READOS / Ideas
Research and Evidence for Better Decisions
Methods, surveys, interviews, sampling, analysis, causation, evaluation, ethics and write-ups for research that informs decisions.
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- 01Choosing a research approach for a business question: from the decision to the methodHow to turn a business decision into a research question, choose quantitative, qualitative or mixed approaches, match methods to the question and plan proportionate, credible research.
- 02Desk research: finding and evaluating sources you can rely onHow to use internal records and external sources such as official statistics, industry reports, registers and published studies, search efficiently, judge credibility and record what you find.
- 03Reading research critically: judging studies, summaries and claims before acting on themHow to read studies, reports and vendor claims critically, from sample and comparison groups to effect sizes, bias and generalisability, and how to summarise evidence clearly for decision-makers.
- 04Designing a survey that measures what you need: objectives, questions, answers and testingHow to design business surveys that produce usable evidence: start from decisions, write clear unbiased questions and answer options, order and test the questionnaire and plan analysis in advance.
- 05Question types and levels of measurement: choosing answers that support the analysis you needHow nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio data differ, which statistics each supports, and how rating, ranking, multiple-response, constant-sum and open questions shape what results can show.
- 06Sampling: who to ask and how many responses you needHow to define a population and sampling frame, choose probability or non-probability sampling, estimate margins of error and sample sizes, and deal with small populations, subgroups and non-response.
- 07Running interviews and focus groups: recruiting, questioning and listening for useful evidenceHow to plan research interviews and focus groups, recruit the right people, write a discussion guide, ask about real past behaviour, avoid leading people and capture what was said accurately.
- 08Observation and field research: seeing how work and customers really behaveHow to use structured and unstructured observation, gemba walks, contextual inquiry, work sampling, usability testing and site visits to see what people actually do, and record it fairly.
- 09Case studies as evidence: when one example is enough and when it is notHow to design and use case studies to explain how and why things happen, choose cases, combine sources, test rival explanations, compare across cases and avoid treating success stories as proof.
- 10Coding and analysing qualitative data: from interview notes and comments to reliable themesHow to prepare transcripts and comments, build a codebook, code deductively and inductively, develop themes, check reliability, look for exceptions and report qualitative findings honestly.
- 11Screening and cleaning data before analysis: duplicates, gaps, outliers and a clean audit trailHow to screen and clean business and research data before analysis: keep raw data safe, check structure, duplicates, missing values, ranges, units, dates and outliers, and document every change.
- 12Describing data: centre, spread and shape before drawing conclusionsHow to summarise business data with means, medians, percentiles, ranges and standard deviations, read its shape with histograms and box plots, and avoid averages that hide what matters.
- 13Testing a hypothesis without fooling yourself: predictions, p-values, power and honest comparisonsHow to state testable business hypotheses, plan comparisons before seeing data, read p-values and confidence intervals correctly, size tests with enough power and avoid peeking and fishing.
- 14Correlation, causation and natural experiments: telling what drives results from what merely moves with themWhy correlated measures may not be cause and effect, how confounding, reverse causation and Simpson's paradox mislead, and how experiments, natural experiments and comparisons establish causes.
- 15Evaluation and action research inside organisations: judging what worked and improving as you goHow to evaluate programs, projects and changes with logic models, indicators, baselines and comparisons, and how action research cycles let teams study and improve their own practice rigorously.
- 16Research ethics, consent and confidentiality in Australia: respecting the people behind the dataHow to run business research ethically: informed, voluntary consent, minimising harm, anonymity versus confidentiality, staff and vulnerable participants, privacy and secure data handling.
- 17Writing up research: findings, limitations and recommendations people can act onHow to turn business research into a clear report: answer-first structure, findings tied to evidence, honest limitations, charts and quotes that inform, and recommendations linked to decisions.
These topic-based reading collections are organised alphabetically; chapters may be read in any order.
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