Human Resources Research Methods

1

YORK UNIVERSITY

HUMAN RESOURCES RESEARCH METHODS

AK/ADMS 4420

AUTUMN, 2013

GENERAL COURSE INFORMATION

1. Recall and explain key concepts, frameworks, and approaches to research methods in HRM
2. Understand and summarize academic articles
3. Develop research questions, testable hypotheses, and write a focused literature review
4. Report in written form the results of a research study
5. Use the Statistical Program for Social Sciences (SPSS) software for data analysis, and interpret output
6. Communicate your point of view in writing; work collaboratively in a team environment; effectively give and receive feedback; and exhibit strong project management and organizational skills

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Understanding human resource management implies that you know both about state of the art theories and methods. In the past few years of your academic studies, you have gained knowledge through courses on all kinds of HRM related topics. You have also read academic articles and therefore have learned a little bit about the way data can be analysed and interpreted. By now it is time that you begin to take an active role as a researcher in the HRM field. It is time to integrate theoretical and methodological knowledge and to conduct your own research: you are about to have the opportunity to show how your logical reasoning can help to further the development of our theoretical models.

In this course, we will focus on survey research. This is because it is one of the most important areas of measurement in HRM. The careful and appropriate use of survey data can provide a reasonable basis for HRM decision-making. Although there are myriad data collection and analytical tools that HRM professionals can use, the present course focuses on survey research because it is one of the most popular data gathering techniques in organisations today. It also provides us with a platform to perform some statistical analyses that are used to analyse data collected by other means (e.g., content analysis in qualitative research, experiments, etc.).

This course serves learners who have no or limited background in HRM research. However, it is strongly recommended that you have taken an introductory statistics course. The aim is to equip learners with the knowledge, skills, and insights into HRM research. Learners will be introduced to methodological concepts, and will be required to work in teams to analyse an HRM-related topic.

During this course you will be guided in translating the knowledge that you have acquired so far into a real research problem; you need to bring together everything that you have learned so far.

OUR RESEARCH TOPIC: PERCEPTIONS OF OVER-QUALIFICATION

A pressing concern for governments, organizations, and individuals is that a growing number of employees have qualifications that exceed the requirements of their job. For individuals, over-qualification negatively affects job attitudes and wages; for organizations, it reduces productivity and increases turnover; and for governments, it increases equilibrium unemployment and reduces GDP growth via a loss in human capital. Although research has established the negative outcomes associated with over-qualification, there remain a number of unanswered questions that must be addressed so that the impact of over-qualification can be minimized. For example:

-Do employees who are strongly committed to their career have more negative outcomes as a result of being over-qualified, compared to those who are less committed to their career?

-Are people who feel over-qualified more or less likely to “job craft”? Why or why not?

-Are employees who focus on other roles in life, aside from their work role, less likely to experience negative outcomes as a consequence of over-qualification?

-Can Human Resource Management practices mitigate the negative effects of over-qualification?

-Do employees from Generation Y, Generation X, and the Baby Boomer generation respond differently to feeling over-qualified?

-Do people who believe that the workplace should be fair and just have exacerbated reactions to being over-qualified?

-Do overqualified employees remain with their employer when they feel that they have no other options? What implication does this have on their level of engagement or job satisfaction?

These are just some of the questions that you will be able to answer this semester using data that you collect as a class.

COURSE SET-UP

The course guides students along every step in the preparation of an empirical paper. Students work together in small groups. Every week a three-hour course meeting is dedicated to one aspect of doing research. The groups prepare their work for these meetings during the time in between. The meetings are either set up as lectures, in which a topic is explained in more detail, or as practice classes, in which students discuss their progress. Furthermore, the course provides consulting hours with your professor, to answer questions that may occur while searching for literature, writing, or while performing the analyses.

In the first period of the course you need to study theory and literature and develop a research question, a conceptual model, and hypotheses. You will also collect data via a questionnaire.[1] All students in the course use the same questionnaire. It contains a considerable number of variables, which can be used to build a variety of conceptual models. Because all students collect the same data, we will obtain a large amount of respondents, which will give us some statistical power to perform our analyses. The analyses you will be doing depend on your conceptual model; however, in most cases, you are at least going to create scales, perform reliability analyses, and conduct some kind of regression analysis.

Finally, you describe your theory, method, results, discussion, and conclusion in an empirical paper that meets the requirements of the American Psychological Association (APA) standard. The group paper needs to be structured like a scientific article that might be sent in for publication in a scientific journal.

COURSE ASSESSMENT

Your overall course grade is meant to assess your academic performance inside and outside of the classroom (relative to the course materials). The assessment tools used do not measure your overall potential as a person nor do they assess your overall intelligence or worth. A variety of assessment/grading tools were designed to assess your knowledge, skills, and achievement of the course objectives; they are presented in the table below, then each of them is described briefly in the sections that follow.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

An annotated bibliography gives an account of research articles that have been written on a given topic. Like any bibliography, an annotated bibliography is an alphabetical list of research sources. In addition to bibliographic data, an annotated bibliography provides a concise summary of each source and some assessment of its value or relevance in relation to your research topic. An annotated bibliography is oftentimes the first stage of a larger research project. You will write an annotated bibliography that includes 6 academic articles. Three of the articles have been chosen for you, but you must source three others on your own. Find more information on this assignment in Moodle. This is an individual assignment.

TEAM ASSIGNMENT

Your team will describe your theory, method, results, and provide a discussion of your findings. In order to begin, your group must have a research question in mind. You must be able to answer your research question using the data that we collect as a class. Your group needs to construct a conceptual model that expresses expected relationships (hypotheses) between the independent and dependent variables. In the paper, you will make use of the scientific literature that you reviewed in your annotated bibliography. Your group will likely need to find more articles in order to support your hypotheses.

In the introduction of the paper, your group will provide a clear theoretical foundation and explanation of your conceptual model. The literature review will demonstrate the group’s capability to reflect on the theory, the conceptual model, and related literature. The literature review should be focused in that variables are clearly defined, and there is logic to support your hypotheses. In the methods section, your group will describe the information about the sample, the procedure of data collection, and about the measurement of variables. The completed questionnaires will be entered and analyzed in SPSS. Every group will perform at least the following analyses: Descriptive statistics, Reliability analysis (e.g., Cronbach’s α), Correlations, and Model Analysis (which may include multiple regression, logistic regression, mediation, and/or moderation). The research question is answered by providing a correct interpretation of relevant SPSS output. You will describe the results in the Results section of the paper. The actual output that you derive from SPSS should not be included in the paper. The discussion section of the paper contains a summary of the findings, and a reflection on these findings considering theory and the extant literature. Your group will also assess the limitations of your study. This reflection leads to suggestions for further research. The section also contains practical implications of the findings. When using references in the text, make sure you apply APA style. The same applies to the reference list, and to the style of tables and figures in the text. You will find examples on Moodle.

During the semester, your team is provided with two opportunities to receive formative feedback. Formative feedback is not graded. There is more information on Moodle that describes how to submit your ideas to get formative feedback. We will discuss in detail in class how to complete the group assignment, and you can find more information on Moodle.

POSTER PRESENTATIONS

The School of HRM will host a research event (exact date TBA) where you will present a poster that summarizes your research model and findings. At the research event, each team’s poster will be affixed to the wall. Our guests (other students, faculty, friends, family) will walk around the room, look at posters, and ask questions about your study. So there is no presentation, per se, in that you will not need to prepare a script. Instead, the poster presentations are designed such that the “audience” can get to know all of the research projects relatively quickly by walking around and asking questions. After the poster presentations, an esteemed researcher will give a talk. You are expected to attend the talk. We will discuss more about the “dos” and “don’ts” of poster presentations in class.

PEER EVALUATION

Teams are often more efficient and effective than individuals working alone. As a result, teams are increasingly prevalent in organizations and educational settings. In this course, we take a particular approach to teamwork by leveraging software developed by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers in the USA. Our approach to teams is distinctive for two reasons:

First, rather than choosing your own teammates, you will be assigned to a team. The assignment of teams, however, is not random. Instead, in the second week of class, you will be sent a link to an on-line survey that will ask you questions related to your (1) weekly schedule, (2) preference for weekend meetings, (3) your commute to campus, (4) your experience using SPSS, and (5) your commitment to this course. The software automatically assigns you to teams so that your team members share similar or different characteristics from one another. In doing so, you can reap the benefits of working in a diverse team, while “curing those omigod-not-another-group-class” blues. Teams will be announced on September 25.

Second, you will provide feedback to your teammates via another survey. You will be asked to complete an instrument called the “Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness” (CATME), which was developed to measure effective team membership. You will rate yourself, as well as your team members, along 5 broad categories at 2 points during the semester. The 5 categories are: (1) contributing to the team’s work, (2) interacting with teammates, (3) keeping the team on track, (4) expecting quality, and (5) having relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities. The ratings you assign to yourself and to your team members count for 5 percent.

There can be difficulties in coordinating team activity. To help your team stay "on track,” it is important that each individual has assignments that are due at regular intervals during the semester. This is difficult if you assign one person to do the introduction, another one to collect information, one person to analyze information and to write your results, and one person to put the whole package together. You can tell how well the first people are working out, but you cannot tell how the final people are doing until it is much too late! Teams are responsible for their internal management, but I will be available for consultation if difficulties persist.

FINAL EXAM

There will be a final exam held during the final examination period. The exam will require you to not only remember information, but also to use it to solve problems in a rigorous manner. Hence, it is important that you not only focus on learning the material, but also on applying it. It will draw heavily from your experience using SPSS and interpreting the output, as well as your experience in developing conceptual models and formulating hypotheses. More information about the exam will be discussed in class on the last day of the term.

COURSE ROADMAP

Note: The exact date for the poster presentations will be announced on Moodle and in class. In all likelihood, it will be the first week of December.

Random information:

• Our classroom is TEL 2027/2032; each student has a computer with SPSS
• If you really, really, really want to work with someone else in the class, then you must email me to let me know as soon as possible – include first and last names and student IDs in the email please. I will try my very best to accommodate you. In return, you must promise that you will welcome the other group members assigned to your team, work collaboratively, and generate an amazing assignment!
• Please do not drink or eat anything (aside from water) in TEL 2027/2032. Please have your coffee during the break, or in advance of class.
• SPSS may take about 5 minutes to start up in our classroom – so please be patient! Do not keep clicking on the icon to open it, as this will just make it even slower…and you might even cause the computer to crash!
• You can use the computers in TEL 2027/2032 to work on your team project outside of class time. There is a sign posted outside the room to let you know when another class is booked in the room. Aside from those times, it’s yours to use.
• If you do not contribute anything to the group assignment, your group may not put your name on the assignment. Doing so would amount to plagiarism, which is an academic offense.

[1]If you choose not to collect data, then an alternative assignment will be made available to you. There is no grade penalty for not collecting data for this course. Contact your professor if you prefer not to collect the data so that she can provide you with the alternate assignment.