Course Work Syllabus

• Scientific Research: meaning and characteristics of scientific research, validity in research, phases/stages in research; types of research- qualitative, quantitative, exponential, exploratory, empirical, descriptive, ex-post facto, case studies, historical studies, philosophical studies, quasi-experimental; ethical problems in research; constructs and variables- nature of construct and variables, concept of constructs, type of variables, continuous and categorical, constructs, observables and intervening variables; Review of literature- purpose of the review, sources of the review, preparation of index card for reviewing and abstracting.
• Problem Identification and Hypothesis Formation: problem- meaning and characteristics of a problem, types of problem, generality and specific of problem; hypothesis- meaning and characteristics of a good hypothesis, types of hypotheses, formulating a hypothesis, ways of stating a hypothesis; testing experimental hypothesis- standard error, test of significance, level of significance, degrees of freedom, errors in hypothesis- type I, type II errors.
• Sampling and Research Design: meaning and types of sampling; probability and non probability sampling. methods of drawing samples, requisites of a good sampling method, sample size, sampling error; meaning and purpose of research design, types of research design, criteria of a good research design, basic principles of experimental design.
• Introduction to MS-Office: MS-WORD, MS-EXCEL, MATLAB, LATEX.

• Cooper & Schindler, Business Research Methods, Tata McGraw Hill.
• Saunders, Research Methods for Business Students, Pearson Education
• Allen T Harrell, New Methods in Social Science Researchs, Praeger Publishers, New York
• Beri, G.C., Statistics for Management, Tata MacGraw-Hill
• Chandan J. S., Statistics for Business and Economics, Vikas Publications.
• Broota, K.D., Experimantal Designs in Behavioural Research, New Age International
• Singh A. K., Test Measurement and Research Methods in Behaviours Sciences, Bharti Bhawan
• Joyce Cox & Polly Urban, Microsoft Office, Galgotia Publishing
• Sinha P.K., Computer Fundamentals, BPB Publishing.

*Latest editions of all the suggested books are recommended.

• Measurement and Scaling Techniques: measurement in research, measurement scales sources of errors in measurement, tests of second measurement, techniques of developing measurement tools, meaning of scaling, scale classification bases, important scaling techniques, and scale construction techniques.
• Data Collection, Processing and Analysis: methods of data collection – primary data, secondary data; primary data collection – observation method, interview method, questionnaires, schedules, guideline for constructing questionnaires/schedules, secondary data collection of, selection of appropriate method of data collection; coding, editing and tabulation of data, charts and diagrams used in data analysis, bar and pie diagrams and their significance; measures of central tendency, measures of dispersion; correlation and regression analysis - meaning and uses, methods of calculation of coefficients and their analysis and implication. sampling distribution, sampling schemes and sample sizes, confidence interval for the mean, t-statistic, z-statistic, confidence interval for the population variances, hypothesis testing, test of hypothesis for the population mean, population variance and ratio of two population variances; applications of z-test, t-test, f-test and chi-square test, association of attributes and techniques of testing, ANOVA.
• Report Writing: meaning and significance of report writing, types of report, steps in writing report, layout of the research report, precaution in writing research report, developing thesis report, formatting, inside citations, references and bibliography, knowledge of computer, statistical software and their application, application of statistical tests/techniques through the use of statistical software like SPSS, scientific packages like LISREL, AMOS, and SYSTAT for documentation and report generation.

• Cooper & Schindler, Business Research Methods, Tata McGraw Hill.
• Malhotra Naresh K., Marketing Research, Pearson Education
• Power Analysis for experimental Research: A practical Guide for the Biological, Medical and Social Sciences by R. Barker Baushell, Yu-Fang Li Cambridge University Press
• Chandan J. S., Statistics for Business and Economics, Vikas Publications.
• Broota, K.D., Experimantal Designs in Behavioural Research, New Age International
• Singh A. K., Test Measurement and Research Methods in Behaviours Sciences, Bharti Bhawan
• Joyce Cox & Polly Urban, Microsoft Office, Galgotia Publishing
• Sinha P.K., Computer Fundamentals, BPB Publishing.
• Latex: A Document Preparation System, 2/E pearson low price edition by Lamport
• MATLAB: An Introduction with Applications by Gilat Wiley India Pvt. Ltd.
• Getting started with MATLAB by Rudra Pratap Oxford University Press.

*Latest editions of all the suggested books are recommended.

The research scholar will review the important studies conducted at the national and international level either by individuals or organizations including government agencies and present the methodology adopted and important findings emerged from these studies. Based on this review of literature the researcher will identify the research gaps existing in the available literature and thus justifying the need for the present study.

The researcher is supposed to follow the pattern adopted in the standard national and international research journals. However, as an illustration the pattern for reporting review of literature is as under:

• Tiwari and Sinha (1971) gave productivity trends and factor compensation in Indian textiles industry for the period 1946-65 comprising of two sub-periods (1946- 1955 and 1956-1965). The marginal productivity of capital on an average for the industry as a whole is found to be lower in the sub-period (1946-55) and higher during (1956- 65). On the contrary, the estimates of the marginal productivity of labour again on average exhibit an actual decline from 2.9 percent to 2.5 percent.
• Menon (1971) in his review article examines the concepts associated with measurement of productivity at various dimensions of output and input, which are the major elements involved in the exercise of measuring productivity.
• Kumar, Anil and Khurana (2007) in their paper have examined trends in productivity of labour and capital in dairy industry in India during pre and post-reform periods. The results in the study conclude that labour productivity at national level has shown considerable improvement during post-reform period. But variations have been observed in case of growth rate of labour productivity at state-level. On the other hand, capital productivity has declined during post-reform period at national and state levels.
• Kumar and Bala (2007) in their study on “An evaluation of the impact of economic reforms on the growth and productivity of Indian small scale sector” has concluded that economic reforms process initiated in the early nineties has had a downbeat impact on the growth and productivity of small scale sector.

• Pedagogy: Class room teaching, guest lectures, group discussions, and practical sessions.
• Evaluation: Continuous assessment will be done through tutorials, assignments, quizzes, and group discussions. Weightage will be given for active participation. Final written examination will be conducted at the end of the course.
• Course structure: The course comprises of six modules listed in table below. Each module has 4-5 units.

SYLLABUS IN DETAIL

Theory

• RPE 01: PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS (3 hrs.)
  • Introduction to philosophy: definition, nature and scope, concept, branches
  • Ethics: definition, moral philosophy, nature of moral judgments and reactions
• RPE 02: SCIENTIFIC CONDUCT (5 hrs.)
  • Ethics with respect to science and research
  • Intellectual honesty and research integrity
  • Scientific misconducts: Falsification, Fabrication, and Plagiarism (FFP)
  • Redundant publications: duplicate and overlapping publications, salami slicing
  • Selective reporting and misrepresentation of data
• RPE 03: PUBLICATION ETHICS (7 hrs.)
  • Publication ethics: definition, introduction and importance
  • Best practices / standards setting initiatives and guidelines: COPE, WAME, etc.
  • Conflicts of interest
  • Publication misconduct: definition, concept, problems that lead to unethical behavior and vice versa, types
  • Violation of publication ethics, authorship and contributorship
  • Identification of publication misconduct, complaints and appeals
  • Predatory publishers and journals

Practice

• RPE 04: OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING (4 hrs.)
  • Open access publications and initiatives
  • SHERPA/RoMEO online resource to check publisher copyright & self-archiving policies
  • Software tool to identify predatory publications developed by SPPU
  • Journal finder/journal suggestion tools viz. JANE, Elsevier Journal Finder, Springer Journal Suggested, etc.
• RPE 05: PUBLICATION MISCONDUCT (4hrs.)
  • Group Discussions (2 hrs.)
    • Subject specific ethical issues, FFP, authorship
    • Conflicts of interest
    • Complaints and appeals: examples and fraud from India and abroad
  • Software tools (2 hrs.) :Use of plagiarism software like Tumitin, Urkund and other open source software tools
• RPE 06: DATABASES AND RESEARCH METRICS (7hrs.)
  • Databases (4 hrs.)
    • Indexing databases
    • Citation databases: Web of Science, Scopus, etc.
  • Research Metrics (3 hrs.)
    • Impact Factor of journal as per Journal Citation Report, SNIP, SIR, IPP, Cite Score
    • Metrics: h-index, g index, i10 index, altmetrics