Irish Leaving Certificate Business

Investigating a business issue starts with a question, and the quality of the question decides how useful the research will be. A question that is too broad produces a pile of loosely related facts, and one that cannot be answered with the information available produces nothing. The same habits apply whether the issue is a local shop's falling sales, a news story about a company closing a plant, or a project a student carries out on a topic in any of the other strands.

Developing a research question

A research question is refined until it is clear and until enough good-quality information or data can be found to answer it. The refining is done with SMART objectives, where each letter sets a test the question must pass.

A question is usually revised more than once. A first draft may be specific but not measurable, and adding a figure or a period fixes that. It can also be too narrow, in which case there is not enough evidence to say anything reliable, so the scope is widened a little.

Several questions are normally needed rather than one. A project on why a café chain is expanding might ask what its sales were over three years, how its prices compare with competitors, who its customers are and what it spends on new premises. Each is small enough to answer, and together they build the larger picture.

Types of information

Information comes from two kinds of source.

Primary sources are original documents or first-hand information. They include interviews, surveys, questionnaires, observation, a company's own accounts, a court judgment or a government statute. The researcher collects the material directly, so it can be fitted to the question, but it takes time and the sample may be small.

Secondary sources interpret or summarise primary information. They include newspaper reports, textbooks, a magazine analysis of a company's results, a website that compares products and a statistical summary of someone else's survey. They are quick to find and often cover much more than one person could collect, but the writer may have left things out, have had a purpose of their own, or be out of date.

The format makes no difference to the classification. A video interview, a printed report and a web page can each be primary or secondary depending on whether the content is the original or an account of it.

Data may be quantitative (numbers, such as turnover, units sold, percentages) or qualitative (opinions, descriptions and reasons, such as why customers switched supplier). Quantitative data shows how much and how often, and qualitative data shows why. Good research usually needs both.

Managing information

A researcher gathers a range of information, not a single source, and considers a variety of perspectives. For a closure of a factory the employees, the owners, the local council, a supplier and a customer will each describe events differently, and the picture is incomplete until they are all heard.

Each source is checked on several grounds.

• Credibility is whether the author or organisation has the knowledge and standing to write on the subject. A report by a statistics office or a published annual report carries more weight than an anonymous post.
• Accuracy is whether the facts and figures are correct and can be confirmed in a second source.
• Reliability is whether the source would give the same result if the research were repeated, and whether the method was sound. A survey of ten people is less reliable than one of a thousand chosen at random.
• Context is the date, the place and the circumstances in which the information was produced. A set of figures on retail sales before a recession may mislead if it is used to describe the position afterwards.
• Bias is a leaning towards one view. A trade association will speak for its members, a company's advertising presents its products favourably, and a campaign group argues one side of an issue. Bias does not make a source useless, but it has to be noticed and allowed for. Questions on a survey can be biased too, for example by being worded to push a respondent towards an answer.
• Value is how far the information helps to answer the question. A reliable source that does not address the question is still of little use.

The information gathered must also be representative and as complete as the topic allows. A survey given only to teenagers cannot be used to describe all customers, and a researcher who collects only evidence that supports an idea already held has not investigated anything. The data should be analysed from a range of perspectives, and the researcher asks who an issue matters to and why. A rise in a company's prices matters differently to a loyal customer, a shareholder, an employee on a pay review and a competitor.

Gaps in the evidence

Even a careful search leaves gaps: figures that are not published, groups who were not surveyed, or years for which no data exists. A researcher identifies these gaps and judges how much they weaken the conclusion. If the missing information could change the answer, the conclusion is stated as tentative, and further research is suggested. A researcher who hides a gap gives a false impression of certainty.

Recording and acknowledging sources

Every source is recorded when it is used, whether it is primary or secondary and whatever its format: book, article, website, interview, video, dataset or image. The record gives enough detail for another person to find it again, usually the author or organisation, the title, the date it was published or accessed and the place it was found, such as a web address or publisher.

Acknowledging sources matters for three reasons. It shows the reader where the evidence came from, so its credibility can be judged. It gives credit to the people who produced the information, and presenting someone else's work as one's own is plagiarism. It also makes the research open to checking, which is how errors are found. Direct quotations are placed in quotation marks and attributed, and information that has been put into the researcher's own words is still acknowledged.

A simple research log, kept as the work goes on, avoids the problem of trying to remember where something was found. Each entry has the source, the date, the key points taken from it, and a note on how reliable it seems.

Identifying key points

Each source is read for its main points or ideas, and these are noted briefly, in the researcher's own words, with the source recorded beside them. Summarising in this way shows whether the source is relevant, makes it easier to compare sources and prevents long passages being copied without being understood. Where two sources disagree, the disagreement is itself a finding and is followed up: it may come from different dates, different definitions (one counts part-time workers and the other does not) or different bias.