The internal assessment: business research project

📚The requirements

• Research question: can look forward (“Should…?”, “How can…?”) or backward (“How successful was…?”, “To what extent did…?”). It may relate to any part of the syllabus. Your teacher approves it before you start.
• One organization: the project refers directly to one business, though it may consider industry-wide issues that affect it.
• One key concept: change, creativity, ethics or sustainability, stated on the title page. It may or may not appear in the research question.
• Three to five supporting documents, primary and/or secondary, from which most of your information comes. They must be published within three years of submission, chosen by you (not given by the teacher), ideally no more than about five A4 pages each, with the relevant parts highlighted and labelled “Supporting document 1” and so on. At most one may be a transcript of video or audio from a reliable source.
• Primary documents (surveys, interviews, focus groups) must include the blank questionnaire or questions and a summary of responses.
• Referencing: in-text citations and a bibliography. Textbooks and class notes must be referenced but do not count as supporting documents.

What counts towards the 1800 words

Not counted: acknowledgments, contents page, tables of statistical data, diagrams and figures, equations and calculations, supporting documents, citations and footnote references, bibliography. Counted: everything else, including definitions and quotations. Moderators stop reading at 1800 words, so anything beyond earns nothing.

Structure

1. Introduction: background on the organization, the issue, and your methodology (which documents, why).
2. Main body: findings from the supporting documents, analysed with business tools and theories, with the key concept integrated throughout. Evaluate: strengths and weaknesses of each position, assumptions, implications.
3. Conclusion: explicitly answers the research question, with no new facts, and notes what remains unanswered.

The seven criteria (25 marks)

• A: Integration of a key concept (5). Top level: the connection between the concept and the organization is analysed and integrated throughout, not just mentioned in the introduction.
• B: Supporting documents (4). Three to five documents that are relevant, in depth, and give a range of ideas and views (not five items from the company’s own website).
• C: Selection and application of tools and theories (4). Tools chosen and applied with clear relevance to the research question.
• D: Analysis and evaluation (5). Effective use of data from the documents; thorough analysis and evaluation, with sustained integration of ideas and consideration of assumptions and implications.
• E: Conclusions (3). Consistent with the evidence and explicitly answer the research question.
• F: Structure (2). An appropriate, logical structure.
• G: Presentation (2). A title page, an accurate table of contents, headings and sub-headings, and numbered pages.

F and G (4 marks) are the easiest marks on the whole course: check them before you submit.