Applied Organizational Research Methods
Curriculum guideline
The course will involve a number of instructional methods, such as the following:
1. Lecture
2. Online videos
3. Group discussion
4. Lab
The topics covered may include:
1. Types of organizational research and research methods in organizational psychology
2. Organizational surveys - an overview
3. Project stages; planning, design, implementation, analysis, reporting, evaluation
4. Consulting and engaging stakeholders
5. The research context: auditing, quality control, organizational change, leading and lagging indicators, reporting and accountability, drivers, organizational capacity
6. Identifying and communicating objectives; agreeing on survey content
7. Ethical issues in the design, administration and use of surveys
8. Methodological issues: validity, types of error, maturation, history and instrument decay
9. Design issues: using existing measures, longitudinal designs, benchmarking, cross organizational surveys, cross cultural surveys
10. Creating and evaluating surveys: writing items, item types, item responses, item order, response bias, survey length
11. Sample size and sample methods, recruiting respondents
12. Methods for delivering surveys: miced-mode surveys, online surveys and survey interviews
13. Administering surveys: monitoring and maximizing response rates
14. Evaluating data and preparing data for analysis, recoding data and composite measures, outliers
15. Using XLSTAT to do basic univariate and bivariate data analysis and graphing: location, spread, correlation, and regression
16. Scaling: raw data, standard scores, ranks, transformations
17. Using XLSTAT to do basic data analysis and graphing: multiple regression, PCA, factor analysis, clustering, and MDS
18. Interpretation and presentation of data analytic results
19. Presenting and reporting the findings for organizational action
20. Evaluating the research project and the organizational response
At the conclusion of the course students will be able to:
- Critically evaluate commonly used survey methods in applied organizational psychology.
- Consult with organizational stakeholders about the organizational objectives and outcomes of oganizational surveys.
- Independently design, develop and implement an applied organizational survey project.
- Understand and make effective use of appropriate online resources for survey delivery.
- Use widely available software tools to analyze and present the results of organizational surveys.
Evaluation will be carried out in accordance with Douglas College policy. Evaluation will be based on course objectives and will include some of the following: quizzes, multiple choice exams, essay type exams, term paper or research project, computer based assignments, etc. The instructor will provide the students with a course outline listing the criteria for course evaluation.
An example of one evaluation scheme:
1 final exam 25%
1 term project 25%
5 computer assignments 50%
Textbooks and Materials to be Purchased by Students
Possible texts could include:
1) Fowler, F.J. (2008). Survey research methods (Applied social research methods series). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. And
2) Church, A. H., Waclawski, J., & Kraut A.I. (2001) Designing and using organizational surveys: A seven-step process. New York, NY: Jossey-Bass. Or
3) Edwards, J.E., Thomas, M.D., Rosenfeld, P. Booth-Kewley, S. (1996). How to conduct organizational surveys: A step-by-step guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.