Introduction: Remembering the Fundamentals in Research and Teaching

Abstract

When reading an empirical article, have you ever skipped over (or just briefly glanced at) the table of descriptive statistics and correlations? If you answered “yes” to this question, this EDI essay may change how you look at this table and assess empirical research. In “‘More than Meets the Eye’: The Descriptive Statistics and Correlation Matrices Reported in Management Research,” Arthur Bedeian (Louisiana State University) posits that research methods education has emphasized learning the latest statistical techniques, often at the expense of learning data fundamentals. He argues that graduate programs should ensure that new researchers have a fine-grained knowledge of primary data analysis procedures in order to assess whether findings based on complex statistical analyses are situated on solid ground or quicksand. Bedeian supports this argument by providing a 12-point checklist that is an informative primer (or refresher) for those who conduct, teach, and review empirical research. This essay reminds us of the need to know the fundamentals not only of research methods, but also of contemporary theories and practices in management education. For instance, what are the conceptual and empirical heritages of the latest popular leadership theories that we research and teach? To what extent are these simply minor variations on the “consideration (people-oriented)” and “initiating structure (task-oriented)” leadership behavior dimensions identified in the early Ohio State University studies? Read the original works of these leadership researchers (e.g., Fleishman, 1953; Stogdill, 1950)—then be prepared for a sense of deja vu when reading about the latest leadership theory. Judge, Piccolo, and Ilies’ (2004) metaanalysis found substantial empirical support for the validity of these not-to-be “forgotten” leadership dimensions. That the source data for meta-analysis procedures is often correlations (Rosenthal & DiMatteo, 2001) further supports Bedeian’s call for researchers to closely examine these statistics. This essay encourages a greater appreciation of the fundamentals in research methods as well as the foundations of the theories that we teach. And after reading it, you will be more likely to do a critical analysis of the basic data statistics in empirical papers. REFERENCES