Respond to two or more of your colleagues

Post an assessment of your chosen qualitative study utilized in Week 2. Your assessment should include the following:

· Briefly describe key components of your chosen article: problem statement, purpose statement, conceptual framework, research question(s), and interview questions. (Note: You will attach a copy of this study to your Discussion post.)

· Analyze the alignment between these components, including areas of misalignment.

. Explain the level of alignment between these specific components, including areas that may be lacking.

. Recommend at least one change that could improve alignment within this study, including a rationale for your recommendation.

Be sure to support your work with a minimum of two specific citations from this week’s Learning Resources and at least one additional scholarly source.

Rita

The author, Johnston (2018) conducted an explorative multiple case study of five small businesses in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States to determine what strategies small business owners employed to remain in business for over 5 years as the research question. He adopted the entrepreneurship theory based which emphasized sustainability, resource management and strategies as a conceptual framework and utilized semi-structured face-to-face interviews for data collection. The findings were that products or service that solved customer problems were critical, funding options, marketing increased chances of survival beyond 5 years and customer service was the differentiator for small businesses to compete.

Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill (2015) emphasized the need for synthesis to create a storyline and a new statement or conclusion further emphasized by Walden University in the requirement for alignment of the problem and purpose statement of doctoral studies. The problem statement which highlights the need for the study enables reader understanding of the significance of the research. It should be aligned to the purpose statement which builds on the need expressed in the problem statement and provides reason and goals for the study and informs the research questions which should align to the specific business problem, purpose statement to inform the interview questions. This ultimately ensures that the findings speak to the intended research objective expressed (Laureate Education, 2016a, 2016c; Walden University, 2016a; 2016b).

Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill et al pointed to the need for interview themes derived from extant literature, researcher experience as well as other sources. They particularly advocated more probing questions which would be useful for a qualitative study like this. The interview questions for this study did not meet this test and the findings on the four themes. The findings particularly on customer service, funding options were presented in a manner

that aligned more to a correlational study and did not necessarily align to the more general qualitative research questions and interviews. The proposal would be largely to refine the

research and interview questions or adopt a mixed methodology. The author’s presentation of

the conceptual framework also suggested a study of competitive strategies for success which

from extant literature, while intertwined with small business survival, may be better suited to

a theoretical approach and different methodology. The framework was therefore also to some

extent misaligned to the methodology and the purpose of the framework. A change in

methodology could be useful.

References

Johnston, J. (2018). Strategies for New Small Businesses to Be Successful Beyond 5 Years [Dissertation]. Retrieved from https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/library/dissertations

Laureate Education (Producer). (2016a). The doctoral business problem statement [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author. 

Laureate Education (Producer). (2016c). The purpose statement [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Saunders, M. N. K., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2015). Research methods for business students (7th ed.). Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited.

Walden University Doctoral Capstone Resources. (2016a). DBA doctoral study prospectus guide. Available from http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/doctoralcapstoneresources/dba

Walden University Doctoral Capstone Resources. (2016b). Doctoral study rubric and research handbook. Available from http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/doctoralcapstoneresources/dba

Justin

Briefly describe key components of your chosen article: 

· problem statement,

. After analyzing the source and considering the alignment of the key components, the business problem was made clear in the discussion associated with the conceptual framework. Wu and Ko (2013) explain that many of the popular service quality assessments are inadequate, as they identify aspects of service quality but do not assess service performance.

· purpose statement,

. Wu and Ko (2013) explicitly identify the purpose of the study in the abstract, explaining the study was to enhance the understanding of service quality in the hotel industry by creating a conceptual framework based on their qualitative research. This statement directly aligns the conceptual framework, the problem, and the purpose.

· conceptual framework, research questions, and interview questions

. By implementing an inductive approach, the researchers were able to align all of the key concepts of their study. When researchers use an inductive approach, they first begin with data collection, followed by theme analysis and theory development (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2015). Wu and Ko (2013) discuss a variety of inadequacies associated with many popular service quality frameworks. This shows that their research questions, although not clearly identified, guided their literature review. To build their interview questions, the researchers first conducted three focus groups and were able to identify 11 sub-dimensions and three primary dimensions of service quality (Wu & Ko, 2013). Next, the researchers used the identified dimensions to build their questionnaire (interview questions ), establishing alignment with the other key concepts (Wu & Ko, 2013). Based on their received responses and in-depth analysis, the researchers were able to create their own conceptual framework associated with service quality assessment (Wu & Ko, 2013).

Recommend at least one change that could improve alignment within this study, including a rationale for your recommendation.

Research questions should use the same words stated in the business problem, resulting in direct alignment between the research question and business problem (Walden University Doctoral Capstone Resources, 2016). As I explained above, I believe one can infer what the research question was. My recommendation would be to clearly identify the research question and explain that this question is what guided the literature review. After reading through the study, I believe the research question identifies that hotel managers lack an adequate method of analyzing service quality, but it is never explicitly stated. 

That being said, I believe that the inductive approach to research almost requires that everything is in alignment. In this study, the researchers identified a problem associated with the lack of framework and conducted research on popular frameworks to identify inadequacies (Wu and Ko, 2013). The researchers were able to use those identified inadequacies to build their interview questions, resulting in their proposed framework (Wu and Ko, 2013). Based on this study, I believe that the inductive approach naturally forces alignment within one's study. 

References

Saunders, M.N.K., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2015). Research methods for business students (7th ed.). Retrieved from https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com

Walden University Doctoral Capstone Resources. (2016b). Doctoral study rubric and handbook. Available from https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/doctoralcapstoneresources/dba

Wu, H.C., & Ko, Y. J. (2013). Assessment of Service Quality in the Hotel Industry. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality Tourism, 14(3), 218-244. Retrieved from https://eds-a-ebscohost-com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org