Rural Management - Management DecisionMaking Tools Rural Management Management Decision Making Tools First Edition Government of India MoE Ministry of Education Editorial Board Dr W G Prasanna Kumar Dr K N Rekha First Edition: 2020 ISBN: 978-93-89431-09-4 Price: ₹ 750/- All Rights Reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher. Disclaimer The editor or publishers do not assume responsibility for the statements/opinions expressed by the authors in this book. © Mahatma Gandhi National Council of Rural Education (MGNCRE) Department of Higher Education Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India 5-10-174, Shakkar Bhavan, Ground Floor, Fateh Maidan Road, Hyderabad - 500 004 Telangana State. Tel: 040-23422112, 23212120, Fax: 040-23212114 E-mail : [email protected] Website : www.mgncre.org Published by: Mahatma Gandhi National Council of Rural Education (MGNCRE), Hyderabad About the Book Research is a scientific process and this definition holds true irrespective of disciplines. Research provides new domain of knowledge, new theories and laws, solution to a problem and open new area of thought. Further, it has the potential to question and analyses the existing theories in accordance to the present circumstances. Hence, it is important for educational/professional academicians to be acquainted with the process of research i.e. research methodology. It is worth mentioning that research is a systematic process and the knowledge of research methodology helps to understand what to do in specific situation. Research Methodology is a way to systematically solve the research problem. A researcher must know the rationale for using specific methods or techniques and establish their relevance. Methodology may be understood as a science of studying how research is done scientifically. A research work must act as a catalyst for further researches to be undertaken in the said field. In the recent past, many new dimensions of research have emerged catering to the vast changes taking place in the present-day social situation. The quality of research depends on the understanding of the research problem, the research methodology and the appropriate tools used for the analysis. Research Methodology is the central and most crucial component, element of any research endeavour in social sciences. Any researcher has to be well-equipped and must have command over this tool. The course Material on Research Methodology is designed to impart knowledge for scientific research to integrate qualitative and quantitative approaches in research and orient the researchers to techniques for precise, rational and scientific research. It is particularly meant for those who are engaged in survey research and have some basic knowledge of data processing, analysis and interpretation. The present text is a brief endeavor to explain the concepts of research and the various methods, tools and techniques for carrying out research in a rural scenario. The main focus of the book lies in the fact that it tries to explain the otherwise complicated terms such as research, statistics, probability and ethics in the most lucid manner with a lot of case studies to facilitate the user in understanding the same with quite an ease. The book is a designed as a textbook to cater to the requirements of the first course on Management Decision Systems to the undergraduate students of Bachelors of Business Administration course. The book is organized into 5 Units that provide a comprehensive coverage of all the relevant topics using simple and easy to understand language. “Learning by Doing” is one of the best ways to understand a concept and get to know it. Keeping the same in mind, the book provides a number of Case studies and to-do-activities to supplement the text and enable the reader to explore on his own as well. References at the end of chapters and self- learning questions will surely kindle the minds of the readers. I thank the contributors: Dr S Prasanna Devi, Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Vadapalani Campus, Chennai and Dr Meenakshi S Arya, Professor of Computer Science at SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Vadapalani Campus, Chennai to this book for their outstanding insights. Also, I would like to thank MGNCRE Team members for extending their extreme support in completing this text book. Dr W G Prasanna Kumar Chairman MGNCRE Contents About the Book Chapter1 Introduction to Research Methods 1-28 1.1 Introduction to Research 1 1.2 The Research Process: A Broad Perspective 2 1.3 Research Process Characteristics and Requirements 18 1.4 Types of Research and Theory of Causality 20 1.5 Research Ethics and Associated Case Study 24 Chapter2 Statistics as a Tool for Research 29-56 2.1 Growth and Development of Statistics 29 2.2 Descriptive and Inferential statistics 31 2.3 Importance, Scope and Limitations of Statistics 34 2.4 Classification and Tabulation of Data 36 2.5 Measure of Central Tendency, Dispersion & Skewness 43 Chapter 3 Probability and Sampling 57-87 3.1 Introduction to Probability 57 3.2 Sample Space 64 3.3 Sampling Unit and Sampling Frame 69 3.4 Probabilistic and Non-Probabilistic Samples 70 3.5 Metrics for Errors 80 Chapter 4 PRA and PLA 88-122 4.1 Objectives of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) 88 4.2 Methodology Principles for PRA and PLA 94 4.3 Introduction to tools for PRA-PLA 96 4.4 Seasonal Calendar, Venn- Diagram and Focussed Group Discussion 105 4.5 Case Study On PRA-PLA 116 Chapter 5 Introduction to Research Report 123-148 5.1 Research Report Structure 123 5.2 Types of Report 125 5.3 Components of a Research Report 127 5.4 APA Style Essentials & Citing and Referencing Sources 131 5.5 Suggestions for Writing Effective Research Reports 133 List of Tables List of Figures List of Tables 1.1 Some commonly used methods for data analysis in research 11 1.2 Main Characteristics of Research Designs 16 2.1 Comparison Between Descriptive and Inferential Statistics 34 2.2 Discrete Frequency distribution of the number of children* 38 2.3 Continuous frequency distribution table of weight 39 2.4 Example of Temporal classification 39 2.5 Example of Spatial classification 40 2.6 Qualitative classification of Indian population based on religion 40 2.7 Population of Tamil Nadu 42 2.8 Growth population in a district 43 3.1 Examples of Random Experiments and their Outcomes 63 3.2 Village wise population statistics of Nashik district, Maharashtra 76 3.3 Calculation of Village Numbers using decimal sample intervals 79 4.1 Survey template for electrification of a village 105 4.2 Seasonal calendar representing yield of crops across a year 109 4.3 Trend Map 110 4.4 Percentage of villages electrified across all states in India 111 4.5 Resultant Wealth Ranking Matrix 114 4.6 Direct Matrix Ranking 115 4.7 Pairwise ranking exercise conducted at Village 115 4.8 Transect map in the Nadukani village 118 4.9 Timeline showing the different development stages in the Nadukani village 119 4.10 Seasonal analysis of five diseases in the Nadukani village 120 4.11 Preference ranking matrix of Nadukani village 12o 5.1 Types of reports 125 5.2 How to choose between tables, figures, and text to present data 133 5.3 Best practices in writing a research report involving mathematical equations 134 5.4 How to choose between different graph types to present a given data 135 107-Management Decision Making iv MGNCRE List of Figures 1.1 Linear Flow Depicting a Typical Research Process 3 1.2 The Literature Review Process 5 1.3 Hypothesis Criteria 6 1.4 The Literature Review Process 6 1.5 Finding patterns in the qualitative data 8 1.6 Methods used for data analysis in qualitative research 9 1.7 Preparing data for analysis 9 1.8 Descriptive Statistics 10 1.9 Inferential Statistics 11 1.10 Concluding Findings 12 1.11 The 'onion' diagram of research choices 13 1.12 Subjective Research perspectives 14 1.13 Exploratory Research Design Methodologies 14 1.14 Primary Research methodology 15 1.15 Secondary Research methodology 15 1.16 Depicting low usage (downloads) of the Swachh App widget 18 1.17 Causal study of factors chronic malnutrition/ anaemia in rural children 22 1.18 Causal diagram of “rural poverty” 22 1.19 Cause and effect diagram of measuring loyalty 23 1.20 Representation of fish bone diagram 23 1.21 Fishbone diagram to measure underlying causes affecting loyalty 23 1.22 Principles of research ethics 24 2.1 Two general types of statistics used to describe data 31 2.2 Two kinds of descriptive statistics 32 2.3 Importance, Scope and Limitations of Statistics 41 2.4 Multi-fold classification of Indian population 41 2.5 Histogram Plot 50 2.6 Histogram of average age at mortality in a village/month 51 2.7 Histogram of cost of onion/kg and frequency of purchase by customers Measure of Skewness 51 2.8 Distribution of Hourly wages of non-agricultural jobs in a village 53 3.1 Approaches to Assigning Probability 58 3.2 Venn Diagram Depicting Conditional Probability 61 3.3 Kinds of Experiments 63 3.4 Types of Events 67 3.5 Classification of Sampling Methods 71 107-Management Decision Making v MGNCRE 3.6 Types of non-probability sampling methods 71 3.7 Simple Random Sampling for studying rice consumption pattern 74 3.8 Stratified Random Sampling to study the reach of Digital India schemes in a rural district Cluster Sampling 75 3.9 Stratified Sampling 78 3.10 Systematic Random Sampling 79