Ukcbc unit 9 research assignment - onlineassignmenthelp.com.au

UKCBC Unit 9 Research Skills

LO3 Be able to present a research proposal Research topic: Effect of the social media on the individuals and families Purpose: The research should explore the effects of the social media on the individuals and families. The research should also explore the advantages and disadvantages of the social media.

Background: The social media are being used heavily these days. Along with several benefits, the usage of social media has several disadvantages.

Scope: The usage of the social media by a group of individuals will be observed by the research team. The activity of the usage of social media will be observed thrice a week, each for two hours. The users are then interviewed regarding the process of usage of the social media. The effects on their families are also observed closely (Kumar, 2005).

Research method: 1. A literature review is conducted on usage of the social media and their effects on the

individuals and families.

2. The group of individuals are closely observed thrice a week, each for 2 hours. The users are then interviewed about the usage of social media after each session. The family members are also interviewed to a certain extent.

3. The users are then interviewed on the basis of the provided set of questions. These interviews can be conducted in a less formal way to get honest opinion of the users regarding various effects of the sessions.

The set of questions is provided below.

1. What was the aim of the session?

2. Which social media were you using?

3. Did you achieve what you wanted?

4. What do you think about the result of the session?

5. What do you think about the effect of the sessions?

6. What do you think about the effect of the sessions on your family members?

7. All the findings of each session are documented along with the observations.

8. A final report is created.

3.2 Role of ethics in research Ethics is very important in research as in any of the business processes. In the absence of ethical behaviour among the people included in the research processes, the data collected and analysed are not valid and reliable. Moreover the absence of ethical behaviour in the research methods causes the quality of the research results to be compromised (Vanderpool, 1996).

Possible ethical issues Authorship – The ethical issue related to the authorship of the work includes actions by people submitting someone else’s work as their own.

Peer review – During the process of peer review in the organisation, unethical people deliberately evaluate their peers to be performing bad in order to decrease their value in the workplace.

Plagiarism – The absence of ethics in the research method allows people to put ideas and arguments from external sources as their own in the reports.

Conflicts of interest and research misconducts are some other ethical issues that may arise during the research (Simons, 2000).

Resolution of ethical issues in research There are several ways to resolve the ethical issues that arise during the research. These ethical issues are resolved by the usage of several options described below.

The implementation of ethical guidelines in the organisations causes the employees to follow those guidelines, which ensures ethical behaviour from the participants in the research method (Sales, 2000).

The ethics committee established in the organisation carrying out the research reviews and observes the method closely. This committee ensures the compliance of the participants to the ethical guidelines.

The implementation of appraisal systems in adhering to the ethical guidelines causes the participants to behave ethically (Berenbeim, 1987).

LO4 Be able to contribute to a research seminar 4.1 Research seminar The research proposal provided earlier suggests the research method of questionnaire to collect information about the effect of the usage of social media on individuals and families.

Some other ideas to research about the usage of social media are usage of media listeners with proper authorisations that can help the researchers to observe the usage and activity of the group of users of the social media. This can also help the researchers to collect data and information about the content of the social media sessions. The research about the usage of the social media can be automated by affiliations with the social media providers and managers. This allows the researchers to complete the research in a proper way (Jabine, 1984).

There are several good practices that can be followed during the research method to determine the effect of the social media usage on individuals and families. The interview questions to the users of the social media should be relevant to the research topic. The questions should not cross the personal space of the users. The research method and the participants must adhere to the ethical guidelines of the organisation. The set of questions should be properly arranged and organised to yield maximum result (Aguinis, 2002).

The research proposal can contain another method of opinion poll organised online or via telephone. These methods also yield maximum accuracy in determining the effect of the usage of social media on the individuals and the families. The interviews of the users of social media can be more formal to give them an experience and sense of being involved in the process.

4.2 Constructive feedback There are several alternatives to the methodology proposed in the above research proposal. The proposal of obtaining affiliations with the social media providers and managers provide the researchers with a very clear framework to work in. The level of detail of the data and information gathered in this method are very high as it allows the researchers to have direct access to the social media usage sessions of the users. The information technology factor of this method is not that high (Jabine, 1984).

Another alternative provided as the proposal was to use online opinion poll as the method of gathering data and information about the effect of the usage of social media on the individuals and families. This method also has a clear framework having a comparatively low level of detail.

This method includes a high usage of the information technology to gather data regarding the usage of the social media (Kumar, 2005).

Conclusion There are several methods and methodologies to carry out a research, which depends on the type of the research, type of the required data, type of the issue being solved, size of the required data and the scope of the research. The collection of qualitative or quantitative data is then analysed and processed to understand several facts about the environment being researched. This allows the organisation to gain in-depth knowledge about the environment by using the primary sources of the data. The secondary sources of the data are the collections of data by several other organisations. The research proposal is a very important document that provides the researchers and the higher authorities of the organisation with the details such as the issue being researched about, the method used to collect the data and the methods used to process the collected data.

References Aguinis, H., & Henle, C. A. 2002. Ethics in research. Handbook of research methods in industrial and organizational psychology, 34-56.

Berenbeim, R. 1987. Corporate Ethics: A Research Report from the Conference Board. The Board.

Cooper, D. R., & Schindler, P. S. 2003. Business research methods.

Harris, R. 1997. Evaluating Internet research sources. Virtual Salt, 17.Order Now