Post mortem on the Research Proposal exam

'The deductive approach is based on developing an understanding of how a logical chain of events can combine to produce a result, whereas the inductive approach is based on observing events, then explaining them'. This is the sentence which I memorised this morning whilst riding on the train to Tel Aviv, in order to take the Introduction to Business Research 1 (aka "The Research Proposal") exam. I felt that I had most of the material down cold, but last night I was looking at hypotheses and de/inductive approaches, thus making the above sentence as important as 'A paradigm is a series of beliefs and values about research'.

As I wrote before, the structure of the exam is very consistent, and there appear to be only a few questions which can be asked. The first question, 50% of the marks, is critiquing a research proposal; almost certainly the second question (25%) will be about research paradigms and how they relate to the case study and the third question (25%) would be about something else - managing time, methodology or hypotheses.

The case study which appeared in the exam was a very badly written proposal about success in new businesses. Although it took just over an hour to fill six pages of A4 paper, this question was technically very simple (provided that one knows the material, of course!). The proposal is composed of fourteen different sections, so one has to go through each section and offer comments. In a sense, I was fortunate that there was so much which was obviously missing as it made it easier to write the answers. Some of what I wrote was stock sentences (for example, the sections about ethics, deliverables, time needed after the viva and appendices were all stock answers) and some was pre-prepared, like noting that the number of companies to be questioned was not noted and that no sample questionnaire was appended.

The second question was, as I had guessed, about research paradigms and how they affect the case study. In the proposal, the candidate had written about quantitative analysis and standard statistical methods, meaning that he was writing about using the paradigm of positivism (although this word specifically did not appear in the text). My answer first explained what a research paradigm is, then showed the advantages and disadvantages of the two paradigms, positivism and phenomenology. This material was almost word for word the same essay which I wrote for practice the other night, although more concentrated and lacking all the anecdotal material which I thought was unnecessary. I then wrote that in my humble opinion, the research question called for the paradigm of phenomenology - and of course, explained why I thought so. I even wrote a little on how this would change the research.

The third question was how a candidate moves from a wide research area to a specific research question and hypotheses. This isn't material which I had actively revised, although by chance, I had skimmed over some of this material last night so it was fresh enough to enable me to describe competently what programmers call stepwise refinement (the text refers to this as building a work breakdown structure). Once I had built what should have been the candidate's research question (much more focused than the original vague statement), I then explained about null and alternative hypotheses, and even wrote down a few possible pairs (the null hypothesis is what the researcher is trying to prove, such as 'good cash-flow is an indication for success', whereas the alternative hypothesis is the negation, 'good cash-flow is not an indication for success'). At this point, I felt it was time to throw in the sentence about deduction and induction, pointing out the candidate was using induction to prove his case. This may well not have been in the scope of the question, but I had the time.

I finished the exam after two and a half hours of furious writing (interrupted only by a few toilet breaks). I think that I did very well in the exam. I'll probably only get the results towards the end of January - until then, I'm on "holiday": I'd like to know that I passed the first course before I start the second, which will only be examined  in June (hopefully before the graduation ceremony in Edinburgh!).

There were only four students in the examination room (including myself), but three invigilators. Each student was taking a different exam, so we couldn't have copied even had we tried.

It had rained heavily yesterday, so I came prepared with a thick coat and a large umbrella. Fortunately, I did not rain while I was in Tel Aviv, so I was able to walk from the hotel where the exam took place to the Dizengoff centre, where I bought a guitar stand in the music shop. I then walked from there to the train station, cursing my heavy coat and umbrella. But when I got to my local train station, it was raining heavily, so then I was pleased that I had the coat and umbrella. My wife was supposed to pick me up, but she had to go and help her brother and his wife look after their twins (they came home from hospital yesterday). I had to find a taxi.