Business Research Methods & Tools

Find a presentation of interest on TED

(Links to an external site.)

Links to an external site.

and critique its content, visuals, and the presenter’s skills (if applicable). Use this week’s lecture to aid your analysis. Cite the presentation in your post, and document it in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center

Week Six Lecture

Business Research Methods and Tools

Week Six: Experimental Research Design, Quasi-Experimental Research Design, and Presenting Research Results

Presenting the results of your research in a professional manner is essential. If your report is not easily understandable, management will likely not respond well to your findings, regardless of how well you executed the research. The stakeholders who are reading the research report may not be experts in research, so you must communicate all aspects of the research effectively. This applies to every aspect of your written presentation. Grammar and spelling errors, overly long paragraphs, a lack of logical flow, and so on can make your stakeholders view your work negatively, even if the research was designed and conducted well.

Business research writing is different from other types of writing. If you took English literature classes as an undergraduate, you might remember that you had to write quite a bit about your interpretation of the stories, poems, and so forth. Business communication is very different from the writing you had to do for your freshman English class, and it’s definitely very different from the texts and Facebook messages you might send to your friends and family. The Hollis-Turner and Scholtz (2010) article that you’ve been assigned to read this week will hopefully help you understand the importance of good business communication, and why we emphasize it so much here at Ashford University.

Solid writing can involve visuals as well. Elements such as charts, graphs, tables, and an overall attractive visual presentation will take you a long way in providing a polished report. Statistical results can be more easily understood if they’re presented in a simple chart or graph than if they’re written out in a paragraph. Of course, you must consider your various audiences as you write your report: their job responsibilities, their connection to the research, their investment in the results, and so on. If you’re presenting research to upper management, they might be most interested in how the research will affect the bottom line for the business. If you’re presenting research to peers, they might want to know how it can improve the efficiency of their everyday workflow.