Postgraduate - UnitBEX5000 - Quantitative business research methods

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 3, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Postgraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Business and Economics
Offered	Caulfield First semester 2015 (On-campus block of classes)

Synopsis

This unit considers the quantitative research methods used in studying business, management and organisational analysis. Topics to be covered include: research design including experimental designs studies; data collection including designing data collection instruments, sampling strategies and assessing the appropriateness of archival data for a research purpose; data analysis including graphical and numerical techniques for the exploration of large data sets; communication of quantitative research; and the use of statistical software packages such as SPSS in research.

Outcomes

The learning goals associated with this unit are to:

acquire the necessary quantitative skills to conduct high quality independent research related to business administration
acquire a comprehensive grounding in a number of quantitative methods of data production and analysis
consider and evaluate data collection instruments, sampling strategies and the appropriateness of archival data for a research purpose
assess research design including experimental designs, observational studies, case studies, longitudinal analysis and cross-sectional analysis
conduct quantitative data analysis of a suitable multivariate data set through a practical research activity.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 100%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. Independent study may include associated readings, assessment and preparation for scheduled activities. The unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Co-requisites

BEX5010 and students must be enrolled in course 4408 Master of Philosophy before undertaking this unit.