Course Project Data Collection Plan and Instrument - Essay Example

Project Data Collection Plan and Instrument number teacher’s ment of Purpose Examination of any correlation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business performance. Research Questions Is there a significant positive correlation between Corporate Social Responsibility and actual business performance? Are there existing trends of measuring business performance in relation to strategy and are the key indicators of business performance valid? Does Corporate Social Responsibility, directly or indirectly, affect key indicators of business performance including shareholder value, market value and revenue directly or indirect?

Are the approaches used in measuring the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on actual business performance effective? Hypotheses Getting involved in Corporate Social Responsibility has positive effects on a company’s overall profitability. Sources of Data A number of different data sources will be utilized for this research including the financial performance of businesses, surveys, interviews and company portfolios. Business Financial Performance Data related to financial performance will be extracted from a company’s financial statements and its performance in the stock market (Adler & Clark, 2007).

Based on this information, a financial assessment instrument will be developed that will rely on market value as well as revenue and shareholder value by utilizing an appropriate Z-score model (Mosalakae, 2007). Financial ratios will be derived in order to quantify the business performance of the subject company. More information about this instrument would be available from a review of econometric literature that focuses on CSR and financial performance. Financial instruments derived from such literature review possess high degrees of reliability and validity since they have been tested extensively.

Surveys Surveys will be conducted by mailing them to respondents. Respondents will be called up in order to augment responsiveness to the surveys. Filled surveys will be mailed back by the respondents to the researcher for further scrutiny. Data extracted from surveys consists of a number of different measurement levels. Depending on the questions involved, survey results lead to ordinal level of measurement, interval level of measurement and ratio level of measurement (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2008).

Choosing the right questions is essential to ensuring the validity and reliability of a survey. Surveys must contain questions of various formats, ranks and levels to provide coverage to all kinds of respondents. Biased questions tend to skew the results of surveys in any particular direction (Buros Institute, 2007). To avoid such a pitfall, more information regarding survey structure and appeal needs to be extracted using guides such as the Mental Measurement Handbook. Interviews Interviews will be delivered in person with concerned corporate managers at all levels.

The contention is to discover the manager’s views on CSR and associated business performance. Interviews offer little more than nominal levels of measurement unless the researcher chooses to use researcher-completed instruments such as rating scales. Even then the extracted data may not go beyond the ordinal level of measurement. In order to gain more information regarding interviews guides such as the Mental Measurements Handbook may be utilized. References Adler, E. S., & Clark, R. (2007).

How Its Done: An Invitation to Social Research. London: Wadsworth Publishing. Buros Institute. (2007). The Seventeenth Mental Measurements Yearbook. Lincoln: Buros Institute of Mental Measurements. Mosalakae, I. G. (2007). Financial performance measurement of South Africas top companies: an exploratory investigation. Pretoria: University of South Africa. Teddlie, C. B., & Tashakkori, A. (2008). Foundations of Mixed Methods Research: Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.

New York: Sage.