Trident DOC670 Full Course Latest 2020 January

DOC670 Applied Statistics for Research

Module 1 Case

ASSESSMENT OF DATA SOURCES FOR THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

Assignment Overview

You will be working from the statement of intent about your project and the introduction that you originally prepared in DOC650 along with the literature review that you prepared in DOC660. By now, you should have a pretty good idea of the structure of your project, what you hope to accomplish with it, who you will be working with on it, and what you will actually be doing. The purpose of this methodology statement is to describe systematically what you will be doing in your research and how you will be doing it.

In the Case for this module, you will be reviewing numerous readings relating to different kinds of studies and how they are structured, the relationship between research questions and study design, and the constraints on research posed by different kinds of designs. You will then be asked to review your study and your research questions in light of this material, and to select and describe an appropriate study design that you believe will help you answer the research questions you have posed. This will constitute the first section of your project methodology.

As the course progresses, you will be making a series of decisions in which you will increasingly specify the structure of your project. These decisions build on each other in critical ways. However, you are not locked into previous decisions if you subsequently decide you need to change direction. In each subsequent module, as you build up your methodology, you will have an opportunity to go back and revise and/or extend the sections completed in previous modules. Case grades given for the first four modules will be advisory rather than final. Your ultimate grade will be based on the completed methodology at the end of the course.

Case Assignment

Prepare a 5- to 7-page paper in accordance with the Assignment Expectations below, describing the basic research design for your project, in accordance with the following outline:

Restate your research question(s), simply and directly.

Describe your basic assumptions about the project, the research site, and the participants, as well as the role that you hope to play.

Describe the goal(s) you hope your project will achieve.

Describe the general methodology you chose for your study, in terms of the various categories of research described in the module readings:

Relative mix of quantitative and qualitative data

Exploratory vs. descriptive

Other categories

Explain why this method is the best for your purposes.

Identify your research partner(s) and the role they will play in the project.

List any specific deliverables that you will provide to your research partner(s) at the end of the project.

 

DOC670 Applied Statistics for Research

Module 1 SLP

ASSESSMENT OF DATA SOURCES FOR THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

In this SLP you will begin the process of collecting and analyzing background information on the firm for your dissertation. You received this firm’s commitment via the Letter of Intent in DOC650. In the SLPs, you will analyze secondary data on your chosen firm. (In the Cases, you will design how you will conduct your primary research at the firm.) Secondary data are records that are publicly available while primary data for most of you will involve interviews and observations at the firm.

In the SLPs, you will take a deep dive into the context of the firm for your dissertation. For some of you this may be a for-profit corporation that has stockholders and publishes an Annual Report with articles about the firm in Forbes, Fortune, CNNMoney, and other sources. For others, this may be a non-profit or volunteer organization. Some may have selected a small business that is privately owned, or you may have selected a government agency for your dissertation. You could be researching an educational institution at any level. Bear in mind that before you can start collecting primary data from the firm, you will need to submit a proposal on your research to Trident’s Institutional Review Board, one of whose rules is that research subjects must be at least 18 years of age.

In this SLP, you will describe the organization where you will conduct your dissertation research, describing the organization in detail and why it is relevant for your research question. Here in SLP 1, you will build a quantitative case to supplement your qualitative rationale for selecting this firm.

Below is a list of data sources that may be helpful in finding background information for your firm. You may have other sources, and you can certainly use them as long as you provide the source for the information you use in justifying the context for your dissertation research.

Data Sources

Pew http://www.pewresearch.org/download-datasets/

http://money.cnn.com/quote/financials/financials.html?symb=UA

https://www.usa.gov/statistics

https://www.census.gov/econ/isp/

https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.TOTL.ZS

https://data.oecd.org/industry/industrial-production.htm

https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/NACJD/index.html

https://www.kaggle.com/datasets

https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/susb.html

https://www.census.gov/econ/survey.html

http://www.annualreports.com/

https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-trends/ (available via the Trident Online Library)

https://www.financewalk.com/industry-analysis/

Nonprofits

http://foundationcenter.org/find-funding/990-finder

In the remaining SLPs, you will use Excel. In Figure 1 below you see how you can get the latest version of Excel via the Trident website using Microsoft 365. EXCEL is free to you as a TUI Student. Log on to mytlc.trident.edu and then go to your email.

Click the Office 365 button at the top.

Click Install Office Apps.

Follow the directions to get Office 365 on your computer.

Figure 1

 

DOC670 Applied Statistics for Research

Module 2 Case

DESIGNING THE STUDY AND ASSESSMENT OF THE RESEARCH CONTEXT

Assignment Overview

In this Case, you will be reading materials relating to definition of constructs, operational definition, and measurement. Then, you will be asked to create a list of such constructs and measures for your own study, taking into consideration the issues you have been reviewing and the decisions that you previously made regarding research designs. You will also be asked to identify control and/or environmental factors that you won’t be able to include directly in your study, but which might affect your results.

As the course progresses, you will be making a series of decisions in which you will increasingly specify the structure of your project. These decisions build on each other in critical ways. However, you are not locked into previous decisions if you subsequently decide you need to change direction. You have an opportunity to go back and revise and/or extend the previous section completed in the previous module. If you do revise the earlier section, please include it and indicate what changes you have made to it. Case grades given for the first four modules will be advisory rather than final. Your ultimate grade will be based on the completed methodology at the end of the course.

Case Assignment

Prepare a 5- to 7-page paper in accordance with the following Assignment Expectations, describing the measurement issues for your project in accordance with the following outline:

List of main concepts in your study; why you believe that each of them is important.

Any explicit or implicit model that you may believe connects these concepts and that you propose to explore, if any. See above on creating and illustrating models.

Initial operational definitions of your study concepts, arranged in the form of this grid (please replace our illustration with your information):

Concepts	Constructs	Variables/ Indicators	Measures	Source	Study or control	Level of analysis
Love	Love of children	Time spent with child	Minutes of direct contact per week	Observation	Study	Individual
		Quality of interaction	Assessments immediately after interaction; qualitative ordinal scale 1-5 low-high	Questionnaire to participants	Study	Individual
Gender	Self-expressed gender	Gender category	Self-identification	Participant query	Control	Individual
Profitability	ROI	ROI	Calculated rate	Organizational records	Study	Organizational

 

List any concerns you may have about measurement or the general availability of the data you need.

 

DOC670 Applied Statistics for Research

Module 2SLP

DESIGNING THE STUDY AND ASSESSMENT OF THE RESEARCH CONTEXT

Now that you have described the context for your research and provided a description of the secondary data available for that firm, you will now begin to mine that data. As an example, the United Way of Orange County was selected to demonstrate some use of Excel for your background analysis. For nonprofits, there is a database listed in the secondary sources list that has the financial report forms 990 listed for the nonprofits. This data is used in a running analysis for the United Way of Orange County.

If you need an Excel refresher, here are some resources to help you:

Brown, N., Lave, B., Romey, J., Schatz, M., &Shingledecker, D. (2018) Beginning Excel. OpenOregon, Creative Commons License. Retrieved from https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/beginningexcel/.

Harvey, G. (2016). Excel 2016 all-in-one for dummies [Books24x7 version]. John Wiley & Sons. Available in the Trident Online Library: Follow these instructions for Finding Skillsoft Books. Enter 112925 in the search bar.

Harvey, G. (2016). Chapter 10: Charming charts and gorgeous graphics. In Excel 2016 for dummies [Books24x7 version].John Wiley & Sons. Available in the Trident Online Library: Follow these instructions for Finding Skillsoft Books. Enter 117498 in the search bar.

In Figure 3 below is the Excel Chart done for the United Way of Orange County showing how the spreadsheet was set up. (Click on the image below to open the file.)

Figure 3

Using this as a model and using the secondary data you found on your firm, produce a background analysis on the firm that shows some pertinent information in the spreadsheet along with charts to show the impact this firm is having in the area or the competitive space in which it is located. This is your unique perspective on the firm you have selected for the dissertation, and you will put this in the appendix ultimately as background on your firm. This, along with the Introduction you developed in SLP 1, will be the second part of the Background Analysis for your firm that will go in the Appendix of the dissertation. Integrate the spreadsheet and graphical analysis into your Module 2 SLP.

 

DOC670 Applied Statistics for Research

Module 3 Case

OBTAINING THE DATA FOR THE RESEARCH CONTEXT

Assignment Overview

In this Case Assignment, you will be reading several articles and sources about sampling, about participant recruitment and interaction, and about managing the relationship between research participants and researchers. You will then be asked to think about how these issues apply to your project and your research questions, and to develop an appropriate sampling plan for your study taking all these issues into consideration.

As the course progresses, you will be making a series of decisions in which you will increasingly specify the structure of your project. These decisions build on each other in critical ways. However, you are not locked into previous decisions if you subsequently decide you need to change direction. As before, you have an opportunity to go back and revise and/or extend the previous sections completed in previous modules. If you do revise earlier sections, please include them and indicate what changes you have made to them. Case grades given for the first four modules will be advisory rather than final. Your ultimate grade will be based on the completed methodology at the end of the course.

Case Assignment

Prepare a 5- to 7-page paper in accordance with the following Assignment Expectations, describing the sampling issues for your project, in accordance with the following outline:

Identify the organization within which you are going to be constructing your project, and the nature of the problem that you are investigating.

Identify the general kinds of respondents within the organization, and the kinds of information that you will need to collect from each group of people in order to complete your project.

Complete the following grid describing the respondents in your project and some things about them:

 

Interview(s)
Subject	Role	Topics	When	Purpose	IRB concerns?
Questionnaire(s)
To whom	Role(s)	Topics	Purpose	IRB concerns?

 

Identify any additional issues which you think might arise in terms of obtaining cooperation from your respondents or that might complicate getting the information that you need.

 

DOC670 Applied Statistics for Research

Module 3SLP

OBTAINING THE DATA FOR THE RESEARCH CONTEXT

Descriptive statistics are used to learn about the characteristics of a measure that is collected over time or may be a measure of an item from a survey administered to many people. Typically, descriptive statistics are the average score (mean), the maximum, the minimum in the scores along with the variation. Descriptive statistics is used to describe the measures rather than to make inference centered around the same item or conceptual construct being measured. Thus, descriptive statistics is not inferential statistics and does not use probability to infer behaviors of a population from which the measures were drawn.

Descriptive statistics fits the background analysis for your firm selected for your dissertation. Here you have financial and performance measures of the firm with respect to others in the same competitive space. In most cases descriptive measures can be used to generate trend lines to try and forecast based on past measures.

Here is a descriptive spreadsheet for the United Way of Orange County that shows the average and standard deviation for revenues and expenses from the 990 Report we looked at in SLP 2. Here in this spreadsheet Figure 4 (click the image to open the file) you see by clicking the various tabs on the lower part of the spreadsheet graphs that can be generated from this 990 data. Columns F and G have the average and standard deviation of the revenue and expense measures, but they are rather static. To use the years of revenue and expense measures, you can click the Forecast Sheet tab on your tool bar. This is how the graphs for Revenues, Expenses, and Net were produced where a technique called exponential smoothly is used that factors in the four years of data to produce the trend lines in the forecast.

Figure 4

Chapter 18 in:

Carlberg, C. (2016). Excel sales forecasting for dummies, 2nd edition. John Wiley & Sons. Available in the Trident Online Library: Follow these instructions for Finding Skillsoft Books. Enter 132620 in the search bar.

 

DOC670 Applied Statistics for Research

Module 4 Case

DESIGNING THE TRIANGULATION APPROACH TO ADDRESS THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

Assignment Overview

In this Case Assignment, you will be reading several articles and sources describing data collection protocols, arrangements, and relationships, and the kinds of issues that need to be considered in developing a set of procedures for your study. You will then be asked to construct a basic procedure list and plan for your study, taking these issues into consideration and allowing for the decisions you previously made regarding design, measures, and respondents.

As the course progresses, you will be making a series of decisions in which you will increasingly specify the structure of your project. These decisions build on each other in critical ways. However, you are not locked into previous decisions if you subsequently decide you need to change direction. As before, you have an opportunity to go back and revise and/or extend the previous sections completed in previous modules. If you do revise earlier sections, please include them and indicate what changes you have made to them. Case grades given for the first four modules will be advisory rather than final. Your ultimate grade will be based on the completed methodology at the end of the course.

Case Assignment

Prepare a 5- to 7-page paper in accordance with the following Assignment Expectations, describing the procedural issues for your project, in accordance with the following outline:

Briefly describe the organization within which you are working for your project, and your relationship to it.

Identify your organizational contact/liaison person(s), their role within the organization, how you got involved with them, the role that you expect them to play in regard to your project, and the arrangements you have for maintaining regular contact with them.

Complete a basic plan/timeline for your project, according to the following grid. Identify the principal activities you will need to carry out, the approximate dates when you might complete them (or, if you’re unable to identify specific dates, at least how long you expect each activity to take), and any necessary prerequisites for any of these activities (that is, things that have to happen before the activity can be undertaken). Be sure to include both specific activities related to research and administrative events such as project approval and IRB (https://www.trident.edu/students-and-alumni/institutional-review-board/) approval, as well as any needed organizational reviews.

Activities              Date start            Date complete  Prerequisites     Deliverables (if any)

1                                                                             

2                                                                             

3                                                                                                                                                             

Identify any potential sources of difficulty or complication for your project—that is, things that might make it difficult to complete. For each difficulty, identify any ideas you might have about how to overcome it, and any kind of specific help you might need to resolve these issues.

 

DOC670 Applied Statistics for Research

Module 4SLP

DESIGNING THE TRIANGULATION APPROACH TO ADDRESS THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

In DOC640 you discussed using Dedoose to do content analysis on qualitative data such as interviews. Content analysis can also be done on reports, statements, etc., from secondary data. Using the Strategic Plan from the United Way of Orange County’s website this Word Cloud was produced showing the most frequent words used in the Strategic Plan (the Strategic Plan was posted on the Web and then the text was copied to a Word document).

word cloud

Some of the words are clearly a part of their strategic mission and could be used to analyze transcripts from interviews later after you receive IRB approval.

Here is an example using Dedoose to analyze transcripts on priorities in Information Security by Information Security Specialists. Here the scenario for this research is described to show you results from the Dedoose analysis.

There were eleven propositions for insider threat for computer systems in an organization, and the propositions were evaluated in terms of importance and timing within an insider risk program. Seven volunteers participated in the research. The interviews were conducted over Zoom with the audio portion of the discussions recorded. Each of the participants was presented with the eleven propositions and discussed each in the interview. While the respondents are anonymous, Table 1 shows their demographics and role in setting up insider threat programs.

Table 1

Participant demographics

Table 1

The volunteers were recruited from the LinkedIn business networking platform. Over 70 individuals received invitations. Each invitation contained information about the purpose of the study, the fact that there would be a recorded interview, and that the research is carried out under applicable laws that govern research. The Informed Consent document was explained to prospective participants. Once they accepted the LinkedIn invitation, the respondents received a link to a Qualtrics survey containing the Informed Consent document. After they signed the Informed Consent form, it was possible to continue the research using the recorded interview. Of the 73 invitations sent, 25 of the individuals responded in the affirmative. Six withdrew their offer of participation, and others either did not sign the electronic copy of the Informed Consent or could not participate for some other reason. Seven volunteers were the final count of participants.

The central discussion of the interviews was dictated by the research question and the eleven propositions. Those eleven propositions were predetermined as the overarching themes of the interviews. Each proposition was presented to the volunteers one at a time, and then the subject stated their judgments. By signing the informed consent, the subject agreed to the Zoom interview and to have the audio of the interview recorded. Recording the discussions allowed detailed analysis of the conversations using the Dedoose qualitative analysis tool.

Transcription of audio data from the structured interviews occurred in three phases. In the first phase, the audio files underwent automatic transcription to text using a tool called Trint. The second transcription phase consisted of a transcriber listening to the MP3 audio files while reviewing the transcribed text and making corrections to inaccuracies. The third and final step was a second sweep of each text file to ensure that all the corrections had been made. The researcher and one assistant reviewed the transcribed text. The files underwent final validation by the researcher. After transcription of the audio and double-verification for accuracy, the text-based files were placed into Dedoose. Additionally, the demographic data regarding the participants was added as well.

After putting the files into Dedoose, an inductive method was applied to the transcribed data for the data coding. The image below shows a visual example of the coding process. Each transcript was first open coded as the transcriber listens to the audio of the interview. Subsequent passes allowed for linking related ideas in the axial coding part of the analysis. Figure 5 shows an example of the coding process.

Figure 5. Example of Open coding and Axial coding process in Dedoose.

The responses to the 11 propositions were coded according to two criteria, the first criterion is the importance of the proposed practice, and the second criterion is the timeline of implementing the practice when setting up a new insider threat program. Coding of the remainder of the text files from each of the interviews consists of a three-step process. The steps were open coding, axial, and lastly selective coding.

For this project, the 11 propositions provided a pre-existing framework of themes attached to each of the 11 propositions. One set deals with the importance of each proposition and another set deals with the timeliness of each proposition. These two frameworks were entered into Dedoose.

Each of the codes for the two types or characteristics were weighted in a custom fashion. Because there are 11 proposed processes, each code got a weight range of 1 to 11. In Dedoose, the higher the number, the greater the weight. When coding the interview, the researcher can evaluate the mood, context, and emphasis when adding a code weight to an excerpt in the text of each discussion. Figure 6 shows a sample of how each code can be assigned a weight range.

Figure 6. Weight range options set for coding in Dedoose, minimum weight 1, maximum weight 11.

Analysis of the transcripts with the coding yielded these results in Dedoose in Table 2.

Table 2

These weights then can be used to interpret the interviews and to produce a graphical analysis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

DOC670 Applied Statistics for Research

Module 5 Case

COMPARING MODELS TO ASSESS THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

Assignment Overview

In this Case Assignment, you will be reading several articles and sources relating to different kinds of data analysis, the process of inferring conclusions from data, the legitimacy of different kinds of analyses, and the development of conclusions and recommendations from your data. You will then be asked to develop a preliminary data analysis and presentation plan, describing the kinds of inferences you hope to draw from your data and how you justify their legitimacy. You also be asked to sketch out a plan for presenting your findings for your research site and wrapping up your relationship with the site.

As the course has progressed, you have made a series of decisions in which you have increasingly specified the structure of your project. These decisions build on each other in critical ways. However, you’re not locked i