Reflective Journal on Business Research

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 1
Reflective journal
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REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 2
Introduction
Business research necessitates creativity, innovation and process improvement in
companies. In this assignment, I have presented my reflection on my learning experience
throughout the twelve lessons on business research. The assignment has been presented in a
structured way to include all the topics, my learning experience during the lessons, my initial
perceptions and the applications of my experiences in my career, personal and academic life. I
have also reviewed how the knowledge of business research related to the two assignments that I
previously did.
The first topic related to the nature, process, and strategy of business research. From this
topic, I learned that business research relates to some features of a business such as production,
marketplace trends, financial practices and production processes. Business research is essential
as it helps the management to predict trends in sales, identify opportunities and avoid some
problems (Palinkas et al., 2015, p. 533). Interestingly, this topic related to my first assessment. In
the first assessment, I analyzed open data, its importance in business research, significance and
limitations. Ideally, business research can be conducted using open data, which is freely
available on the internet.
The second topic related to research designs and research planning. Before, studying this
topic, I held a perception that a research design only provides an outline of research. However,
after studying the topic, I was able to understand that research design is the glue that holds a
research study together. It is a combination of methods and processes used in gathering and
analyzing measures of the variables highlighted in the research problem (Yilmaz, 2013, p. 312).
It identifies the study type. Therefore I was able to gain clear insights concerning study types like
descriptive, experimental, correlation and meta-analytic kinds of research. I used the knowledge

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 3
from this topic in designing my research proposal in assessment two. In writing the proposed
project, I will use a descriptive research design as it can enhance a perfect analysis of different
types of models and concepts related to the research problem. The knowledge of this topic will
also enable me to accurately use different research designs to handle my future research projects.
Before doing any research, scholars should conduct literature reviews to identify different
contributions made by previous researchers on the same topic. This enables the researchers to
identify the research gap (Collis & Hussey, 2013, p. 5). In topic three, I was able to gain the right
skills and knowledge of conducting literature reviews. This was also part of the first assessment
whereby I was prompted to conduct a literature review about open data and business innovation.
This topic was pivotal in enabling me to accomplish the assessment. The knowledge from this
topic will be essential to me in future while doing my project as I will do a literature analysis
concerning the impacts of innovation on business growth. In future, I intend to use my literature
review skills to conduct different research studies.
The most important topic to me was ethics and legal considerations in business research.
Indeed, ethical and legal issues form a primary component of modern research, related to the
researcher and the subject. Some ethical considerations in business research include
confidentiality, informed consent, plagiarism and professional conduct (Wallace & Sheldon,
2015, p. 268). The research participants should participate willingly and with informed consent
regarding the effects of their participation. Furthermore, a researcher is not allowed to leak
confidential information about the participants to unauthorized parties. Also, while doing the
research, works of other scholars should be properly cited. Initially, I cited the literature review
to acknowledge the scholars who did specific works. However, I have realized from this topic
that citing sources is a crucial requirement in research to avoid plagiarism. The knowledge of this