IRE2002Y 2006-2006
Radhakrishnan
Rationale for Your Research Project (15%)
This assignment encourages you to develop your skills in inquiry. That is, it gives you an
opportunity to learn and demonstrate your skills in describing a phenomenon of
interest, defining concepts to study that phenomenon, and in making arguments for and
against expecting the phenomenon to occur. Follow the steps provided and answer the
questions below as best as you can in the assignment to demonstrate these skills.
Unlike other courses’ written assignments, this assignment does not have any page limit
nor stylistic requirements. Instead, it requires you to devote your attention to developing
content. I will assess you on how well you can convey your descriptive, definitional and
argumentative skills via writing
Steps to follow
I. To demonstrate good writing, you will need to read good writing. The first step for you
to take before you attempt completing this assignment is to gather good articles. This
class provides you with a session and assignment on library research skills that will
enable you to gather good research articles.
II. Once you have gathered good research articles, the second step is to select parts that
you will write about in your paper. The first thing you will have to select is your
hypothesis. Again, this class provides you with an assignment to help you generate a
good hypothesis, namely one that is not too broad or not too narrow.
III. After selecting the hypothesis, you will then have to describe the studies that support
and do not support that hypothesis. When describing a study, you will have to not only
report the relevant result of the study as it pertains to your chosen hypothesis, but also the
relevant context in the finding was reported. Say for instance, your hypothesis is that
happy people are more productive than are unhappy people. So you describe an empirical
study (let’s call it Study 1) that supports this hypothesis. However, the assignment also
requires that you find at least one empirical study that does not support your hypothesis.
So you describe another study (say Study 2) that demonstrates that happy people were
less productive than unhappy people. Now to make sense, you will have to write about
the similarities and differences between the studies to help me understand why these two
studies find such different results. Therefore, to demonstrate good writing skills you will
have to learn how to describe relevant and specific details about a study.
IV. Once you start describing the evidence you will realize that you need to define the
terms used in the research. Thus it becomes important to gather research articles that help
you in defining the concepts. These articles may not specifically describe evidence that
supports or does not support your hypothesis, but they are useful nonetheless. So do not
hesitate to do read and research further so that you are better able to explain what the
terms mean.
IV. After you have described the evidence and defined the terms the next writing task for
you to do is explain the evidence for and against the hypothesis. Going back to the
example of the hypothesis that happy people are more productive, explaining in this case
involves writing why happy people are more productive. Is it because happy people are
more motivated and this increased motivation makes them more productive? Or is it
because happy people get more help from others which makes them more productive?
These are two possible explanations for why happy people are more productive. Your
writing task is to write about these explanations and use the research articles you read as
support for these explanations. After explaining why happy people are more productive,
you also have to explain why there is at least one empirical study suggesting that they are
not more productive.
V. Remember that after you have completed the writing tasks required of the first writing
assignment, go back and read what you wrote. Ensure you have organized the material to
flow logically from one part to another.
Engaging in these three writing tasks of description, definition, and argumentation should
help you think critically about a particular hypothesis. This is exactly what the
assignment is promotes and what has been shown to improve writing quality (Hillocks,
1984). Once you have submitted the assignment, you will get feedback on the quality of
your writing in terms of your skill in description, definition and argumentation. You will
also get feedback on the quality of the research material you read/described to generate
the writing content you did.
Questions to Answer
1. What is the practical and theoretical significance of the phenomenon chosen for
study? Why is the chosen phenomenon important for theory and practice in IR/HR?
Why does it interest you? Cite relevant popular and academic sources while justifying
your choice.
2. Describe the phenomenon: what is the two-variable hypothesis? Focus your proposal
on the relationship between two key variables. You will have an opportunity to
describe additional control variables in your “Method” section of your final report
and discuss the impact of other (unmeasured) variables on your chosen phenomenon
in the “Discussion” section of your final report. However, for the proposal you should
narrow down to two key variables.
3. Discuss how the chosen phenomenon is similar to AND different from another,
closely- related, phenomenon. That is, using academic sources define each variable in
your hypothesis outlining how each is similar to AND different from a variable that it
is commonly mistaken for.
4. Describe the empirical research (cite at least 2 empirical studies found in academic
sources) supporting the hypothesis. When & where is the phenomenon exhibited?
Give only relevant and sufficient details of the research.
5. Why & how does the empirical research support the hypothesis? What reasons did
you find in your readings of previous research for why the hypothesis is supported in
this research? You can also give reasons not considered by the current literature for
why the hypothesis is supported after adequately reviewing existing literature.
6. Describe the empirical research (cite at least one empirical found in academic sources
study) supporting the counter hypothesis. When and where is the phenomenon not
exhibited? Give only relevant and sufficient details of the research.
7. Why & how does the empirical research support the counter-hypothesis? What
reasons did you find in your reading of previous research for why the hypothesis is
not supported. You can also give reasons not considered by the current literature for
why the hypothesis is supported after adequately reviewing existing literature
8. Based on your answers to 6 & 7 above, why might the hypothesis you propose not be
supported?
Additional Instructions
1. Use only a staple to fasten your slides (no heavy binder clips, cerlox etc. due to weight
considerations)
2. Write your name(s), student ids and on your submission
3. Double-spaced lines, character size is at least 12 point font, 1” margins on all sides
4. Provide adequate information about the source (i.e., title of journal, issue, volume,
page number, year, author, and title of article) as footnotes, endnotes, reference section,
or in the body of the text so source quality can be judged.