section usually begins with descriptive statistics about key variables. Descriptive statistics are
things like frequency counts, mean, standard deviation, range, sample size, etc. For example, if I did
a study to find out if women work harder than men, I should document the number of men vs.
women included in the study, and the mean, standard deviation, and range of number of work
hours for each gender.
Descriptive statistics, however, are useless when it comes to testing hypotheses. You need
inferential statistics for that. Inferential statistics are things like correlation, regression, t test, and
ANOVA. These tests help you determine the statistical significance level of your hypothesis which
you can use to support or reject a hypothesis.
You might have a lot of questions about what statistics to include, and what tables/figures you
need. Please use the lecture slides on statistics as your first reference. You might be surprised by
how much we have covered and you have forgotten! Chapter 12 of your textbook is also a good
resource. Finally, I’ve provided a few online resources for your reference. Use these tools and ask
questions!
This section is for summarizing and presenting the results. There’s no need to discuss them in this
section. Save that for the discussion section. Again, you’re not selling a product. Present whatever
you’ve found in simple, straightforward language.
As always, use clear logic and scientific evidence as the basis of your argument. Emotional
appeal, drama, and sales tactics should be reserved for your colleagues in the sales and
marketing department. Those skills are not part of the core toolkit for writing a research report!
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