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Lecture 11

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11 views10 pages

Lecture 11

Uploaded by

Alper Kara
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lecture 11

Research Plan
WHY PLAN THE DISSERTATION?

• Helps you to organise and order your thoughts:


• The more your sort out your ideas now, the more effectively
you will use your time later

• Helps you to narrow down and refine your topic


• Parts of the plan can be the base for parts of the final draft
of your dissertation
PURPOSE OF THE PLAN

• To inform your supervisor of what you intend to do.


• What questions are you asking.
• How will you answer them.
• What methodology have you chosen and why.
• Time frame (be realistic).
DISSERTATION PLAN AS A GUIDE
• Title
• Background to the research (context)
• Research Questions and Objectives
• Methodology: This section should include:
• conceptual framework - which concepts you intend to investigate through
your data collection. You should look at other examples of conceptual
frameworks from the literature to see what a conceptual framework
looks like.
• research design – e.g. survey, case study design, experimental design. You
should justify why the approach you select is appropriate to answer the
research questions and objectives.
• expected data collection – where are you intending to collect your
(primary) data (e.g. company annual reports; employees of a single
company; managers of firms, customers of a particular product etc)
• Resources
• References
DISSERTATION TITLE
Research Title
• Must be interesting and definitive.
• e.g. The impact of IFRs on transparency.

• Title can also be in the form of a question (e.g. Does compliance with
IFRs have a positive impact on transparency?)
• Must be of interest to the accounting and finance community.
RESEARCH TOPIC

• Brainstorming topics
• interest
• ability / knowledge (existing & new)

• Investigate whether topic has theory / literature


• Can you gain access to data?
• Does the topic match your career goal? (dissertation as
calling card)
RESEARCH QUESTIONS

• Decide the particular questions that you want to answer


• e.g. Does capital structure affect company performance?
• Decide on one(s) that are clearly studied in the literature and explained by
theory
• Research questions should be influenced by the literature (and your
own views)
• 1-3 questions ONLY
• Think through possible courses of action to answer these questions
• Choose between these courses of action
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
• You need a theoretical framework
• Literature will inform this
• The literature will also give ideas on methodology

The literature review is the foundation of the whole study


COMMON REASONS FOR LOW MARKS
• Poor planning
• Not allowing enough time to write the plan and carry out the research
work to build a coherent dissertation
• Lack of critical review of literature
• to support your research questions
• To inform research method choice
• To inform the discussion of results

• Not (properly) engaging with the supervision process


SUMMARY OF STRUCTURE AND CONTENT
• Introduction and background
• Research objectives
• Research questions
• Literature review: Frameworks of analysis/preliminary
• Research methods
• Data analysis and findings
• References

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