Engineering
Engineering
Your second assignment in this course is to help a group of beginner researchers develop their
research project from an initial research topic and research questions, with particular attention to
plans for data collection. Your assignment should be 2,000 words ±10%. The word count excludes
the list of references at the end of the document. In-text citations are included in the word count.
The main body of the text should be in 12pt Arial or Times New Roman with 1.5 or double line
spacing. Pages should be numbered.
You will need to cite and reference the work and ideas of others, and may need to quote directly – it
is your responsibility to do this correctly and accurately, in the Harvard style.
The scenario
Three keen industry practitioners want to understand more about work and employment in
particular settings, and although they’ve studied the topic well, they’ve never actually ‘done’
empirical research before. These novice researchers have heard that you’ve recently been studying
research methods, and so have come to you for advice on appropriate tools and techniques for
collecting data, alongside some suggestions on how that data might be analysed.
Following some initial discussions and reading, together you produce the following broad research
topic:
How do disabled accounting professionals perceive their work and how are disabled accounting
professionals perceived within the accounting profession?
After further reviewing the literature, you’ve helped to develop this broad topic into two specific
research questions:
What are the experiences of disabled accounting professionals working in Scotland?
What are the attitudes towards disabled accounting professionals at accounting firms in Scotland?
You suggest that that the first question would lend itself to the collection and analysis of qualitative
data, while the second would lend itself to the collection and analysis of quantitative data. The
researchers are keen to do both at the same time, which you characterise as a convergent parallel
design.
Your task is to provide informed guidance on suitable approaches to collecting (and to a lesser
extent analysing) both forms of data, with clear justifications drawn from a range of empirical and
non-empirical resources. This guidance is in the form of a report, which should be well-referenced.
The following prompts are designed to help get you writing:
Data collection tools and techniques
What do you think would be an appropriate approach to collecting useful qualitative data on this
topic? Why? Can you give examples of this approach from relevant good quality peer-reviewed
published empirical research?
What do you think would be an appropriate approach to collecting useful quantitative data on this
topic? Why? Can you give examples of this approach from relevant good quality peer-reviewed
published empirical research?
Sampling
Who/where should the researchers collect qualitative data from? Why? Where primary data is being
collected, do you have any ideas for where they might find their participants and how they could
approach them? Where secondary data is being collected, where could they find this?
Who/where should researchers collect quantitative data from? Why? Where primary data is being
collected, do you have any ideas for where they might find their participants and how they could
approach them? Where secondary data is being collected, where could they find this?
Questions, scales, research instruments
The researchers are not sure how to (for example) write questions or find scales for collecting
qualitative and quantitative data. Where primary data is being collected, what advice would you give
the researchers on questions or scales? Can you give examples of both from relevant good quality
peer-reviewed published empirical research? Where secondary data is being collected, what are the
specifics of the research instruments used to collect the data?
Ethical issues
What are the key ethical principles of research, and what sort of ethical issues might the researchers
encounter in this particular study, within this particular profession? Are there different issues
relating to each question and form of data collected?
Data analysis
Briefly, what would be a suitable method for analysing the qualitative data and why do you think this
is appropriate here? Can you find any examples of this in published empirical and non-empirical
research?
Briefly, what would be a suitable method for analysing the quantitative data and why do you think
this is appropriate here? Can you find any examples of this in published empirical and non-empirical
research?
General notes:
For the purposes of this assignment, we are using the UK definition of disability under the Equality
Act 2010:
You’re disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a
‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities.
Please note that this assignment is primarily an assessment of your ability to study, select, and write
about data collection tools and related considerations when thinking about a specific research topic.
When planning a research project it is also very important to consider and study the tools and
techniques for analysing data, but we do not expect a lengthy discussion of the specifics of data
analysis in this assignment.
Part of this task is to clearly choose specific data collection tools and techniques and to justify these
choices as suitable for this research topic, with reference to relevant and suitable academic sources.
Please do not ask your lecturers and tutors whether or not you have made appropriate choices while
writing the assignment, as your ability to make and justify these decisions is part of what you are
being assessed on.
If you choose to include any tables or figures then these do not count towards your overall word
count.
