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72 THE RESEARCH PROCESS

necessary to assure employees that their responses will be kept confidential by the
interviewer/s and that individual responses will not be divulged to anyone in the
organization. These two steps make the employees comfortable with the research
undertaken and ensure their cooperation. Attempts to obtain information through
deceptive means should be avoided at all costs as they engender distrust and anx-
iety within the system. In essence, employers have the right to gather information
relating to work, and employees have the right to privacy and confidentiality; but
respondent cooperation alone assures good information.
We could draw lessons from the fact that Johns Hopkins University ran into
ethical problems for allegedly using human beings for riskly scientific experi-
ments. The Maryland Court of Appeals took issue with the prestigious university
for its research in the 1990s when it exposed hundreds of poor and minority
infants and toddlers to major health risks without alerting their parents. Some of
the children, according to newsprint reports, now suffer learning disabilities and
cognitive impairments akin to lead poisoning.
More recently, in June 2001, the same institution practiced deliberate decep-
tion on asthma patients to enable doctors to chart the effects of certain medicine.
In the process one patient died. In both cases, failure to observe ethical stan-
dards brought discredit to this prestigious research organization. The moral of
this is quite clear—experiments on human beings may sometimes become
worthwhile as a matter of necessity in the larger interests of promoting the health
and well being of people, but it is imperative that these should be undertaken
only with the full knowledge and unqualified and specific approval of the par-
ticipating subjects.

SUMMARY

In this chapter, we learned about the first three steps in the research process: identifica-
tion of the broad problem area to be researched, preliminary data gathering through inter-
views and literature survey, and problem definition. In particular, we discussed how
managers could identify the broad problem area through observation, how preliminary
data can be collected through unstructured and structured interviews and literature sur-
vey, and how the problem can be honed. We defined the term problem as any situation
where a gap exists between the actual and desired states. We also touched on the ethical
issues confronting researchers.
The Appendix to this chapter offers information on (1) online databases, (2) biblio-
graphical indexes, (3) APA format for references, and (4) notes on referencing previous
studies and quoting original sources in the literature review section.
In Chapter 5 we will examine the next two steps in the research process: theoretical
framework and hypotheses.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS AND POINTS TO PONDER

1. How would you describe the research process?
2. Explain the preliminary data collection methods.
3. Why is it important to gather information on the background of the organization?