Common Management Errors (108)

Cviii) Not appreciating and under standing methodological problems in research (many research methods are flawed;
However,
"...randomised studies - in which people are randomly assigned to one treatment or another to ensure that no other factors interfere - are considered the gold standard..."
Anupam Jena et al, 2023

Unfortunately, lack of randomised studies makes it hard to reach reliable conclusions from analysing the data.
Furthermore, research can ignore reality, ie the way people are in the real world.
Sometimes the non-randomised studies are called observational studies.
Another alternative is called natural experiments, ie
"... Identifying situations in which people are exposed to those behaviours, not by the randomising hand of researchers but by accident..."
Anupam Jena et al, 2023

Need to be careful of assuming causation from correlation.
How to get reliable findings is a challenge:
"...Reliability starts with randomisation. Randomisation is key to establishing cause-and-effect; it helps make sure 2 groups are otherwise similar before we consider what happens to the people.....in randomised trials, researchers intentionally randomise people to one group or another, but it is difficult to conduct trials like this that are large enough and long enough to be useful..."
Anupam Jena et al, 2023

Furthermore, any sample chosen must be representative of the population under study for meaningful conclusions to be drawn.