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THE HALLMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 23

of exactitude in research investigations. In the case of our example, let us say
the manager of an organization asks 10 to 12 of its employees to indicate what
would increase their level of commitment to it. If, solely on the basis of their
responses, the manager reaches several conclusions on how employee commit-
ment can be increased, the whole approach to the investigation would be unsci-
entific. It would lack rigor for the following reasons: (1) the conclusions would
be incorrectly drawn because they are based on the responses of just a few
employees whose opinions may not be representative of those of the entire
workforce, (2) the manner of framing and addressing the questions could have
introduced bias or incorrectness in the responses, and (3) there might be many
other important influences on organizational commitment that this small sample
of respondents did not or could not verbalize during the interviews, and the
researcher would have failed to include them. Therefore, conclusions drawn
from an investigation that lacks a good theoretical foundation, as evidenced by
reason (3), and methodological sophistication, as evident from (1) and (2) above,
would be unscientific. Rigorous research involves a good theoretical base and a
carefully thought-out methodology. These factors enable the researcher to col-
lect the right kind of information from an appropriate sample with the minimum
degree of bias, and facilitate suitable analysis of the data gathered. The follow-
ing chapters of this book address these theoretical and methodological issues.
Rigor in research design also makes possible the achievement of the other six
hallmarks of science that we shall now discuss.

Testability
If, after talking to a random selection of employees of the organization and study
of the previous research done in the area of organizational commitment, the man-
ager or researcher develops certain hypotheses on how employee commitment
can be enhanced, then these can be tested by applying certain statistical tests to
the data collected for the purpose. For instance, the researcher might hypothesize
that those employees who perceive greater opportunities for participation in deci-
sion making would have a higher level of commitment. This is a hypothesis that
can be tested when the data are collected. A correlation analysis would indicate
whether the hypothesis is substantiated or not. The use of several other tests, such
as the chi-square test and the t-test, is discussed in the Module titled Refresher on
Statistical Terms and Tests at the end of this book, and in Chapter 12.
Scientific research thus lends itself to testing logically developed hypotheses to
see whether or not the data support the educated conjectures or hypotheses that
are developed after a careful study of the problem situation. Testability thus
becomes another hallmark of scientific research.

Replicability

Let us suppose that the manager/researcher, based on the results of the study,
concludes that participation in decision making is one of the most important fac-
tors that influences the commitment of employees to the organization. We will