1. INTRODUCTION

As a third year student of the Bachelors Degree programme, you are required to undertake a major individual piece of work- the research project or dissertation. The project is often a key indicator of students' real capabilities as a student and a researcher. It is the longest (10,000 words) and most original piece of work you will undertake in your undergraduate study and will require with varying degrees of commitment, a period of two semesters.

In contrast to the other modules where you are guided fairly closely, the aim of the Project is to give you:
- the opportunity to provide evidence of your ability to carry out highly independent study and research;
- identify, define and analyze problems and issues and integrate knowledge in a business context;

The level 3 research project is a critical component of your academic programme, with a double module status and accounts for 30 credits of the 120 credits required at Level 3.

This project handbook has been compiled to clarify the framework of the project and suggest ways of ensuring that you succeed.

2. WHAT IS A PROJECT/DISSERTATION?

A research project or dissertation sets certain basic expectations:
- The student determines the focus and direction of their work;
- It is an extended piece of work (10.000 words) divided into chapters and containing a more detailed study of a topic and the resulting evidence than is the case for most essays.
- It involves becoming actively involved with research with more opportunity for originality and intellectual independence than a normal essay.

- The longer word count of the project requires the student to engage in sustained analysis, interpretation and comparison of a substantial body of data and information.
- The project report must be presented in a clearly written, academically cogently argued, logically structured and properly referenced form.
- Students are expected to follow a clear and detailed methodology in order to gather
and evaluate their evidence.
- The emphasis should be on applied research and the investigation of a practical problem or issue related to organisations.
- The project is a test of your time and self management skills as well as your research
and analytical skills. Leaving your project until the end of the first semester or the second semester normally ends in failure.

CHOOSING A TOPIC

Choosing your topic is probably the hardest thing you will do. Ideally you should have identified your topic of interest during the Research Methods module at Level 2.

The choice of topic is up to you, with guidance from your supervisor, but, he/ she will not make the decision for you.

Inspiration can come from many places when looking for a research topic. If you are in employment you may be able to research into a real life problem or if you are not employed, you may choose a more general business issue.

In order to select as suitable topic, you should:
- Talk to a member of academic staff or supervisor if allocated at an early stage about your ideas.
- Think of the unresolved/interesting questions and issues you had from other modules that you have studied.
- Draw upon your own experience (as an employee, a parent, a student, a patient and so on).
- Scan the academic journals.
- Start writing a paragraph on what you want to do and why so as to give others a clear picture of the issues.
- Avoid too broad a topic or one that is overly ambitious.

Your initial ideas may be vague form and may lack a clear focus. These ideas must then be developed into something focused, manageable and practical through wider reading of the available research literature on the topic and discussions with your project supervisor.

Most Project ideas come from:

- Personal experience of employment: this is an obvious starting point for the project because in every organisation there would be some issue that can be researched. An example could be an evaluation of the Training Department of your organisation or an evaluation of the performance appraisal systems used for salesmen in your organisation.

- Observation of events: Personal observation of events in the organisation/ environment can serve as a starting point for a project idea. An example of this could be that as an employee you observe that the employee turnover in your organisation is high and you decide that this is an interesting topic that you research and analyse effectively.

- Issues of current interest: reviewing key issues of broader relevance may be another useful indicator for a project idea. You need to take care when dealing with issues such as these. It may be necessary to confine yourself to an aspect of the issue or you could find yourself tackling something that is too big to handle effectively and gives you a very wide project area, which inevitably lacks depth of analysis.

Whatever the source of your project idea, in-depth understanding of the topic is imperative for the successful completion of the project. You must also be able to approach the research topic with adequate analytic distance. Furthermore before you decide on a particular topic/organisation you should ensure that you will have access to the required information or data.

TIME MANAGEMENT AND WORK PLANNING
Be organised and systematic in your approach and the earlier you adopt this, the better. You will need to allow time for the following:
- Refining the research question/hypothesis;
- Designing the framework for the literature review;
- Undertaking the literature search and using the framework to develop the review;
- Developing the methodology for fieldwork and identifying appropriate methods;
- If required, gaining access and agreeing arrangements for data collection;
- Collecting the data;
- Transcribing data;
- Analysing data;

- Developing the discussion;
- Writing up the study and conclusions.

START WRITING AT THE BEGINNING OF THE PROJECT
Students who fail the project usually start on the written work very late. You must always keep the project moving from the earliest stages.
You will be assessed not only on the intellectual content of your dissertation, but also on its presentation. This means that your written style is very important. To be successful the dissertation must adhere to those accepted rules of academic writing
You must record:
- Your initial ideas.
- Points from the literature or other sources that you are consulting: What is currently known, written about or researched in the area?
- New ideas as they develop.
- Problems that you come across.
- The bibliographical details of all the material that you read. This will save an enormous amount of time at the end of the project.

DO LOTS OF READING
A final year project must be located within the existing literature in that area. In order to do this you need to do lots of reading. You must read:
- Classic studies in your chosen area.
- Recent studies published as books or journal articles.
- Research methods and methodology texts.
- Primary literature sources.
The typical length of a bibliography for a project would include anything between 25-50 references covering the following:
- Theoretical/conceptual material.
- Methods/methodologies.
- Industry/practitioner literature.

5. THE INTERIM REPORT

The project is assessed in three parts -
- Interim Report,
- Project Report (85% Weighting)
- Viva Voce (15% Weighting).

The Interim Report is due at the end of the first semester of the student's registration to the project. The Interim Report must have:
1. A clear title.

2. Introduction with well identified project aims & objectives, motives or rationale for carrying out the study.

3. A comprehensive literature review linked clearly to the aims & objectives and presenting the conceptual framework on which the research study is based. The literature review in the interim report should be fully completed or very close to the final version that will be submitted in the final project report.

4. A clear and precise statement of the research methods to be used - justified in the context of the objectives and literature review.

5. If appropriate, a statement of arrangements for liaison/meetings with organisation, which may be, required prior to completion.

6. A list of references-texts, journals and websites.

7. Development of a realistic plan of work.

8. Word limit: 5000 words Literature Review

The main thrust of the literature review chapter is a review of relevant work by other authors and the relationship between this and your own work. It is useful to start this chapter with an overview of its contents, giving the reasoning behind why you have structured it in a particular way.

A literature review should cover a range of relevant material to your project and must identify general trends and positions in your research area. The articles you cite should be compared and contrasted. A literature review is not simply an annotated list of references that you may have read.

Everything you use should be cited by reference to the bibliography at the end of your dissertation. Everything that you write must be your own words. You may also quote sentences from the work of others. These must be included in quotation marks and again the relevant work must be cited.

Research Methodology- Data Collection & Data Analysis:

The main aim of this chapter is to detail the Research Methodology used for this research study. The methodology used both for data collection as well as data analysis should be clearly explained with a rationale for the same. Merits and demerits of the methodology used should also be highlighted. The sample size and the sampling methods have top explained in details. You could use either qualitative or quantitative methods or both for analysing the data collected. Appropriate justification for the chosen methods must be given. It would be useful to refer back to your literature review while justifying the methodology.

Analysis and Findings

The main results of your work should be presented, together with critical discussion. The chapter should:
- Present and analyze all the results generated during the project.
- Describe the extent to which the findings support the original objectives laid out for the project. The goals may be partially or fully achieved, or exceeded.

Conclusion

Your Conclusion should include a summary of your main arguments, drawing together the various themes and issues so that they can be brought to bear on the defined objectives of the study. As with all reports, there should be no new information introduced in this section.

Recommendations

Your Recommendations should be feasible, practical and must place your conclusions within a concrete and practical framework. You need to consider your recommendations in the context of their possible human, financial, political, managerial, etc, implications. Your recommendations should be justified.

Attachment:- Project handbook.rar