Survey Research (SoSe 2024)

Notice

ATTENTION: Unfortunately this course has to be postponed. The new date will be announced as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding.

The course is given by Prof. Dr. Mark Houston.

The course takes place at the MCM, room 006 (1st floor) on June 19-22 2023.

Applications for this course are possible for all doctoral students of the faculty of business and economics and minor research students by sending an email to Tanja Geringhoff (tanja.geringhoff@wiwi.uni-muenster.de).

For didactic reasons, the number of participants is limited. The decision on participation of an applicant will based on the first-come, first-served principle. The application period is open until June 05, 2023. 

Please make sure to include the following information in your application:

• last name, first name
• date of birth
• university and supervisor/department
• student ID (if doctoral student at WWU Münster)
• info on whether you are studying according to the ”Neue Promotionsordnung” or ”Alte Promotionsordnung” (if doctoral student at WWU Münster)

Additional course information (e.g., the complete syllabus) and materials will be made available to the course participants via learnweb. The enrollment passphrase will be sent to the course participants via e-mail, approximately 2 weeks before the course starts.

Information for students of the Minor Research: If your application was successful, please register at the examination office for the early examination period. The examination consists of a 60-minute written exam and two group work assignments.  

Information for all PhD students: The course is handled as an A-certificate / research methods for the PhD program.

Description

Many important research questions are best answered with survey data. The goal of this course is to help prepare doctoral students in business and economics to conduct survey-based research that is publishable in the leading research journals. Students will acquire an understanding and practical knowledge of the process that is needed to design and execute scientific survey-based research. We will pay particular attention to issues that impact the integrity of survey research, such as construct definition and validity, correctly specifying a scale as formative or reflective, avoiding common source bias, assessing non-response bias, etc. This course is concerned with the total research process, and our focus on survey research will be embedded in discussions that range from philosophy of science and the generation of research ideas through the publication of the research manuscript.

Although this course will employ many examples from the field of marketing, it is designed in a way that will benefit doctoral students with an interest in conducting behavioral and organizational research in a wide variety of contexts. Its focus is on the research process. The class discussions will allow students to create links between the material and the topics in which they are most interested, and students will have the opportunity to apply ideas from the course to a substantive issue of their own choosing. No significant background in marketing theory and/or practice is assumed.

The goals of this course will be pursued through:

1)    Reading, synthesizing and discussing articles and book chapters on survey research techniques and topics from a variety of behavioral disciplines;

2)    Completing various assignments that give students the chance to apply and practice the principles being reviewed;

3)    Critiquing published empirical research studies; and

4)    Designing a scale development study, including construct conceptual development, multi-item scale development and testing, hypothesis development, and methodological planning. On the last day of the course, teams of students will make a short presentation of their work.

Lecturers

• Dorothea Nilusha Aliman (accompanying)