dissertation研究寫作的主要策略three main research strategies
In his book on research Robson (1993) identifies three main research strategies – experiment, survey and case study. 

(1)Experiment

Experiments differ from the other approaches in two ways:

they are primarily designed to determine cause and effect relationships
in an experiment we try to control the circumstances and variables surrounding our area of interest and the data we want to collect

In the experimental approach there is tight control of events by working within a framework in which we:

define theoretical hypothesis
select samples from a known population
allocate samples to different conditions
introduce ‘planned change’ in one or more of the variables
measure on a small number of variables
control other variables

An example could be the impact of an advertising campaign and the perception of students about what it is saying by asking one group of students to recall the advertisements without prompts and showing examples to another.

(2)Surveys

Surveys are the most popular approach used for gathering data in organisational research as a major source of data is ‘people’.  The use of questionnaires helps us to gather a large amount of data in a standardised format from many people in an economical way, and enables us to make comparisons across groups and individuals.

This method requires a sample of respondents to reply to a number of fixed questions under comparable conditions.  The sample is representative of a defined population so that generalisations can be made from results.

The control you have over the research process using this approach comes from the time spent designing and piloting the questionnaire to ensure that you are gathering the data you want.

The different approaches to administering questionnaires will be discussed in more detail later.

(3)Case study

This is an approach to explore both the situation and existing theory to determine whether the accepted connections are still relevant.  This can be done by gathering details about a single case, or a number of cases to help answer the question ‘why’ as well as ‘what and how’. (Robson, 1993)  Methods of data collection can include interviews, observation, questionnaires and documentary analysis.

In addition to these we can consider ethnography as a fourth approach to research.

(4)Ethnographics

Ethnographic research consists of observation and aims to ‘learn’ about the subjects of that observation.  The historical background of this approach is from social anthropology which set out to study firsthand the culture of societies which had not been influenced by outside factors e.g. in Africa and the Pacific.  The fieldwork method of study was developed by these anthropologists to observe individuals in their natural habitat and required that they learnt their language and spent sufficient time with them to overcome the effects of their being ‘outsiders’. #p#分頁標題#e#

If you intend doing research inside a company often you find that a discussion of this approach is relevant as in addition to simply identifying what is going on, you need to try and understand events and be able to explain why they occur.  Parts of the Hawthorne studies by Elton Mayo are examples of this ethnographic approach.

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