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Paper The impact of COVID-19 on small business outcomes and expectations

To explore the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on small businesses, we conducted a survey of more than 5,800 small businesses between March 28 and April 4, 2020. Several themes emerged. First, mass layoffs and closures had already occurred - just a few weeks into the crisis. Second, the risk of closure was negatively associated with the expected length of the crisis. Moreover, businesses had widely varying beliefs about the likely duration of COVID-related disruptions. Third, many small businesses are financially fragile: The median business with more than $10,000 in monthly expenses had only about 2 weeks of cash on hand at the time of the survey. Fourth, the majority of businesses planned to seek funding through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. However, many anticipated problems with accessing the program, such as bureaucratic hassles and difficulties establishing eligibility. Using experimental variation, we also assess take-up rates and business resilience effects for loans relative to grants-based programs. 

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• Authored by Alexander W. Bartik Marianne Bertrand Zoe Cullen Edward L. Glaeser Michael Luca Christopher Stanton
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Read the Research in Chicago Booth Review

Us small businesses have little cushion against prolonged disruptions.

New research underscores the need for fast and easy-to-access government interventions when small businesses are interrupted.

• CBR - Economics

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Small Business Research Papers Samples For Students

71 samples of this type

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Q.1 Financial ratios important to a small business and their comparison with ratios critical to a manager of a larger corporation

The following ratios are critical for small businesses:

- Acid test ratio/ Quick ratio: Current assets – stock/Inventory

Current liabilities

Measure liquidity position of a firm - Average collection period: Average debtors – 365 days

Credit sales

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Average stock

Measures efficiency of a firm in sales - Total debt/Equity: Long term debt + Current Liabilities

Shareholders’ funds

Shows the extent of leverage used by a firm - Net profit margin: Net profit (Earnings after tax) * 100%

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National Research Council (US) Committee on Capitalizing on Science, Technology, and Innovation: An Assessment of the Small Business Innovation Research Program. An Assessment of the Small Business Innovation Research Program: Project Methodology. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2004.

An Assessment of the Small Business Innovation Research Program: Project Methodology.

• Hardcopy Version at National Academies Press

Methodology Paper

1. introduction.

As the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program approached its twentieth year of operation, the U.S. Congress requested that the National Research Council (NRC) conduct a “comprehensive study of how the SBIR program has stimulated technological innovation and used small businesses to meet federal research and development needs,” and to make recommendations on improvements to the program. 1

Mandated as a part of SBIR's renewal in 2000, the NRC study is to assess the SBIR program as administered at the five federal agencies that together make up 96 percent of SBIR program expenditures. The agencies, in order of program size, are DoD, NIH, NASA, DoE, and NSF.

The objective of the study is not to consider if SBIR should exist or not—Congress has already decided affirmatively on this question. Rather, the NRC Committee conducting this study is charged with providing assessment-based findings to improve public understanding of the program as well as recommendations to improve the program's effectiveness.

In addition to setting out the study objectives, this report defines key concepts, identifies potential metrics and data sources, and describes the range of methodological approaches being developed by the NRC to assess the SBIR program. Following some historical background on the SBIR program, this introduction outlines the basic parameters of this NRC study.

A Brief History of the SBIR Program

In the 1980s, the country's slow pace in commercializing new technologies—compared especially with the global manufacturing and marketing success of Japanese firms in autos, steel, and semiconductors—led to serious concern in the United States about the nation's ability to compete. U.S. industrial competitiveness in the 1980s was frequently cast in terms of American industry's failure “to translate its research prowess into commercial advantage.” 2 The pessimism of some was reinforced by evidence of slowing growth at corporate research laboratories that had been leaders of American innovation in the postwar period and the apparent success of the cooperative model exemplified by some Japanese kieretsu . 3

Yet, even as larger firms were downsizing to improve their competitive posture, a growing body of evidence, starting in the late 1970s and accelerating in the 1980s, began to indicate that small businesses were assuming an increasingly important role in both innovation and job creation. 4 Research by David Birch and others suggested that national policies should promote and build on the competitive strength offered by small businesses. 5 In addition to considerations of economic growth and competitiveness, SBIR was also motivated by concerns that small businesses were being disadvantaged vis-à-vis larger firms in competition for R&D contracts. Federal commissions from as early as the 1960s had recommended the direction of R&D funds toward small businesses. 6 These recommendations, however, were opposed by competing recipients of R&D funding. Although small businesses were beginning to be recognized by the late-1970s as a potentially fruitful source of innovation, some in government remained wary of funding small firms focused on high-risk technologies with commercial promise. The concept of early-stage financial support for high-risk technologies with commercial promise was first advanced by Roland Tibbetts at the National Science Foundation (NSF). As early as 1976, Mr. Tibbetts advocated that the NSF should increase the share of its funds going to small business. When NSF adopted this initiative, small firms were enthused and proceeded to lobby other agencies to follow NSF's lead. When there was no immediate response to these efforts, small businesses took their case to Congress and higher levels of the Executive branch. 7 In response, a White House Conference on Small Business was held in January 1980 under the Carter Administration. The conference's recommendation to proceed with a program for small business innovation research was grounded in:

• Evidence that a declining share of federal R&D was going to small businesses;
• Broader difficulties among small businesses in raising capital in a period of historically high interest rates; and
• Research suggesting that small businesses were fertile sources of job creation. Congress responded under the Reagan Administration with the passage of the Small Business Innovation Research Development Act of 1982, which established the SBIR program. 8

The SBIR Development Act of 1982

The new SBIR program initially required agencies with R&D budgets in excess of $100 million to set aside 0.2 percent of their funds for SBIR. This amount totaled $45 million in 1983, the program's first year of operation. Over the next 6 years, the set-aside grew to 1.25 percent. 9

The legislation authorizing SBIR had two broad goals:

• “to more effectively meet R&D needs brought on by the utilization of small innovative firms (which have been consistently shown to be the most prolific sources of new technologies) and
• to attract private capital to commercialize the results of federal research.”

SBIR's Structure and Role

As conceived in the 1982 Act, SBIR's grant-making process is structured in three phases:

• Phase I is essentially a feasibility study in which award winners undertake a limited amount of research aimed at establishing an idea's scientific and commercial promise. Today, the legislation anticipates Phase I grants as high as $100,000. 10
• Phase II grants are larger – normally $750,000 – and fund more extensive R&D to further develop the scientific and technical merit and the feasibility of research ideas.
• Phase III. This phase normally does not involve SBIR funds, but is the stage at which grant recipients should be obtaining additional funds either from a procurement program at the agency that made the award, from private investors, or from the capital markets. The objective of this phase is to move the technology to the prototype stage and into the marketplace.

Phase III of the program is often fraught with difficulty for new firms. In practice, agencies have developed different approaches to facilitating this transition to commercial viability; not least among them are additional SBIR awards. 11 Some firms with more experience with the program have become skilled in obtaining additional awards. Previous NRC research showed that different firms have quite different objectives in applying to the program. Some seek to demonstrate the potential of promising research. Others seek to fulfill agency research requirements on a cost-effective basis. Still others seek a certification of quality (and the additional awards that can come from such recognition) as they push science-based products toward commercialization. 12 Given this variation and the fact that agencies do not maintain data on Phase III, quantifying the contribution of Phase III is difficult.

The 1992 and 2000 SBIR Reauthorizations

The SBIR program approached reauthorization in 1992 amidst continued worries about the U.S. economy's capacity to commercialize inventions. Finding that “U.S. technological performance is challenged less in the creation of new technologies than in their commercialization and adoption,” the National Academy of Sciences at the time recommended an increase in SBIR funding as a means to improve the economy's ability to adopt and commercialize new technologies. 13

Accordingly, the Small Business Research and Development Enhancement Act (P.L. 102-564), which reauthorized the program until September 30, 2000, doubled the set-aside rate to 2.5 percent. 14 This increase in the percentage of R&D funds allocated to the program was accompanied by a stronger emphasis on encouraging the commercialization of SBIR-funded technologies. 15 Legislative language explicitly highlighted commercial potential as a criterion for awarding SBIR grants. For Phase I awards, Congress directed program administrators to assess whether projects have “commercial potential” in addition to scientific and technical merit when evaluating SBIR applications. With respect to Phase II, evaluation of a project's commercial potential was to consider, additionally, the existence of second-phase funding commitments from the private sector or other non-SBIR sources. Evidence of third-phase follow-on commitments, along with other indicators of commercial potential, was also sought. Moreover, the 1992 reauthorization directed that a small business' record of commercialization be taken into account when considering the Phase II application. 16

The Small Business Reauthorization Act of 2000 (P.L. 106-554) again extended SBIR until September 30, 2008. It also called for an assessment by the National Research Council of the broader impacts of the program, including those on employment, health, national security, and national competitiveness. 17

Previous NRC Assessments of SBIR

Despite its size and tenure, the SBIR program has not been comprehensively examined. There have been some previous studies focusing on specific aspects or components of the program—notably by the General Accounting Office and the Small Business Administration. 18 There are, as well, a limited number of internal assessments of agency programs. 19 The academic literature on SBIR is also limited. 20 Annex E provides a bibliography of SBIR as well as more general references of interest.

Against this background, the National Academies' Committee for Government-Industry Partnerships for the Development of New Technologies—under the leadership of its chairman, Gordon Moore—undertook a review of the SBIR program, its operation, and current challenges. The Committee convened government policy makers, academic researchers, and representatives of small business on February 28, 1998 for the first comprehensive discussion of the SBIR program's history and rationale, review existing research, and identify areas for further research and program improvements. 21

The Moore Committee reported that:

• SBIR enjoyed strong support both within and outside the Beltway.
• At the same time, the size and significance of SBIR underscored the need for more research on how well it is working and how its operations might be optimized.
• There should be additional clarification about the primary emphasis on commercialization within SBIR, and about how commercialization is defined.
• There should also be clarification on how to evaluate SBIR as a single program that is applied by different agencies in different ways. 22

Subsequently, at the request of the DoD, the Moore Committee was asked to review the operation of the SBIR program at Defense, and in particular the role played by the Fast Track Initiative. This resulted in the largest and most thorough review of an SBIR program to date. The review involved substantial original field research, with 55 case studies, as well as a large survey of award recipients. It found that the SBIR program at Defense was contributing to the achievement of mission goals—funding valuable innovative projects—and that a significant portion of these projects would not have been undertaken in the absence of the SBIR funding. The Moore Committee's assessment also found that the Fast Track Program increases the efficiency of the DoD SBIR program by encouraging the commercialization of new technologies and the entry of new firms to the program.

More broadly, the Moore Committee found that SBIR facilitates the development and utilization of human capital and technological knowledge. Case studies have shown that the knowledge and human capital generated by the SBIR program has economic value, and can be applied by other firms. And through the certification function, it noted, SBIR awards encourage further private sector investment in the firm's technology.

Based on this and other assessments of public private partnerships, the Moore Committee's Summary Report on U.S. Government-Industry Partnerships recommended that “regular and rigorous program-based evaluations and feedback is essential for effective partnerships and should be a standard feature,” adding that “greater policy attention and resources to the systematic evaluation of U.S. and foreign partnerships should be encouraged.” 23

Preparing the Current Assessment of SBIR

As noted, the legislation mandating the current assessment of the nation's SBIR program focuses on the five agencies that account for 96 percent of program expenditures (although the National Research Council is seeking to learn of the views and practices of other agencies administering the program as well.) The mandated agencies, in order of program size, are the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation. Following the passage of H.R. 5667 in December 2000, extensive discussions were held between the NRC and the responsible agencies on the scope and nature of the mandated study. Agreement on the terms of the study, formalized in a Memorandum of Understanding, was reached in December 2001 (See Annex B ), and the funding necessary for the Academies to begin the study was received in September 2002. The study was officially launched on 1 October 2002.

The study will be conducted within the framework provided by the legislation and the NRC's contracts with the five agencies. These contracts identify the following principal tasks:

• Collection and analysis of agency databases and studies,
• Survey of firms and agencies,
• Conduct of case studies organized around a common template, and;
• Review and analysis of survey and case study results and program accomplishments.

As per the Memorandum of Understanding between the NRC and the agencies, the study is structured in two-phases. Phase I of the study, beginning on October 2002, focuses on identifying data collection needs and the development of a research methodology. Phase II of the study, anticipated to start in 2004, will implement the research methodology developed in Phase I of the study.

This document outlines the methodological approach being developed under Phase I of the study. It introduces many of the methodological questions to be encountered during Phase II of the NRC study. Finally, it outlines strategies for resolving these questions, recognizing that some issues can only be resolved in the context of the study itself.

Given that agencies covered in this study differ in their objectives and goals, the assessment will necessarily be agency-specific. 24 As appropriate, the Committee will draw useful inter-agency comparisons and multiyear comparisons. In this regard, a table with the agencies in one dimension and all of the identified SBIR objectives in the other may be a useful expository tool. The study will build on the methodological models developed for the 1999 NRC study of the DoD's Fast Track initiative, as appropriate, clearly recognizing that the broader and different scope of the current study will require some adjustments. 25 Additional areas of interest, as recognized by the Committee, may also be pursued as time and resources permit.

2. An Overview of the Study Process

Following its approval of the broad study parameters of the study in October 2002, the Committee set out an overall roadmap to guide the research process. Tasks included are the development a set of operational definitions, the identification of detailed metrics, the review existing data sources, and the development of primary research methodologies. Closely interrelated, these tasks will be addressed iteratively. (These iterative tasks are represented in the box within Figure 1 .) Following completion of field research, the Committee will conduct its analysis and assessment and will issue its findings and recommendations.

The elements of this multi-step process are detailed below:

• Agree on initial guidelines. These initial guidelines are based on the legislation, the Memorandum of Understanding, and contracts.
• Clarify objectives. What central questions must the study answer? What other interesting but optional questions should be addressed? What questions will specifically not be considered? This is discussed further in Section 3 of this chapter.
• Develop operational definitions: For example, while Congress has mandated that the study address the extent to which SBIR supports the agencies' missions, the Committee needs to develop operational definitions of “support” and “agency mission,” in collaboration with agency managers responsible for program operations. This is a necessary step before developing the relevant metrics. This is discussed further in Section 4 of this chapter.
• Identify metrics for addressing study objectives. The Committee will determine extent of commercialization fostered by SBIR—measured in terms of products procured by agencies, commercial sales, licensing revenue, or other metrics. This is discussed further in Section 5 of this chapter.
• Identify data sources . Implementation of agreed metrics requires data. A wide mix of data sources will be used, so the availability of existing data and the feasibility of collecting needed data by different methods will also condition the selection of metrics, and the choice of study methods. The existence or absence of specific methodologies and data sets will undoubtedly lead to the modification, adoption, or elimination of specific metrics and methods. This is discussed further in Section 6 of this chapter.
• Develop primary research methodologies. The study's primary research components will include interviews, surveys, and case studies to supplement existing data. Control groups and counterfactual approaches will be used where feasible and appropriate to isolate the effects of the SBIR program. Other evaluation methods may also be used on a limited basis as needed to address questions not effectively addressed by the principal methods. This is discussed further in Section 7 of this report.
• Complete Phase I . Phase I of the NRC study will be formally completed once a set of methodologies is developed and documented, is approved by the Committee, and passes successfully through the Academy's peer review process.
• Implement the research program (NRC Study Phase II). The variety of tasks involved in implementing the research program is previewed in Annex I of this report.
• Prepare agency-specific reports. Results from the research program will be presented in five agency-specific reports—one for each of the agencies. Where appropriate, agency-specific findings and recommendations will be formulated by the relevant study subcommittee for review and approval by the full Committee.
• Prepare overview report. A separate summary report, buttressed by the relevant commissioned work and bringing together the findings of the individual agency reports, along with general recommendations, will be produced for distribution. This final report will also draw out, as appropriate, the contrasts and similarities among the agencies in the way they administer SBIR. It will follow the approval procedure outlined above.
• Organize public meetings to review and discuss findings. Following report review, findings and recommendations will be presented publicly for information, review, and comment.
• Submit reports to Congress.
• Disseminate findings broadly.

3. Clarifying Study Objectives

Three primary documents condition and define the objectives for this study: These are the Legislation—H.R. 5667 [ Annex A ], the NAS contracs accepted by the five agencies [ Annex B ], and the NAS-Agencies Memorandum of Understanding [ Annex C ]. Based on these three documents, the team's first task is to develop a comprehensive and agreed set of practical objectives that can be reviewed and ultimately approved by the Committee.

The Legislation charges the NRC to “conduct a comprehensive study of how the SBIR program has stimulated technological innovation and used small businesses to meet Federal research and development needs.” H.R. 5667 includes a range of questions [see Annex A ]. According to the legislation, the study should:

• review the quality of SBIR research ;
• review the SBIR program's value to the agency's mission;
• assess the extent to which SBIR projects achieve some measure of commercialization;
• evaluate economic and non-economic benefits;
• analyze trends in agency R&D support for small business since 1983;
• analyze—for SBIR Phase II awardees—the incidence of follow-on contracts (procurement or non-SBIR Federal R&D)
• measuring outcomes for agency strategy and performance;
• possibly opening Phase II SBIR competitions to all qualifying small businesses (not just SBIR Phase I winners);
• recouping SBIR funds when companies are sold to foreign purchasers and large companies;
• increasing Federal procurement of technologies produced by small business;
• improving the SBIR program.

Items under (g) are questions raised by the Congress that will be considered along with other areas of possible recommendation once the data analysis is complete.

The NAS proposal accepted by the agencies on a contractual basis adds a specific focus on commercialization following awards, and “broader policy issues associated with public-private collaborations for technology development and government support for high technology innovation, including bench-marking of foreign programs to encourage small business development.” The proposal includes SBIR's contribution to economic growth and technology development in the context of the economic and non-economic benefits listed in the legislation.

SBIR does seek to meet a number of distinctly different objectives with a single program, and there is no clear guidance from Congress about their relative importance. The methodology developed to date assumes that each of the key objectives must be assessed separately, that it will be possible to draw some conclusions about each of the primary objectives, and that it will be possible to draw some comparisons between those assessments. Balancing these different objectives by weighing the Committee assessment is a matter for Congress to decide.

At the core of the study is the need to determine how far the SBIR program has evolved from merely requiring more mission agency R&D to be purchased from small firms to an investment in new product innovation that might or might not be purchased later by the agency.

4. Developing Operational Definitions and Concepts

The study will identify core operational terms and concepts in advance of full development of the methodology. The following represents an initial identification of some terms and concepts:

The quality of SBIR research

Quality is a relative concept by definition, so an assessment of SBIR research quality must compare it to the quality of other research. 26 Quality is also subjective, so the realization of value may depend on its perceived utility. The principal comparison here will be with other extra-mural research funded by the same agencies. The question of whether comparisons should focus only on R&D by other small businesses is yet to be addressed; this decision may be made on an agency-by-agency basis. 27

SBIR's value to agency missions

Given that agency missions and their associated sub-unit objectives differ substantially among, (and even within) agencies, the issue of SBIR's value to agency missions will be addressed largely in the context of individual agency analysis. While a more generic set of answers would be helpful, it will be important to emphasize the challenges posed by multiple agencies with multiple missions, executed by multiple subunits. For example, some agencies, such as DoD and NASA, are “procurement agencies,” seeking tools for the nation's military, while others, such as NSF and NIH, are not. These different goals may change the agency's vision of SBIR's role quite fundamentally. Generic mission elements include:

• Technology needs ( i.e., agency-identified technology gaps, such as a missing vaccine delivery system identified as a priority by NIH 28 );
• Procurement needs ( i.e., technologies that the agency needs for its own internal use, e.g., optical advances for smart weapons at DoD). Expansion or commercialization of knowledge in agency's field of stewardship ( e.g., funding in relatively broad sub-fields of information technology at NSF); 29
• Procurement from supply chain providers,
• Purchase by the agency on the open market via successful commercialization by the SBIR firm (e.g., purchase of DoD-R&D-supported advanced sonar equipment),
• Use by others of the technology whose development is sponsored by the agency and made available through such means as licensing, partnership arrangements, or by purchase on the open market. (e.g., a power plant may adopt technology available on the market and fostered by DoE's SBIR, or a public health clinic may adopt a new vaccine delivery system available on the market and fostered by NIH's SBIR).

To address agency-specific missions (e.g., national defense at DoD, health at NIH, energy at DoE), the Committee will closely consult with agency staff to develop operational definitions of success--in some cases at the level of sub-units (e.g., individual NIH institutes and centers.) Some overlay will likely occur (e.g., defense-health needs.)

Finally, agencies will undoubtedly have their own conceptions of how their SBIR program is judged in relation to their missions, and it is possible (perhaps likely) that some of these views will not fit well in the areas listed. The Committee is sensitive to these distinctions and differences, and will articulate these concepts at an early stage.

The extent of commercialization

SBIR is charged with supporting the commercialization of technologies developed with federal government support. In many agencies, this requirement is articulated as a focus on the “commercialization” of SBIR supported research. 30 At the simplest level, commercialization means, “reaching the market,” which some agency managers interpret as “first sale”: the first sale of a product in the market place, whether to public or private sector clients. 31 This definition is certainly practical and defensible. However, it risks missing significant components of commercialization that do not result in a discrete sale. At the same time, it also fails to provide any guidance on how to evaluate the scale of commercialization, which is critical to assessing the degree to which SBIR programs successfully encourage commercialization: the sale of a single widget is not the same as playing a critical role in the original development of Qualcomm's cell-phone technology.

Thus, the Committee's assessment of commercialization will require working operational definitions for a number of components. These include:

• Sales—what constitutes a sale?
• Application—how is the product used? For example, products like software are re-used repeatedly.
• Measuring scale—over what interval is the impact to be measured. (e.g., Qualcomm's SBIR grant was by all accounts very important for the company. The question arises as to how long the dollar value of Qualcomm's wireless related sales, stemming from its original SBIR grant, should be counted.) 32
• Licensing—how should commercial sales generated by third party licensees of the original technology be counted. Is the licensing revenue from the licensee to be counted, or the sales of that technology by the licensee—(or both)?
• Complex sales—technologies are often sold as bundles with other technologies (auto engines with mufflers for example). Given this, how is the share of the total sales value attributable to the technology that received SBIR funding to be defined?
• Lags—some technologies reach market rapidly, but others can take 10 years or more. What is an appropriate discount rate and timeframe to measure award impact?

Metrics for assessing commercialization can be elusive. Notably, one cannot easily calculate the full value of developed “enabling technology” that can be used across industries. Also elusive is the value of material that enables a commercial service. In such cases, a qualitative approach to “commercialization” will need to be employed.

While the theoretical concept of additionality will be of some relevance to these questions, practicalities must govern, and the availability of data will substantially shape the Committee's approach in this area. This is particularly the case where useful data must be gathered from thousands of companies, often at very considerable expense in dollars and time. 33

The NRC study will resolve these very practical questions by the early stages of the study's second phase. The Committee plans to adapt, where appropriate, definitions and approaches used in the Fast Track study for the current study. 34

Broad economic effects

SBIR programs may generate a wide range of economic effects. While some of these may be best considered in a national context, others fall more directly on participating firms and on the agencies themselves. The Committee will consider these possible benefits and costs in terms of the level of incidence.

Participating firms

Economic effects on firms include some or all of the following elements:

• Revenue from sale or adoption of SBIR-developed products, services, or processes (this tracks quite closely but not 100 percent with commercialization)
• Changes in the firm's access to capital, including ways in which SBIR awards have helped (or hindered) recipient companies access capital markets
• Product development
• Entry into market
• The impact of SBIR on the frequency with which companies develop partnerships
• The nature of the partnerships—are they public or private partners?
• Change in employment and capitalization 36
• Change in firm productivity
• Change in profits
• Work in this section will follow closely on the Fast Track study model, seeking to identify ways in which the recipient firms were affected in the areas listed. 37

The agencies

Effects on the agencies include the following:

• Effects on mission support
• SBIR has helped to generate technologies that agencies might not otherwise have developed in the same timeframe without the program
• SBIR is an effective way for agencies to fund competitive research, presumably compared to non-SBIR research funding for small scale requirements
• There are significant benefits to agency missions from the specific effort of SBIR to capture research by small firms. Benchmark numbers for small business contributions to agency research programs before SBIR (pre-1983), and outside SBIR (other programs?) may be needed.

Research efficiency implies a review of the returns to the agency from SBIR investment vs. other research investment. It is important to acknowledge, however, that this analysis will likely not be based on hard rate of return analysis, because the data necessary for such analysis is unlikely to be available at the agency level.

• Effects on agency procurement efficiency

Effects on society

• Social returns r efer to the returns to society at large, including private returns and spillover effects. Using the Link/Scott approach from Fast Track as a model is expected to help us conceptualize our approach to this broad effect. 38 Other approaches may also be useful.
• Small business support refers to the positive social externalities associated with a vibrant small business sector, including community cohesiveness and improvements to life made possible new products. Measuring the impact of program support for small business is a major objective, 39 given that support encourages the commercialization of public investment in R&D, the achievement of national missions, and the encouragement of small firm growth.
• Training in both business development and in technology and innovation The Audtresch/ J. Weigand/ C. Weigand Fast Track paper provides a good methodological basis for addressing “training.” 40

Non-economic benefits

While it is possible to view almost all non-economic effects through the lens of economic analysis, pushing all effects to economic measurement is usually not feasible and may not be appropriate. Certain effects have been specifically defined as positive outcomes by Congress, regardless of whether they have any measurable impact on economic well-being. This section addresses non-economic benefits, which will in turn have non-economic metrics attached to them, discussed later in this paper.

Knowledge benefits

The missions of several agencies explicitly state the requirement of advancing knowledge in the relevant field. For the SBIR program, this requirement can be viewed from two distinct but complementary perspectives:

• Intellectual property, 41 which is governed by a set of legal definitions, and is susceptible to close measurement via analysis of patent filings and other largely quantitative assessment strategies. 42 Intellectual property rights are generally used to convert knowledge to property for commercial benefit of the owner. At the same time, mechanisms of intellectual property can help to disseminate knowledge to others. A patent, for example, gives the holder exclusive rights, but provides information to others. Intellectual property also includes “trade secrets.” In many cases, the “know how” that firms keep proprietary may be the most important intellectual property produced by the research. These may be less susceptible to measurement.
• Non-property knowledge is much less well defined but nonetheless of great importance. Non-property knowledge ranges from formal activities (e.g., papers published in refereed journals, and seminars) to very informal activities (e.g., discussions among researchers and worker mobility). Many relevant concepts are discussed in the literature on human capital. Non-property knowledge is related to education and training and encompasses network capital and tacit expertise that an engineer or scientist may possess.

Other potential non-economic benefits

• Environmental impacts
• Quality of life

Trends in agency funding for small business

For this study, “small business funding” will be defined as synonymous with SBIR. A definition of “small” is needed. The SBIR definition (fewer than 500 employees) is quite broad. 43 Dividing firm participants into size subcategories may be advantageous. We plan a breakdown of small firms by size, taking into account existing SBA classifications and based on natural divisions as emerge from the data.

The agencies have considerable discretion in defining which agency expenditures and disbursements they consider to be R&D, and thus subject to the percentage requirements of the SBIR set aside. Small firms also receive R&D funding directly from the agencies outside the SBIR program, and receive subcontracts for R&D from primes or other subcontractors, whose original funding source was federal R&D. Since in some cases the prime or intermediate contractor may also be a small business, there is an opportunity for double counting as well as for undercounting. It is important to keep in mind that the congressional intent was to increase the amount of federal R&D funding ultimately reaching small businesses.

Small businesses, in many cases, cannot take on more R&D funding, as they do not have the expert staff, or the culture to do R&D. Thus, there might conceivably be a sort of saturation effect. The issue of absorptive capacity also occurs in the case of fast moving high tech firms, which may not willing to risk the overhead and delay involved in seeking federal funds at all. In the present study, saturation effects can be examined in part by investigating the relationship between the growth of grant-program funding and the growth of grant-program applications. Insights into the impacts of expansions in grant funding on small-business response capacity and on research quality may be gained by analyzing ATP's experience between 1993 and 1994, based on changes in reviewer technical scores and small business application rates as the program was expanded dramatically between 1993 and 1994.

Best practices and procedures in operating SBIR programs

Issues related to administrative process, both within agencies and across agencies, will be defined over the course of the first phase of the NRC study. Areas to be addressed may include:

• Topic development
• Application procedures and timelines
• Project monitoring
• Agency management funding
• Project funding limitations
• Bridge funding
• Post SBIR Phase II support

5. Potential Metrics for Addressing Study Objectives

In keeping with the definitions and concepts in the previous section, the NRC study will identify the desired measures for expressing results related to each of the objectives defined in section 3, Clarifying Study Objectives . It is important to note that the metrics ultimately used in the study will be selected partly based on their theoretical importance in answering critical questions, and partly based on practicalities. Here we list a set of draft metrics of clear utility to the study; not all will ultimately be adopted, and, as the research progresses; undoubtedly others will be developed as additional elements emerge as the study moves forward.

Research quality 44

• Internal measures of research quality—These will be based on comparative survey results from agency managers with respect to the quality of SBIR-funded research versus the quality of other agency research. It is important here to recognize that standards and reviewer biases in the selection for SBIR awards in the selection of other awards may vary.
• Peer-reviewed publications
• Technology awards from organizations outside the SBIR agency
• Patent Citations

Agency mission

Agency missions vary; for example procurement will not be relevant to NSF and NIH (and some of DoE) SBIR programs. The value of SBIR to the agency mission can best be addressed through surveys at the sub-unit manager level, similar to the approach demonstrated by Archibald and Finifter's (2000) Fast Track study, which provides a useful model in this area. 45 These surveys will seek to address:

• The alignment between agency SBIR objectives and agency mission
• Agency-specific metrics (to be determined)
• The rate at which agency procurement from small firms has changed since inception of SBIR;
• The change in the time elapsed between a proposal arriving on an agency's desk and the contract arriving at the small business;
• The rate at which SBIR firm involvement in procurement has changed over time;
• Comparison of SBIR-related procurement with other procurement emerging from extra-mural agency R&D;
• Technology procurement in the agency as a whole;
• Time elapsed between a proposal arriving on an agency's desk and the contract arriving at the small business.
• Minimization of lags in converting from SBIR Phase I to Phase II

Parallel data collection across the five agency SBIR programs is to compile year-by-year program demographics for approximately the last decade. Data compilation requests will include the number of applications, number of awards, ratio of awards to applications, and total dollars awarded for each phase of the multi-phase program. It will cover the geographical distribution of applicants, awards, and success rates; statistics on applications and awards by women-owned and minority-owned companies; statistics on commercialization strategies and outcomes; results of agency-initiated data collection and analysis; and uniform data from a set of case studies for each agency.

The Committee plans to draw on the following data collection instruments:

• Phase I recipient survey
• Phase II recipient survey
• SBIR program manager survey
• COTAR (technical point of contact) survey
• case data from selected cases

Data collected from these surveys and case studies will be added to existing public sources of data that will be used in the study, such as:

• all agency data covering award applications, awards, outcomes, and program management
• patent and citation data
• venture capital data
• census data

Additional data may be collected as a follow-up based on an analysis of response.

The study will examine the agency rates of transition between phases, pending receipt of the agency databases for applications and awards of Phase I and Phase II.

The Phase II survey will gather information on all Phase III activity including commercial sales, sales to the federal government, export sales, follow-on federal R&D contracts, further investment in the technology by various sources, marketing activities, and identification of commercial products or federal programs that incorporate the products. SBIR Program manager surveys and interviews will address federal efforts to exploit the results of phase II SBIR into phase III federal programs.

Commercialization

First order metrics for commercialization revolve around these basic areas:

• Direct sales in the open market as a percentage of total sales
• Indirect sales (e.g. bundled with other products and services) as a percent of total sales
• Contracts relating to products
• Contracts relating to the means of production or delivery—processes
• SBIR-related products, services, and processes procured by government agencies.
• Spin-off of firms

The issue of commercial success goes beyond whether project awards go to firms that then succeed in the market. It is possible that these firms may well have succeeded anyway, or they may simply have displaced other firms that would have succeeded had their rival not received a subsidy. The issue is whether SBIR increases the number of small businesses that succeed in the market. If the data permit, the study team may try to emulate the research of Feldman and Kelley to test the hypothesis that the SBIR increases/does not increase the number of small businesses that pursue their research projects or achieve other goals. 46

Broad economic benefits

• Creation of a firm (i.e., has SBIR led to the creation of a firm that otherwise would not have been founded)
• Growth in size (employment, revenues)
• Merger activity
• Increase in stock value/IPO, etc. 47
• Formation of collaborative arrangements to pursue commercialization, including pre-competitive R&D or a place in the supply chain
• Investment in plant (production capacity)
• Other pre-revenues activities aimed at commercialization, such as entry into regulatory pipeline and development of prototypes
• From angel investors
• From venture capitalists
• Banks and commercial lenders
• Capital contributions from other firms
• Stock issue of the SBIR-recipient firm, e.g., initial public offerings (IPO)
• Subsequent (non-SBIR) funding procurement from government agencies

For agencies (Aside from mission support and procurement)

• Outcomes from SBIR vs. non-SBIR research
• Agency manager attitudes toward SBIR

For society at large

Social returns include private returns, agency returns, and spillover effects from research, development, and commercialization of new products, processes, and services associated with SBIR projects. It is difficult, if not impossible, to capture social returns fully, but an attempt will be made to capture at least part of the effects beyond those identified above including the following:

• Evidence of spillover effects
• Small business share of agency R&D funding
• Survival rates for SBIR supported firms
• Growth and success measures for SBIR vs. non-SBIR firms
• SBIR impact on entrepreneurial activity among scientists and engineers
• Management advice from Venture Capital firms
• Other training effects.
• Patents filed and granted
• Patent citations
• Journal articles and citations
• Human capital measures

Other non-economic benefits

Given the complexity of the NRC study, the Committee is unlikely to devote substantial resources to this area. However, some evidence about other non-economic benefits e.g., environmental or safety impacts may emerge from the case studies and interviews.

• Absolute SBIR funding levels
• SBIR vs. other agency extra mural research funding received by small businesses
• Agency funding for small business relative to overall sources of funding in the US economy

Best practices in SBIR funding

It will be important to analyze the categories below with respect to the size of the firm.

• Recipient views on process
• Management views on process
• Flexibility of process, e.g., award size
• Timeliness of application decision process
• Management actions on troubled projects

Possible independent variables: demographic characteristics

For all of the outcome metrics listed above, it will be important to capture a range of demographic variables that could become independent variables in empirical analyses.

What is the best way of assessing SBIR? One approach—utilized by many agencies when examining their SBIR programs—has been to highlight successful firms. Another approach has been to survey firms that have been funded under the SBIR program, asking such questions as whether the technologies funded were ever commercialized, the extent to which their development would have occurred without the public award, and how firms assessed their experiences with the program more generally. It is important to recognize and account for the biases that arise with these and other approaches. Some possible sources of bias are noted below 48 :

• Response bias—1: Many awardees may have a stake in the programs that have funded them, and consequently feel inclined to give favorable answers (i.e., that they have received benefits from the program and that commercialization would not have taken place without the awards). This may be a particular problem in the case of the SBIR initiative, since many small high-technology company executives have organized to lobby for its renewal.
• Response bias—2: Some firms may be unwilling to acknowledge that they received important benefits from participating in public programs, lest they attract unwelcome attention.
• Measurement bias: It may simply be very difficult to identify the marginal contribution of an SBIR award, which may be one of many sources of financing that a firm employed to develop a given technology.
• Selection bias. This source of bias concerns whether SBIR awards firms that already have the characteristics needed for a higher growth rate and survival, although the extent of this bias is likely overdrawn since an important role of SBIR is to telegraph information about firms to markets operating under conditions of imperfect information. 49
• Management bias: information from agency managers, who must defend their SBIR management before the Congress, may be subject to bias in different ways.
• Size bias: The relationship between firm size and innovative activity is not clear from the academic literature. 50 It is possible that some indexes will show large firms as more successful (publications and total patents for example) while others will show small firms as more successful (patents per employee for example.)

A complement of approaches will be developed to address the issue of bias. In addition to a survey of program managers, we intend to interview firms as well as agency officials, employ a range of metrics, and use a variety of methodologies.

The Committee is aware of the multiple challenges in reviewing “the value to the Federal research agencies of the research projects being conducted under the SBIR program…” [H.R. 5667, sec. 108]. These challenges stem from the fact that

• the agencies differ significantly by mission, R&D management structures (e.g., degree of centralization), and manner in which SBIR is employed (e.g., administration as grants vs. contracts); and
• different individuals within agencies have different perspectives regarding both the goals and the merits of SBIR-funded research.

The Committee proposes multiple approaches to assessing the contributions of the program to agency mission, in light of the complicating factors mentioned above:

• A planned survey of all individuals within studied agencies having SBIR program management responsibilities (that is, going beyond the single "Program Manager" in a given agency). The survey will be designed and implemented with the objective of minimizing framing bias. We will reduce sampling bias by soliciting responses from R&D managers without direct SBIR responsibilities as well as those who have both. Important areas of inquiry include study of the process by which topics are defined, solicitations developed, projects scored, and award selections made.
• Systematic gathering and critical analysis of the agencies' own data concerning take-up of the products of SBIR funded research.
• Study of the role of multiple-award-winning firms in performing agency relevant research;
• A possible study comparing funded and nearly funded projects at NIH (possibly extended to other agencies).

6. Existing Data Sources

Specific data requirements are driven by a study's methodology, and their definition would normally follow that discussion. As noted earlier, however, the status of prior agency studies and agency databases will affect the methodologies selected and hence data collection needs. The Committee will make an initial effort to identify and review existing data sources. These will be extended and undoubtedly modified during the early stages of Phase II of the NRC study.

In general, existing data will be extracted in the main from the following sources:

• Agency SBIR databases
• Published agency reports
• Internal agency analysis
• SBA and GAO reports
• Previously conducted recipient surveys
• Academic literature
• Prior NRC studies

These existing data sources are briefly discussed below.

Existing agency and SBA reports

The agencies appear to have produced few major reports on their own SBIR programs, aside from annual reports to SBA. In addition to Fast Track, DoD has unpublished studies; NASA recently completed some analysis; NSF also has some internal assessments. These agency reports must be assessed for accuracy and comprehensiveness, as an early-stage priority under Phase II of the NRC study. 51 Annex E provides a list of these agency studies

Existing agency SBIR databases

All five agencies maintain databases of awards and awardees. This information typically contains basic information about the awardee (e.g., company name, Principal Investigator, contact address), information about the award (amount, date, award number), and in many cases, additional detailed project information (e.g., proposal summary, commercialization prospects.) 52

In general, the agency databases offer reasonably strong input data – award amounts, dates, Principal Investigator information etc. – and relatively weak output data – commercial impact etc. The agency databases may have information on modifications that have added funds, but do not typically contain sufficient information about the use of funds (The abstract, which may be useful for case study decisions, does not lend itself to statistical use since the sample size is one for each unique abstract.) 53

Thus, the agency databases will be most useful as sources two critical sets of information:

• Basic information about awards, including some demographic data about awardees;
• Contact information for awardees, useful as the survey distribution lists are developed. More technically, issues related to agency databases may include:
• Do the data cover all of the applications received by the agency?
• Are all grants accounted for? Is the contact data up to date (i.e., what percentage respond to a contact effort based on this information)?
• What year was the database started?
• Does it maintain information about non-awardees?
• What percent of SBIR Phase I awards get converted to Phase II awards
• How many SBIR Phase II contracts lead to Phase III
• PI's come and go; firms shrink and grow; firms are acquired; firms may close down, move, or change names;
• Answers often depend on whom you ask;
• Firms that are very successful may have new management in place as a result of venture capital activity or other financial arrangements, or due to firm acquisition by another organization;
• There is often a long gestation between award of the SBIR Phase II and achievement of significant revenues. Often other SBIR grants and other R&D may have occurred in the interval. There may not be anyone still at the firm knowledgeable of the link between the product and the SBIR;
• The most serious analytical issue may be the dependency on self-reporting, as the agencies generally know little about commercialization except that which is self-reported by the firm.
• Depth of the data – Does the data reach firm level variables, award data, projects, and outcomes? Conversely, what primary gaps in the data should be filled by primary research? The Committee will also need to assess data collected by agencies beyond that required by SBA, to see if there are opportunities and/or gaps.
• The expanded role of DoD data R ecent DoD collections include information on projects in the earlier studies, as well as in the next Fast Track: about one-third of the DoD collection is on projects awarded by other agencies. Note that information from the various data collection has not been cross-referenced and analyzed. It will take extensive effort to properly identify each project in each collection (as the collections for example lack common unique identifiers)
• The form of the data – is the agency data in paper form or is it computerized?

Relevant Features of Existing Survey Data

Four substantial surveys have addressed commercial and other outcomes from SBIR: GAO (1992), DoD (1997), SBA (1999), and DoD Fast Track. 54 In many areas, these surveys ask similar or identical questions, creating extensive databases of results relevant to many of the metrics being considered for use in this study.

The Fast Track surveys each addressed a single SBIR Phase II award, and collected some information on the firm. 80 to 90 percent of the questions were about the specific award. Some firms have only one award. Some have over 100. GAO (1992), SBA (1999) and DoD (1997) each surveyed 100 percent of the SBIR Phase II awards made from 1983 through an end date that was four years prior to the date of the survey: i.e., GAO (1992) surveyed, in 1991, all SBIR Phase II project awards from 1983 through 1987. 55 These studies provide coverage for the early years of the program.

The existing survey results showed the distribution of commercialization to be quite skewed. For example, 868 of the 1310 reporting projects in the SBA survey had no sales. Fifty five had over $5 million in sales, one of which was over $240M, two were slightly over $100M, and five were between $46 M and $60M. Those 55 projects represent 1.5 percent of the number surveyed, 4.2 percent of the responses, but 76 percent of the total sales. This means that in collecting commercialization data, firm selection becomes critically important. Surveying a high percentage of the awards (using a long survey) has the related problems of imposing a substantial burden, and risks causing multiple award winners not to respond. 56

A note on the SBA Tech-Net database: SBA maintains a database of information derived from the annual reports made on SBIR by the agencies. 57 Mandatory collected data includes award year and amount, agency topic number, awarding agency, phase, title, and agency tracking number. (Tracking numbers were not mandatory through 1998.)

However, this database is far from complete for our purposes:

• Principal Investigator (PI) Information Today, reporting the PI name is mandatory, but although there are fields for title, email address, and phone, these are not mandatory entries for the agencies to report. As recently as 1998, agencies did not have to report the name of the PI.
• Company information There are fields for the name, title, phone, and email of a company contact official, but these fields are not mandatory for the agencies to report.
• Award information Agency award contract or grant number, solicitation number, year of solicitation and number of employees have fields, but they are not mandatory.
• Technical project information. There are large fields for technical abstract, project anticipated results, and project comments, but they are not mandatory.
• Women and minorities A lthough information is mandatory on minority or women owned, it was not complete in the SBA data for the years before 1993. 58
• Other data. O ther data, such as award date for SBIR Phase I and Phase II, completion date for each phase, additional (non SBIR Phase II) and subsequent funding provided by the agencies, agency POC for each SBIR Phase II, information on cost sharing (if applicable), etc. may be available in some agency data bases.

7. Methodology Development: Primary Research

The wide scope of the current study and gaps in the existing data will necessitate a considerable amount of primary research. The approach adopted is to select the methodological elements best suited to complement and supplement existing information. The study objectives will be realized using the most efficient combination of methods. 59 These include analyzing existing studies and databases, interviewing program officials, surveying various program and technical managers and project participants, carrying out case studies, using control groups and counterfactual approaches to isolate the effects of the SBIR program, and other methods such as econometric, sociometric, and bibliometric analysis. These tools will be used on an as needed, limited basis to address questions for which they are best suited. 60

A dictionary of variable names with definitions that are common across all of the instruments will be developed. This dictionary will form a part of the training materials used by interviewers, survey managers, and those populating variables with administrative data.

Surveys are an important methodological element of the study.

Program staff will be interviewed, with these interviews focusing (at least initially) on process issues – mechanisms, selection procedures, etc. - and on the contribution of the program to the agency. This will include understanding the motivations and objectives of the program managers. What are their goals and incentives? How is their performance within the agency SBIR program judged? Development of a core questionnaire and also a basic reporting template may be appropriate even though interviews with more senior program managers are likely to be free ranging with many open-ended questions and also more agency specific than those with participants. A core template with five derivative templates (one for each of the five agencies identified in the legislation) seems a promising approach. Higher-level research officials, such as deputy institute directors, may be interviewed about the SBIR in comparison with other research support by the agency.

SBIR award recipients will also be surveyed. The key issue here will be to identify the correct respondent, one who both knows the answers and is willing to fill out the instrument. The survey will begin by contacting those already in the database of firm information, which covers all applicants for SBIR Phase I or Phase II grants. 61 The database includes the name of the SBIR Point of Contact (POC) for that firm (along with phone, address, and email). In fact, the database covers many firms that have also received awards from NSF, NASA, and DoE. Most NIH awardees do not submit proposals to these agencies and, therefore, are not covered. Surveys will be field-tested ensure that they are effective and encourage compliance.

The first step will be to develop a short survey to cover those firms lacking a point of contact (POC). This survey will ask for information about the POC and solicit information on a very small set of firm-related questions. This will facilitate development of a comprehensive database of POC's.

Subsequent recipient surveys will be directed to these POC's, although it is likely that certain information will require responses at the corporate level of the firm, and at the level of the primary investigator (PI).

The following questionnaires and surveys will likely be administered:

• Survey of program managers, focusing on major strategic questions and overall program issues and concerns;
• Survey of technical managers f ocusing on operations and issues of program implementation;
• Survey of SBIR Phase II participants, f ocusing both on outcomes from SBIR grants (especially commercial outcomes) and on program management issues from the recipient perspective. This survey is likely to have both a general and an agency-specific component. It is also likely to have a section focused on company impacts (as opposed to project impacts);
• Survey of SBIR Phase I participants, focusing on initial selection and support issues;
• Additional limited surveys f ocusing on particular aspects of the program, possibly at specific agencies, can be initiated, with limiting parameters to be specified.

Each of the survey instruments will have a stated purpose and each will be “mapable” to the objectives of the study to which they relate. 62 All surveys will be pre-tested. These surveys are discussed in more detail below.

Program manager survey

The program manager survey will focus on strategic management issues and on manager views of the program. It will be designed to capture senior agency views on the operations of the SBIR program focused on concerns such as funding amounts and flexibility, outreach, topic development, top-level agency support for SBIR, and evaluation strategies.

The survey may be administered through face-to-face interviews with senior managers, by telephone, by mail, via electronic questionnaire, or through some combination or these approaches. All senior program managers at the agency and all program managers at the sub-unit level (e.g., NIH institutes, DoD agencies) are to be covered. Altogether, there are approximately 45 program managers at this level in the five study agencies.

Technical manager survey

While program managers should have a strategic view of the SBIR program at their agency, the program is to a considerable extent operated by other managers. The responsibilities of these technical managers (or TMs) are focused on the development of appropriate topics, appointment of selection panels, process management (e.g., ensuring that reviews are received on time and that the selection and management process meets approved timelines), and contacts with the grant recipients themselves.

The Committee plans to conduct informal interviews with selected TMs. In addition, a survey instrument is currently being designed which will be sent to each TM in each agency. This instrument will address technical management issues, and will focus on the relationship between SBIR projects and non-SBIR components of each agency's research and development program. TMs, for example, may play a pivotal role in the subsequent take-up of SBIR-funded research within DoD, and the survey is aimed at enhancing assessment of that possibility.

The survey will therefore be delivered to all TMs in the five agencies. Approximately 200-300 potential survey recipients are anticipated.

SBIR Phase I recipient survey

In order to identify characteristics of firms and projects that received SBIR Phase I awards only, the Committee anticipates the implementation of a survey of SBIR Phase I recipients. The objective of this survey is to enhance understanding about project outcomes, and to identify possible weaknesses in the SBIR Phase I—Phase II transition that may have excluded worthy projects from SBIR Phase II funding. (It should be understood that the Committee has no preconceptions on this issue—only that this is an important transition point and winnowing mechanism in SBIR, and should therefore be reviewed.)

As there have been more than 40,000 SBIR Phase I grants made, it is not feasible to cover all SBIR Phase I winners. Therefore, the Committee will developed an initial set of selection criteria, aimed at ensuring that outcomes are assessed for a range of potential independent variables. These will include:

• Size of firm
• Geographic location
• Women and minority ownership
• Multiple vs. single award winners
• Industry sector

SBIR Phase II recipient surveys

The SBIR Phase II recipient survey will be a central component of the research methodology. It will address commercial outcomes, process issues, and post-SBIR concerns about subsequent support for successful companies. Surveys must provide data that will allow the Committee to address the various questions defined in sections 3 and 4. Specifically, survey methodologies will need to differentiate between:

• Funded and unfunded applications
• Women led/minority led businesses
• Different geographical regions or perhaps clusters of zip codes
• SBIR Phase I vs. Phase II awards
• Firms by size: single-person companies vs. micro corporations vs. relatively large established companies (100+ employees?). 63
• Firms by total revenues and by revenues attributable to the SBIR-related commercialization
• Firms by employment effects
• Recipients of single vs. multiple awards
• Other criteria, including the procedural efficiency of converting from Phase I to Phase II

The Committee is also interested in finding relevant points of comparison between research quality and research value. However, such comparisons are complicated because SBIR and non-SBIR funding is differentiated not only by the size of the firm but also by the kind of research, by funding rationale, and by time horizon. For example, NSF views SBIR as a tool for funding research that leads to commercialization, while the remaining 97.5 percent of NSF funding is for non-commercial research. Here, a comparison would be inappropriate. In addition, non-SBIR grants operate under different timeframes and are usually at a different phase of the R&D cycle, requiring different resource commitments.

To address this point, the Committee will consider if the Phase II survey should be expanded to identify awards that have received some form of quality recognition from and outside agency. For example, if the only competitors for such recognition are other SBIR projects, (as is the case with the Tibbetts Award) this may identify the best SBIR projects but say little about comparisons to non-SBIR projects.

All of these data will be collected on an agency-by-agency basis, to ensure sufficient data for the statistical analysis of each agency. The result will be a survey matrix, with an x-axis showing potential explanatory variables such as multiple- vs. single-award winners, and the y-axis showing the individual agencies. 64 (Each cell of the matrix is important to the extent that the specified data help to address study objectives. Detailed articulation between objectives and survey instruments will be an early stage task for SBIR Phase II. See Annex F for a prototype of this matrix.

Award numbers. Although data inconsistencies mean that the number of SBIR Phase II awards from 1992 – 2000 is not known exactly, it is estimated that this number is at about 10,800. Based on the three published reports, about 7 percent of these SBIR Phase II awards are from the smaller agencies. Thus, it is estimated that about 10,000 awards have been made by the five study agencies. There are no good data concerning the distribution by firm (some firms have received more than 100 awards, many others just one).

Existing Commercialization Data DoD has data by project for 10,372 SBIR Phase II projects. (This includes projects from 1983). Since 1999, firms who have submitted SBIR or STTR proposals to DoD have had to enter firm information and information on sales and investments for all of the SBIR Phase II awards they have received, regardless of awarding agency.

The DoD commercialization database contains information on approximately 75 percent of DoD Phase II awards from 1992 to 2000, 67 percent of NASA and DoE awards, 54 percent of NSF awards, and 16 percent of NIH/HHS awards. DoE has provided commercialization data by product, which cannot be directly associated to projects as this may lead to a double counting of awards to firms. NASA does have data by project, although this does not appear to correspond directly to DoD data.

Sampling Approaches and Issues

The question of sampling is of central importance here, and a more extended discussion of the issues raised can be found in Annex G .

The Committee proposes to use an array of sampling techniques, to ensure that sufficient projects are surveyed to address a wide range of both outcomes and potential explanatory variables, and also to address the problem of skew noted earlier.

• Random Sample. After integrating the 10,000 awards into a single database, a random sample of approximately 20 percent will be sampled for each year; e.g., 20 percent of the 1992 awards. Generating the total sample one year at a time will allow improved access to changes in the program over time, as otherwise the increased number of awards made in recent years could dominate the sample.
• Random sample by agency. Surveyed awards will then be grouped by agency; additional respondents will be randomly selected as required to ensure that at least 20 percent of each agency's awards were included in the sample.
• Top Performers. In addition to the random sample, the problem of skew will be dealt with by ensuring that all projects meeting a specific commercialization threshold will be surveyed—most likely $5 million in sales or $5 million in additional investment (derived from the commercialization database). Estimates from current DoD commercialization data indicate that the “top performer” part of the survey would cover approximately 385 projects.
• Firm surveys: 100 percent of the projects that went to firms with only one or two awards will be polled—these are estimated at approximately 30 percent of the 10,000 SBIR Phase II awards, based on data from 1983 to 1993. These are the hardest firms to find: address information is highly perishable, so response rates are much lower.
• Coding The project database will track which survey corresponds with each response. For example, it is possible for a randomly sampled project from a firm that had only two awards to be a top performer. Thus, the response could be coded as a random sample for the program, a random sample for the awarding agency, a top performer, and as part of the sample of single or double winners. In addition, the database will code the response for the array of potential explanatory or demographic variables listed earlier.
• Total number of surveys: With the random sample set at 20 percent, the approach described above will generate approximately 5500 project surveys, and approximately 3000 firm surveys (assuming that each firm receiving at least one project survey also received a firm survey). Although this approach samples more than 50 percent of the awards, multiple award winners would be asked to respond to surveys covering about 20 percent of their projects.

Projected response rates . The response rate is expected to be highly variable. It will depends partly on the quality of the address information, which is itself a function of the effort expended on address collection and verification before surveys are administered, and partly on the extent of follow up of non-respondents. The latter is especially important: one agency manager noted that his survey had a final response rate of 70-80 percent, but that the initial rate before follow-up phone calls was approximately 15 percent.

As noted in Siegel, Waldman, and Youngdahl (1997) , response rates to technology surveys are notoriously low, averaging somewhere in the teens. Thus, a 20 percent response rate for a technology survey can be considered high, especially if it involves sampling small firms, and there is potential attrition in the sample through exits or mergers and acquisitions.

The NRC surveys are expected to exceed this benchmark for two reasons.

• Experience: The NRC has assembled expertise with an excellent track record of effective sampling of firms. Previous survey work for the Department of Defense SBIR Fast Track survey yielded a response rate of 68 percent.
• Stewardship: Substantial time and effort will be devoted to following up the survey with phone calls to non-respondents and those that provide incomplete information.

While the NRC study expects a significant response rate, based on the same techniques as have proved successful in the past, it is inherently difficult to predict the precise size of the actual result.

Draft SBIR Phase II Survey Roadmap

Starting date and coverage

Surveys administered in 2004 will cover SBIR awards through 2000. 1992 is a realistic starting date for the coverage, allowing inclusion of the same projects as DoD for 1991 and 1992, and the same as SBA for 1991, 1992, and 1993. This would add to the longitudinal capacities of the study.

Projects awarded earlier than 1992 suffer from potentially irredeemable data loss: firms and PI's are no longer in place, and data collected at the time was very limited.

Delivery modalities

Possible delivery modalities for surveys will include:

• In person (interviews or focus groups)

Clearly, there are many advantages to online surveys (such as cost, speed, possibly response rates), and such surveys can now be created at minimal cost using third party services. Response rates become clear fairly quickly, and can rapidly indicate needed follow up for non-respondents. Clarifications of inconsistent responses are also easier using online collection. Finally, online surveys allow dynamic branching of question sets, with some respondents answering selected sub-sets of questions but not others, depending on prior responses.

There are also some potential advantages to traditional paper surveys. Paper surveys may be easier to circulate, allowing those responsible at a firm to answer relevant parts of the questionnaire. Firms with multiple SBIR grants also often seek to exercise some quality control over their responses; after assigning surveys to different people, answers may be centrally reviewed for consistency.

It may be appropriate to consider a phased approach to the survey work, with more expensive approaches (e.g. phone solicitation) supplementing email, specifically aiming to ensure appropriate coverage of the various groups outlined above.

Case study method

Case studies will be another central component of the study. Second- and third-level benefits in particular will be addressed primarily through focused case studies, as will information about the procurement needs of Federal agencies. 69

Research objectives addressed primarily through case studies may include:

• generating detailed data not accessible through surveys
• pursuing lines of inquiry suggested by surveys
• identifying anecdotes that illuminate findings that are more general.

Common threads in the case studies are expected to reveal some of the general characteristics of the program, and may help the Committee to understand some of the data resulting from the surveys and agency databases. A common template or set of templates will be developed for the consistent collection of information; however, interviewers will be accorded sufficient freedom to develop the cases in a way that best suits each case and also to collect additional data relevant to their current lines of inquiry and to agency specific concerns. The templates will be mapable to the objectives of the study. Each case study template will be pre-tested.

Case study questions will focus fruitfully on the firm, in addition to the project. This would allow a different perspective, focusing on questions such as: Why did the firm participate? What types of firm were they? What were their business strategy and plans? Did they seek strategic alliances, partnerships, or investment to commercialize when in the SBIR cycle? Why? and How? How long did it generally take to produce sales from SBIR? What difficulties did they experience in commercializing SBIR? What impact did SBIR have on company formation and development? Additional questions will focus on the nature of the competitive landscape. Who are the customers and suppliers? How has the marketplace changed and what value does the innovated product introduce to the market?

Case selection criteria: who participates?

Case studies will be directed to company officers and individual research scientists, and to appropriate individuals within the funding agency, and possibly in other agencies.

The range of selection criteria will be relevant. (e.g., agency, size of firm, multiple awards, etc.). It is not likely that a sufficient number of case studies can be conducted to generate statistically valid results for all relevant issues: not all “cells” in the research matrix will be fully populated. However, it may also be possible to undertake a sufficient number of cases to generate statistically valid results for a limited set of questions. The interview data mentioned above can be used to supplement case studies, or a small subset of case study questions could be generated for responses from prior interviewees.

Process characteristics – ensuring comparability across case study teams

It will be important to ensure that the case studies are at least minimally comparable with information collected and the reports generated. By developing n integrated case-study guide and data collection templates the Committee can synthesize information needed for the final report. 70 Specific tasks to facilitate the case-study component of the study include the following:

• The Committee will develop a common case-study guide for use in the case study process. The guide will outline the case-study approach to be followed, and provide a loosely structured framework for conducting and reporting the cases. It will provide a set of core questions to be used in all the case studies, and will provide formatting and stylistic guidance for writing up the cases.
• The Committee will develop a data collection template with a core data section that applies to all the case studies, and a specific section for each set of case studies aimed at addressing a separate issue. (See Annex F .) The template will be exact with respect to the metrics to be collected. The template will map to an EXCEL spreadsheet that will be used to facilitate working with the case-study data across cases.
• As the case studies relevant to the same agency will be conducted by multiple field researchers reporting to the Committee, attention will be given throughout the process to calibrate these individuals in their interviewing styles and to take into account any remaining differences before drawing conclusions from the case studies.

Use of counterfactual and control group studies

Determining “additionality” entails finding out if a program made a difference that accounts for all or part of an observed change. 71 As a “best practice” principle, additionality means that it is not sufficient to observe that an SBIR award was made and later the awardee commercialized a new product. Rather, a goal of the study will be to determine if the commercialization or its timing or some other associated attribute of importance was likely caused by the SBIR award. Evaluation is directed at ruling out alternative, competing explanations of an observed change. 72 Additionality tests are usually applied by contrasting the changes that occurred in a “program group” with what, hypothetically, they would have done without the program, or, better, what a comparable group that did not participate in the program actually did relative to the program group. In selecting comparison groups, it is important to ensure that they do not differ in important ways other than participation. Additionality tests can be strengthened by using statistical tools and econometric techniques to help rule out other causes.

The comparison of what program participants would have done differently without the program is usually ascertained by interviews or surveys, using what are called “counterfactual questions.” Counterfactual questions, for example, have been used in a variety of ATP surveys. 73 They have also been used in ATP case studies to help estimate project impacts. 74

Use of a control group will entail the comparison of a program group with a comparable group that did not participate in the program. Although identifying appropriate control groups will be challenging and can be controversial, the approach is worth considering. Good examples of the use of control groups in evaluation are also available from ATP studies, where they have been used in conjunction with surveys and supporting econometric analysis. 75

Use of other evaluation methods

Special studies may be required that use methods other than surveys and case studies—such as bibliometric or sociometric analysis. Such needs will be determined as the study progresses.

See Public Law 106-554, Appendix I – H.R. 5667, Section 108. Also Annex A in this volume.

David C. Mowery, “America's Industrial Resurgence (?): An Overview,” in David C. Mowery, ed., U.S. Indus yin 2000: Studies in Competitive Perfomance . Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999, p. 1. Mowery examines eleven economic sectors, contrasting the improved performance of many industries in the late 1990s with the apparent decline that was subject to much scrutiny in the 1980s. Among the studies highlighting poor economic performance in the 1980s are Dertouzos, et al. Made in America: The MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity , Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989 and Eckstein, et al. DRI Report on U.S. Manufacturing Industries , New York: McGraw Hill, 1984.

Richard Rosenbloom and William Spencer, Engines of Innovation: US. Industrial Research at the End of an Era . Boston: Harvard Business Press, 1996.

For an account of the growing importance of the small firm in employment and innovation, see Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch, Innovation and Small Business . Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1991, p. 4. For specifics on job growth, see Steven J. Davis, John Haltiwanger, and Scott Schuh, “Small Business and Job Creation: Dissecting the Myth and Reassessing the Facts,” Business Economics , vol. 29, no. 3, 1994, pp. 113-22. More recently, a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) notes that small and medium-sized enterprises are attracting the attention of policy makers, not least because they are seen as major sources of economic vitality, flexibility, and employment. Small business is especially important as a source of new employment, accounting for a disproportionate share of job creation. See OECD, Small Business Job Creation and Growth: Facts, Obstacles, and Best Practices , Paris, 1997.

David L. Birch, “Who Creates Jobs?” The Public Interest . Vol. 65, 1981, pp. 3-14

For an overview of the origins and history of the SBIR program, see James Turner and George Brown, “The Federal Role in Small Business Research,” Issues in Science and Technology , Summer 1999, pp. 51-58.

Additional information regarding SBIR's legislative history can be accessed from the Library of Congress. See L@@@:18800NS:790d?z/yreuqdb/nib-igc/vog.col.samoht//:ptth

Today, the set aside is fixed at 2.5 percent.

With the accord of the Small Business Administration, which plays an oversight role for the program, this amount can be higher in certain circumstances; e.g., drug development at NIH, and is often lower with smaller SBIR programs, e.g., EPA or the Department of Agriculture.

NSF, for example, has what is called a Phase II-B program that allocates additional funding to help potentially promising technology develop further and attract private matching funds.

See Reid Cramer, “Patterns of Firm Participation in the Small Business Innovation Research Program in Southwestern and Mountain States,” in National Research Council, The Small Business Innovaion Research Program, An Assessmen of the Department of Defense Fas Track Initiative , op. cit. In this report, we use the term “product” to refer to goods and services produced by the SBIR firm.

See National Research Council, The Government Role in Civilian Technology: Building a New Alliance , Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1992, pp. 29.

For fiscal year 2003, this has resulted in a program budget of approximately $1.6 billion across all federal agencies, with the Department of Defense having the largest SBIR program at $834 million, followed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at $525 million. The DoD SBIR program, is made up of 10 participating components: (see Figure 1 ): Army, Navy, Air Force, Missile Defense Agency (MDA), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Chemical Biological Defense (CBD), Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), and the Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD). NIH counts 23 institutes and agencies making SBIR awards.

See Robert Archibald and David Finifter, “Evaluation of the Department of Defense Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Fast Track Initiative: A Balanced Approach,” op. cit. pp. 211-250.

A GAO report had found that agencies had not adopted a uniform method for weighing commercial potential in SBIR applications. See U.S. General Accounting Office, 1999 , Federal Research: Evaluations of Small Business Innovation Research Can Be Strengthened , AO/RCED-99-114, Washington, D.C.: United States General Accounting Office.

The current assessment is congruent with the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993: http://govinfo ​.library ​.unt.edu/npr/library/misc/s20.html . As characterized by the GAO, GPRA seeks to shift the focus of government decision-making and accountability away from a preoccupation with the activities that are undertaken - such as grants dispensed or inspections made - to a focus on the results of those activities. See http://www ​.gao.gov/new ​.items/gpra/gpra.htm

An important step in the evaluation of SBIR will be to identify existing evaluations of SBIR. See for example, GAO, “Federal Research: Small Business Innovation Research shows success but can be strengthened. Washington, D.C.: U.S. General Accounting Office, 1992 ; and GAO, “Evaluation of Small Business Innovation can be Strengthened,” Washington, D.C.: U.S. General Accounting Office, 1999 . There is also a 1999 unpublished SBA study on the commercialization of SBIR surveys Phase II awards from 1983 to 1993 among non-DoD agencies.

Agency reports include an unpublished 1997 DoD study on the commercialization of DoD SBIR. Following the authorizing legislation for the NRC study, NIH launched a major review of the achievements of its SBIR program. NASA has also completed several reports on its SBIR program. See Annex C for a list of agency reports.

See the attached bibliography.

See National Research Council, Small Business Innovation Research: Challenges and Opportunities , C. Wessner, ed., Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999.

See National Research Council, Government-Industry Partnerships for the Development of New Technologies, Summary Report, C. Wessner, ed., Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2002.

Particularly, with respect to DoD, methodological comparability will be sought to enable multiyear comparisons. Where possible and appropriate, tracking of progress of previously surveyed/interviewed firms will be considered as well.

In particular, the objective of the Fast Track study was to compare Fast Track awards and non-Fast Track awards within the DoD SBIR program , in order to determine the efficacy of Fast Track. See National Research Council, The Small Business Innovation Research Program: An Assessment of the Department of Defense Fast Tack Initiaive , C. Wessner, ed., National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 2000.

See K. Buchholz. "Criteria for the analysis of scientific quality," Scientometrics 32 (2), 1995:195-218.

See M. Brown, T.R. Curlee and S.R. Elliott, “Evaluating Technology Innovation Programs: The Use of Comparison Groups to Identify Impacts,” Research Policy, 24, 1995.

See for example, “Micromachined Ultrasound Ejector Arrays For Aerosol-Based Pulmonary Vaccine Delivery.” Response to SBIR Proposal PHS 2001 NIP Topic 009, Technologies to Overcome the Drawbacks of Needles and Syringes Contract No: 200-2001-00112

See, for example, Maryann Feldman and Maryellen Kelley, “Leveraging Research and Development: The Impact of the Advanced Technology Program,” in National Research Council, The Advanced Technology Program , C. Wessner, ed. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2001, for a potential model of how an agency can use SBIR to help foster specific areas of technical expertise. The paper, however, does not address the extent to which this is a conscious goal of DoD.

A key objective of the 1982 Small Business Innovation Development Act is to increase private sector commercialization derived from federal research and development. The role of SBIR in stimulating commercialization was cited as a justification in the reauthorization of the Act in 1992: that SBIR “has effectively stimulated the commercialization of technology development through federal research and development, benefiting both the public and private sectors of the Nation.”

For analysis of observed variations in timelines for commercialization, see NISTIR 6917 ”Different Timelines for Different Technologies: Evidence from the Advanced Technology Program” at http://www ​.atp.nist.gov ​/eao/ir-6917/chapt5.htm

For a profile of Qualcomm, see http://www ​.inknowvation ​.com/cgi-bin/db4/Qualcomm_Profile ​.html

Buisseret, T.J., Cameron, H., and Georghiou, L. (1995) “What difference does it make? Additionality in the public support of R&D in large firms”, International Journal of Technology Managemen, Vol.10 , Nos. 4/5/6 pp. 587-600. See also, Luke Georghiou, “Impact and Additionality of Innovation Policy,” Paper presented at the Six Countries Programme on Innovation, Spring 2002, Brussels.

See National Research Council, SBIR: An Assessment of the Department o Defense Fast Track Initiative , 2000, op. cit.

Though commonly conceived as a linear process, innovation is characterized by significant complexity. For a discussion of this complexity, see, National Research Council, The Small Business Innovation Research Program: Progam Diversity and Assessmen Challenges , C. Wessner, ed. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2004.

The employment effects of research are most often indirect—through the application or commercialization of the research.

See Link, A. N. and Scott, J. T. Public Accountability: Evaluating Technology-Based Institutions , Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Link and Scott use published agency data and interviews to determine key indicators, including private hurdle rates, additional anticipated development time after Phase II, additional cost, life of the commercialized technology, and proportion of value appropriated by firm. These allow estimates of social and private returns. Link and Scott indicate that the rates of return on the SBIR Phase II investment for Fast Track were 84 percent for society and 25 percent for private investors.

See also section 4.5 below.

See David Audretsch, Jeurgen Weigand and Claudia Weigand, “The Impact of the SBIR on creating entrepreneurial behavior,” Economic Development Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 1, February 2002, pp. 32-38. Audretsch/Weigand/Weigand identify interesting spillover effects of SBIR grants on non-recipient scientists and engineers, in terms of career paths, entrepreneurial activities and their timing, etc.

Intellectual property is divided into two categories: Indusrial property , which includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications of source; and Copyright , which includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, artistic works such as drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures, and architectural designs. Rights related to copyright include those of performing artists in their performances, producers of phonograms in their recordings, and those of broadcasters in their radio and television programs. See http://www ​.wipo.org/about-ip/en/

For a summary of such measures, see Table 1 in European Commission, Directorate General Enterprises “Enterprises and SME” Programme, “European Trend Chart on Innovation,” June 2000. Accessed at http://trendchart ​.cordis ​.lu/Reports/Documents ​/Innovation_and_IPR_June2000.pdf

According to the Small Business Administration, a small business is a concern that is organized for profit, with a place of business in the United States, and which operates primarily within the United States or makes a significant contribution to the U.S. economy through payment of taxes or use of American products, materials, or labor. Further, the concern cannot be dominant in its field, on a national basis. Finally, the concern must meet the numerical small business size standard for its industry. SBA has established a size standard for most industries in the U.S. economy. The most common size standards are 500 employees for most manufacturing and mining industries, 100 employees for all wholesale trade industries, $6 million for most retail and service industries, $28.5 million for most general & heavy construction industries, $12 million for all special trade contractors, and $0.75 million for most agricultural industries.

See also parameters of non-economic benefits, especially Knowledge Benefits, p. 11.

See National Research Council, The Smal Business Innovation Research Program: An Assessment of the Department of Defense Fast Track Initiative , op. cit., pp. 211-250.

Maryann P. Feldman and Maryellen R. Kelley, “Leveraging Research and Development: The impact of the Advanced Technology Program.” National Research Council, The Advanced Technology Program, Assessing Outcomes , 2001 op. cit.

The web site inknowvation.com has a data set on publicly traded SBIR firms.

See Joshua Lerner and Colin Kegler, “Evaluating the Small Business Innovation Research Program: A Literature Review, SBIR: An Assessment of the Department of Defense Fast Track Initiative , C. Wessner, ed., op. cit.

See Adam Jaffee, “Building Program Evaluation into the Design of Public Research Support Programs,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy , forthcoming.

Many empirical studies suggest that small firms are more innovative than large firms or, at minimum, that the difference between large and small firm innovative activity is statistically insignificant. See Zoltan Acs and David B. Audretsch (1991), Innovation and Small Firms (Cambridge: MIT Press); Ricardo J. Caballero and Adam B. Jaffe (1993) ,"How high are the giants' shoulders: an empirical assessment of knowledge spillovers and creative destruction in a model of economic growth," in O.J. Blanchard and S. Fischer (eds.) NBER Macroeconomic Annual 1993 , (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press); and Jaffe and Trajtenberg (2002) , Patents, Citations, and Innovations: A Window on the Knowledge Economy (Cambridge: MIT Press). Concerns relating to size-dependant bias can be addressed by employing James Heckman's well-known techniques for controlling for the effects of sample selection bias. John Scott has recently employed such methods in a survey he conducted on environmental research. See John Scott, T., Environmental Research and Development: US Industrial Research, the Clean Air Act and Environmental Damage (Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2003).

It will be interesting to see if including such controls (for firm size) in our econometric analysis confirms or rejects the hypothesis that there will be a size dependant bias as a result of the selection of indicators in which large firms will score more broadly than small ones. Another pragmatic step we will take to address this issue is to make sure that any metrics we use are normalized for firm size (e.g., patents per employee)

See Annex D for a list of these reports.

See NIH/NSF background papers for specifics.

It would not be cost effective to try to group abstracts in any fashion.

See U.S. General Accounting Office, “Federal Research: Small Business Innovation Research shows success but can be strengthened.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. General Accounting Office, 1992 . The DoD study on the commercialization of DoD SBIR was based on a survey of Phase II awards from 1984–1992. It involved an 80 in-person and 69 telephone interviews with SBIR firms, interviews with DoD program managers and laboratory officials. This study, completed in October 1997, is unpublished. The SBA study on the commercialization of SBIR was based on a 100 percent survey of Phase II awards from 1983 to 1993 of non-DoD agencies, and 43 in-person interviews with SBIR firms. This study, completed in July 1999 is unpublished. The DoD Fast Track study was conducted by the National Research Council. See National Research Council, The Small Business Innovation Research Program: An Assessment of the Department of Defense Fast Track Initiative , 2000, op. cit.

See GAO (1992) op. cit. An unpublished study by the SBA was completed in 1999, and an unpublished study by DoD was completed in 1997. See footnote 27 for description.

All prior efforts addressed only phase II. NIH and perhaps other agencies have indicated that they would be interested in a survey of Phase I winners that did not submit or did not win Phase II award.

Tech-Net is an electronic gateway of technology information and resources, maintained by SBA, for and about small high tech businesses. It provides a search engine for researchers, scientists, state, federal, and local government officials, can serve as a marketing tool for small firms, and can "link" investment opportunities for investors and other sources of capital. Visit SBA Tech-Net database at http://tech-net ​.sba.gov/index.html

Agencies have often reported information that is not mandatory so some of the above is available for many projects. For example, the SBA database through 1993 had names for 78 percent of the PI. It had phone numbers for just over half of the named PI. Number of firm employees was entered in 5 percent of the entries.

For a review of methodologies for evaluating technology programs, see D. Campbell, Research Design for Program Evaluation , Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984. See also L. Georghiou and D. Roessner, “Evaluating Technology Programs,” Research Policy , 29, 2000.

See additional discussion related to the counterfactual issue in Section 7 of this chapter, pp. 32-33.

Available from BRTRC, the consulting/survey firm with whom NRC worked in the 1999 Fast Track study.

“Mapability” means that questions on the survey instrument must map, individually or by groups, to the objectives of the study. A survey is a methodological tool for collecting information to meet a study's objective.

Responses to questions about size are often faulty. Some proposal writers enter the size of their division of the company, rather than whole company. Some pull a number out of the air based on the last estimate they heard. A company may apparently vary substantially in size on several proposals that were awarded the same year (even proposals submitted within days of each other.) However, by grouping the sizes in broad groups most of this type of variation can be avoided. One should keep in mind that companies may be very small, for early awards, grow, while continuing to submit, eventually becoming no longer eligible (over 500) then shrink and start submitting again. What is relevant is the size at the time of the award.

The matrix is provided in Annex G .

See R. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995.

For an illustration of a large set of case studies written by different researchers and using a common data template to ensure consistent collection of data across projects for combination and analysis, see Advanced Technology Program, Peformance of 50 Completed ATP Projects , Status Report-Number 2, NIST SP 950-2 (Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2001).

As noted, the SBIR program has not been extensively researched, particularly in light of the program's size and 20 year history. Early examples of evaluations of the SBIR program include Myers, Stern, and Rorke, 1983 ; Price Waterhouse, 1985 ; and the U.S. General Accounting Office, 1987 , 1989 , 1992 . One early assessment by Scott Wallsten of the subset of SBIR awardees that were publicly traded determined that SBIR grants do not contribute additional funding but instead replace firm-financed R&D spending “dollar for dollar.” See Wallsten, S. J. 1998 , Rethinking the Small Business Innovation Research Program,” in Branscomb and Keller, Eds., Investing In Innovation , MIT Press, Cambridge. While Wallsten's paper has the virtue of being one of the first attempts to assess the impact of SBIR, Josh Lerner questions whether employing a regression framework to assess the marginal impact of public funding on private research spending is the most appropriate tool in assessing public efforts to assist small high technology firms. He points out that “it may well be rational for a firm not to increase its rate of spending, but rather to use the funds to prolong the time before it needs to seek additional capital.” Lerner suggests that “to interpret such a short run reduction in other research spending as a negative signal is very problematic.” See Lerner, “Public Venture Capital: Rationales and Evaluation” in The Small Business Innovaion Reseach Program: Challenges and Opportunities , op. cit., p. 125. See also Lerner, “Angel financing and public policy: An overview, Journal of Banking and Finance , vol. 22, no. 6-8, p. 773-784. and Lerner, “The government as venture capitalist: The long-run impact of the SBIR program,” Journal of Business , July, v. 72, 3, pp. 285-97. More broadly, recent research has shown evidence of additionality. For examples, Saul Lach has showed that government R&D subsidies in Israel induced “additionality" in R&D activity for small firms.” See Saul Lach, “Do R&D subsidies stimulate or displace private R&D? Evidence from Israel, Journal of Industrial Economics December 2002, pp. 369-390. Similarly, a study by Feldman and Kelley on the ATP program found that the recipients of awards attracted additional funding, thus meeting the test of additionality, a phenomena they describe as a “halo effect.” See Maryann P. Feldman; Maryellen R. Kelley, “Leveraging Research and Development: Assessing the Impact of the U.S. Advanced Technology Program,” Small Business Economics Vol. 20, No. 2, 2003. More generally, in a major review of the econometric evidence, David, Hall, and Toole, found the evidence for the “crowding out,” of private capital to be at best problematic. See Paul David, Bronwyn Hall, and Andrew Toole, “Is public R&D a complement or substitute for private R&D? A review of the econometric evidence,” Research Policy 29(4-5): 497-530 (2000). The broader point is that these analyses underscore the challenge of assessing the impact of public support for private R&D and the need to address the challenges in a comprehensive fashion.

For a further discussion, see R. Ruegg and I. Feller, A Toolkit for Evaluating Public R&D Investments: Models, Methods, and Findings from ATP's First Decade, NIST GCR 02-842 (Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology, May 2003).

See, for example, J. Powell and K. Lellock, Development, Commercialization, and Diffusion of Enabling Technologies: Progress Report, NISTIR 6491 (Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology, April 2000).

See A. N. Link, Advanced Technology Program; Early Stage Impacts of the Printed Wiring Board Research Joint Venture , Assessed at Project End , NIST GCR 97-722 (Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology, 1997); and Sheila A. Martin, Daniel L. Winfield, Anne E. Kenyon, John R. Farris, Mohan V. Baal, and Tayler H. Bingham, A Framework for Estimating the National Economic Benefits of ATP Funding of Medical Technologies , GCR 97-737 (Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology, 1998).

See, for example, Maryann Feldman and Maryellen Kelley, Winning an Award from the Advanced Technology Program: Pursuing R&D Strategies in the Public Interest and Benefiting from a Halo Effect, NISTIR 6577 (Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2001).

• Cite this Page National Research Council (US) Committee on Capitalizing on Science, Technology, and Innovation: An Assessment of the Small Business Innovation Research Program. An Assessment of the Small Business Innovation Research Program: Project Methodology. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2004. Methodology Paper.
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Cognitive computing in e-commerce.

Abstract Cognitive Computing deals with simulation of human thought processing and analyzing it. Through analysis, Algorithms are generated by system in order to gain self learning capabilities. We can use cognitive computing in various platforms like Artificial Intelligence, cyber security, E-commerce, Image processing. In this paper usage of cognitive computing in E-Commerce is discussed. Introduction To Cognitive Computing Cognitive Computing...

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Developing an Effective Marketing Plan for a Bank

Bank Marketing Introduction As a team member of Sycorr, a technology consulting firm focusing on the banking industry, I have been excited to learn more about the business side of the industry we serve. Because we are not a bank, I selected a client of ours, Bell State Bank & Trust, to focus on for this paper. Although Bell State...

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Working Capital Management

Background information Working capital refers to the funds that are used to meet short-term responsibilities or the funds used to carry out the day-to-day activities of an organization. The management of these resources is equivalently important as the management of the long term finance funds. The management of the working capital is fundamental in making sure that the operations of...

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Food Marketing Strategies

Food is amazing. It is a necessity in order for us to survive and eating it is certainly something we look forward to at any time of day, every day. And it also happens to be one of the most lucrative items for a business to sell in the United States. Many people believe that the key to having a...

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Dollar Tree, Inc.

Executive summary The Dollar tree Inc company is a leading global operator of discount variety stores which offers a merchandise at a fixed price of a dollar in both United States and Canada. Therefore it can be comprehensively described as a customer-oriented, value-driven store which operates at a one dollar price point. Dollar Tree company was established in Dalton in...

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Executive Summary Whirlpool is a famous company across the world for the production, distribution and selling of home appliances. This company started in 1911 as a family business venture and has grown over the years to become a market leader across the globe. It ranks among the best companies across the world as of present. This company was started by...

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Planning Theory Tasks

Abstract This paper discusses planning theory and particularly the urban planning. Major cities and even small towns have poor designs as a result of poor planning. The paper looks at the history of planning and its importance especially in urban areas. It also analyzes the factors that affect planning, ranging from political interference to societal principles as well as the...

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Prestcom Analysis

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Doing Business In India

India is a country that is richly diverse and complex and therefore, it might be difficult for an entrepreneur to determine exactly or to make general conclusions that may be appropriate for doing business there. There are many factors to consider such as the economic, political, social, cultural, religious, as well as geographic ones. There are also other things to...

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Opening a MacDonald’s in India

In the current century of globalization, people around the globe are able to share different kinds of foods from different parts of the world all thanks to the global business in foods and beverages companies and hotels. Now, consumer foods service is the leading driver of global growth in economy and now the fast foods industry is able to reach...

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Individuals and businesses usually gather data for the important creation of facts and business strategies. The most widely used tool for research applicable to both academic and business purposes is what we call a research paper. Research White Paper formatting differs from term papers since it presents comprehensive detail on the problem or the topic being addressed.

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What Is a Research Paper?

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Basic Parts of a Research Paper

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Purposes of a Research Paper

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Research Paper Examples

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A Sample Research Paper on Child Abuse

A research paper represents the pinnacle of academic investigation, a scholarly manuscript that encapsulates a detailed study, analysis, or argument based on extensive independent research. It is an embodiment of the researcher’s ability to synthesize a wealth of information, draw insightful conclusions, and contribute novel perspectives to the existing body of knowledge within a specific field. At its core, a research paper strives to push the boundaries of what is known, challenging existing theories and proposing new insights that could potentially reshape the understanding of a particular subject area.

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Research papers can be categorized into various types, each with distinct objectives and methodologies. The most common types include:

• Analytical Research Paper: This type focuses on analyzing different viewpoints represented in the scholarly literature or data. The author critically evaluates and interprets the information, aiming to provide a comprehensive understanding of the topic.
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Understanding the nuances and objectives of these various types of research papers is crucial for scholars and students alike, as it guides their approach to conducting and writing up their research. Each type demands a unique set of skills and perspectives, pushing the author to think critically and creatively about their subject matter. As the academic landscape continues to evolve, the research paper remains a fundamental tool for disseminating knowledge, encouraging innovation, and fostering a culture of inquiry and exploration.

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A research paper is an academic piece of writing, so you need to follow all the requirements and standards. Otherwise, it will be impossible to get the high results. To make it easier for you, we have analyzed the structure and peculiarities of a sample research paper on the topic ‘Child Abuse’.

The paper includes 7300+ words, a detailed outline, citations are in APA formatting style, and bibliography with 28 sources.

To write any paper you need to write a great outline. This is the key to a perfect paper. When you organize your paper, it is easier for you to present the ideas logically, without jumping from one thought to another.

In the outline, you need to name all the parts of your paper. That is to say, an introduction, main body, conclusion, bibliography, some papers require abstract and proposal as well.

A good outline will serve as a guide through your paper making it easier for the reader to follow your ideas.

I. Introduction

Ii. estimates of child abuse: methodological limitations, iii. child abuse and neglect: the legalities, iv. corporal punishment versus child abuse, v. child abuse victims: the patterns, vi. child abuse perpetrators: the patterns, vii. explanations for child abuse, viii. consequences of child abuse and neglect, ix. determining abuse: how to tell whether a child is abused or neglected, x. determining abuse: interviewing children, xi. how can society help abused children and abusive families, introduction.

An introduction should include a thesis statement and the main points that you will discuss in the paper.

A thesis statement is one sentence in which you need to show your point of view. You will then develop this point of view through the whole piece of work:

‘The impact of child abuse affects more than one’s childhood, as the psychological and physical injuries often extend well into adulthood.’

Child abuse is a very real and prominent social problem today. The impact of child abuse affects more than one’s childhood, as the psychological and physical injuries often extend well into adulthood. Most children are defenseless against abuse, are dependent on their caretakers, and are unable to protect themselves from these acts.

Childhood serves as the basis for growth, development, and socialization. Throughout adolescence, children are taught how to become productive and positive, functioning members of society. Much of the socializing of children, particularly in their very earliest years, comes at the hands of family members. Unfortunately, the messages conveyed to and the actions against children by their families are not always the positive building blocks for which one would hope.

In 2008, the Children’s Defense Fund reported that each day in America, 2,421 children are confirmed as abused or neglected, 4 children are killed by abuse or neglect, and 78 babies die before their first birthday. These daily estimates translate into tremendous national figures. In 2006, caseworkers substantiated an estimated 905,000 reports of child abuse or neglect. Of these, 64% suffered neglect, 16% were physically abused, 9% were sexually abused, 7% were emotionally or psychologically maltreated, and 2% were medically neglected. In addition, 15% of the victims experienced “other” types of maltreatment such as abandonment, threats of harm to the child, and congenital drug addiction (National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, 2006). Obviously, this problem is a substantial one.

In the main body, you dwell upon the topic of your paper. You provide your ideas and support them with evidence. The evidence include all the data and material you have found, analyzed and systematized. You can support your point of view with different statistical data, with surveys, and the results of different experiments. Your task is to show that your idea is right, and make the reader interested in the topic.

In this example, a writer analyzes the issue of child abuse: different statistical data, controversies regarding the topic, examples of the problem and the consequences.

Several issues arise when considering the amount of child abuse that occurs annually in the United States. Child abuse is very hard to estimate because much (or most) of it is not reported. Children who are abused are unlikely to report their victimization because they may not know any better, they still love their abusers and do not want to see them taken away (or do not themselves want to be taken away from their abusers), they have been threatened into not reporting, or they do not know to whom they should report their victimizations. Still further, children may report their abuse only to find the person to whom they report does not believe them or take any action on their behalf. Continuing to muddy the waters, child abuse can be disguised as legitimate injury, particularly because young children are often somewhat uncoordinated and are still learning to accomplish physical tasks, may not know their physical limitations, and are often legitimately injured during regular play. In the end, children rarely report child abuse; most often it is an adult who makes a report based on suspicion (e.g., teacher, counselor, doctor, etc.).

Even when child abuse is reported, social service agents and investigators may not follow up or substantiate reports for a variety of reasons. Parents can pretend, lie, or cover up injuries or stories of how injuries occurred when social service agents come to investigate. Further, there is not always agreement about what should be counted as abuse by service providers and researchers. In addition, social service agencies/agents have huge caseloads and may only be able to deal with the most serious forms of child abuse, leaving the more “minor” forms of abuse unsupervised and unmanaged (and uncounted in the statistical totals).

While most laws about child abuse and neglect fall at the state levels, federal legislation provides a foundation for states by identifying a minimum set of acts and behaviors that define child abuse and neglect. The Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), which stems from the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003, defines child abuse and neglect as, at minimum, “(1) any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, or exploitation; or (2) an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk or serious harm.”

Using these minimum standards, each state is responsible for providing its own definition of maltreatment within civil and criminal statutes. When defining types of child abuse, many states incorporate similar elements and definitions into their legal statutes. For example, neglect is often defined as failure to provide for a child’s basic needs. Neglect can encompass physical elements (e.g., failure to provide necessary food or shelter, or lack of appropriate supervision), medical elements (e.g., failure to provide necessary medical or mental health treatment), educational elements (e.g., failure to educate a child or attend to special educational needs), and emotional elements (e.g., inattention to a child’s emotional needs, failure to provide psychological care, or permitting the child to use alcohol or other drugs). Failure to meet needs does not always mean a child is neglected, as situations such as poverty, cultural values, and community standards can influence the application of legal statutes. In addition, several states distinguish between failure to provide based on financial inability and failure to provide for no apparent financial reason.

Statutes on physical abuse typically include elements of physical injury (ranging from minor bruises to severe fractures or death) as a result of punching, beating, kicking, biting, shaking, throwing, stabbing, choking, hitting (with a hand, stick, strap, or other object), burning, or otherwise harming a child. Such injury is considered abuse regardless of the intention of the caretaker. In addition, many state statutes include allowing or encouraging another person to physically harm a child (such as noted above) as another form of physical abuse in and of itself. Sexual abuse usually includes activities by a parent or caretaker such as fondling a child’s genitals, penetration, incest, rape, sodomy, indecent exposure, and exploitation through prostitution or the production of pornographic materials.

Finally, emotional or psychological abuse typically is defined as a pattern of behavior that impairs a child’s emotional development or sense of self-worth. This may include constant criticism, threats, or rejection, as well as withholding love, support, or guidance. Emotional abuse is often the most difficult to prove and, therefore, child protective services may not be able to intervene without evidence of harm to the child. Some states suggest that harm may be evidenced by an observable or substantial change in behavior, emotional response, or cognition, or by anxiety, depression, withdrawal, or aggressive behavior. At a practical level, emotional abuse is almost always present when other types of abuse are identified.

Some states include an element of substance abuse in their statutes on child abuse. Circumstances that can be considered substance abuse include (a) the manufacture of a controlled substance in the presence of a child or on the premises occupied by a child (Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Virginia); (b) allowing a child to be present where the chemicals or equipment for the manufacture of controlled substances are used (Arizona, New Mexico); (c) selling, distributing, or giving drugs or alcohol to a child (Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, and Texas); (d) use of a controlled substance by a caregiver that impairs the caregiver’s ability to adequately care for the child (Kentucky, New York, Rhode Island, and Texas); and (e) exposure of the child to drug paraphernalia (North Dakota), the criminal sale or distribution of drugs (Montana, Virginia), or drug-related activity (District of Columbia).

One of the most difficult issues with which the U.S. legal system must contend is that of allowing parents the right to use corporal punishment when disciplining a child, while not letting them cross over the line into the realm of child abuse. Some parents may abuse their children under the guise of discipline, and many instances of child abuse arise from angry parents who go too far when disciplining their children with physical punishment. Generally, state statutes use terms such as “reasonable discipline of a minor,” “causes only temporary, short-term pain,” and may cause “the potential for bruising” but not “permanent damage, disability, disfigurement or injury” to the child as ways of indicating the types of discipline behaviors that are legal. However, corporal punishment that is “excessive,” “malicious,” “endangers the bodily safety of,” or is “an intentional infliction of injury” is not allowed under most state statutes (e.g., state of Florida child abuse statute).

Most research finds that the use of physical punishment (most often spanking) is not an effective method of discipline. The literature on this issue tends to find that spanking stops misbehavior, but no more effectively than other firm measures. Further, it seems to hinder rather than improve general compliance/obedience (particularly when the child is not in the presence of the punisher). Researchers have also explained why physical punishment is not any more effective at gaining child compliance than nonviolent forms of discipline. Some of the problems that arise when parents use spanking or other forms of physical punishment include the fact that spanking does not teach what children should do, nor does it provide them with alternative behavior options should the circumstance arise again. Spanking also undermines reasoning, explanation, or other forms of parental instruction because children cannot learn, reason, or problem solve well while experiencing threat, pain, fear, or anger. Further, the use of physical punishment is inconsistent with nonviolent principles, or parental modeling. In addition, the use of spanking chips away at the bonds of affection between parents and children, and tends to induce resentment and fear. Finally, it hinders the development of empathy and compassion in children, and they do not learn to take responsibility for their own behavior (Pitzer, 1997).

One of the biggest problems with the use of corporal punishment is that it can escalate into much more severe forms of violence. Usually, parents spank because they are angry (and somewhat out of control) and they can’t think of other ways to discipline. When parents are acting as a result of emotional triggers, the notion of discipline is lost while punishment and pain become the foci.

In 2006, of the children who were found to be victims of child abuse, nearly 75% of them were first-time victims (or had not come to the attention of authorities prior). A slight majority of child abuse victims were girls—51.5%, compared to 48% of abuse victims being boys. The younger the child, the more at risk he or she is for child abuse and neglect victimization. Specifically, the rate for infants (birth to 1 year old) was approximately 24 per 1,000 children of the same age group. The victimization rate for children 1–3 years old was 14 per 1,000 children of the same age group. The abuse rate for children aged 4– 7 years old declined further to 13 per 1,000 children of the same age group. African American, American Indian, and Alaska Native children, as well as children of multiple races, had the highest rates of victimization. White and Latino children had lower rates, and Asian children had the lowest rates of child abuse and neglect victimization. Regarding living arrangements, nearly 27% of victims were living with a single mother, 20% were living with married parents, while 22% were living with both parents but the marital status was unknown. (This reporting element had nearly 40% missing data, however.) Regarding disability, nearly 8% of child abuse victims had some degree of mental retardation, emotional disturbance, visual or hearing impairment, learning disability, physical disability, behavioral problems, or other medical problems. Unfortunately, data indicate that for many victims, the efforts of the child protection services system were not successful in preventing subsequent victimization. Children who had been prior victims of maltreatment were 96% more likely to experience another occurrence than those who were not prior victims. Further, child victims who were reported to have a disability were 52% more likely to experience recurrence than children without a disability. Finally, the oldest victims (16–21 years of age) were the least likely to experience a recurrence, and were 51% less likely to be victimized again than were infants (younger than age 1) (National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, 2006).

Child fatalities are the most tragic consequence of maltreatment. Yet, each year, children die from abuse and neglect. In 2006, an estimated 1,530 children in the United States died due to abuse or neglect. The overall rate of child fatalities was 2 deaths per 100,000 children. More than 40% of child fatalities were attributed to neglect, but physical abuse also was a major contributor. Approximately 78% of the children who died due to child abuse and neglect were younger than 4 years old, and infant boys (younger than 1) had the highest rate of fatalities at 18.5 deaths per 100,000 boys of the same age in the national population. Infant girls had a rate of 14.7 deaths per 100,000 girls of the same age (National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, 2006).

One question to be addressed regarding child fatalities is why infants have such a high rate of death when compared to toddlers and adolescents. Children under 1 year old pose an immense amount of responsibility for their caretakers: they are completely dependent and need constant attention. Children this age are needy, impulsive, and not amenable to verbal control or effective communication. This can easily overwhelm vulnerable parents. Another difficulty associated with infants is that they are physically weak and small. Injuries to infants can be fatal, while similar injuries to older children might not be. The most common cause of death in children less than 1 year is cerebral trauma (often the result of shaken-baby syndrome). Exasperated parents can deliver shakes or blows without realizing how little it takes to cause irreparable or fatal damage to an infant. Research informs us that two of the most common triggers for fatal child abuse are crying that will not cease and toileting accidents. Both of these circumstances are common in infants and toddlers whose only means of communication often is crying, and who are limited in mobility and cannot use the toilet. Finally, very young children cannot assist in injury diagnoses. Children who have been injured due to abuse or neglect often cannot communicate to medical professionals about where it hurts, how it hurts, and so forth. Also, nonfatal injuries can turn fatal in the absence of care by neglectful parents or parents who do not want medical professionals to possibly identify an injury as being the result of abuse.

Estimates reveal that nearly 80% of perpetrators of child abuse were parents of the victim. Other relatives accounted for nearly 7%, and unmarried partners of parents made up 4% of perpetrators. Of those perpetrators that were parents, over 90% were biological parents, 4% were stepparents, and 0.7% were adoptive parents. Of this group, approximately 58% of perpetrators were women and 42% were men. Women perpetrators are typically younger than men. The average age for women abusers was 31 years old, while for men the average was 34 years old. Forty percent of women who abused were younger than 30 years of age, compared with 33% of men being under 30. The racial distribution of perpetrators is similar to that of victims. Fifty-four percent were white, 21% were African American, and 20% were Hispanic/Latino (National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, 2006).

There are many factors that are associated with child abuse. Some of the more common/well-accepted explanations are individual pathology, parent–child interaction, past abuse in the family (or social learning), situational factors, and cultural support for physical punishment along with a lack of cultural support for helping parents here in the United States.

The first explanation centers on the individual pathology of a parent or caretaker who is abusive. This theory focuses on the idea that people who abuse their children have something wrong with their individual personality or biological makeup. Such psychological pathologies may include having anger control problems; being depressed or having post-partum depression; having a low tolerance for frustration (e.g., children can be extremely frustrating: they don’t always listen; they constantly push the line of how far they can go; and once the line has been established, they are constantly treading on it to make sure it hasn’t moved. They are dependent and self-centered, so caretakers have very little privacy or time to themselves); being rigid (e.g., having no tolerance for differences—for example, what if your son wanted to play with dolls? A rigid father would not let him, laugh at him for wanting to, punish him when he does, etc.); having deficits in empathy (parents who cannot put themselves in the shoes of their children cannot fully understand what their children need emotionally); or being disorganized, inefficient, and ineffectual. (Parents who are unable to manage their own lives are unlikely to be successful at managing the lives of their children, and since many children want and need limits, these parents are unable to set them or adhere to them.)

Biological pathologies that may increase the likelihood of someone becoming a child abuser include having substance abuse or dependence problems, or having persistent or reoccurring physical health problems (especially health problems that can be extremely painful and can cause a person to become more self-absorbed, both qualities that can give rise to a lack of patience, lower frustration tolerance, and increased stress).

The second explanation for child abuse centers on the interaction between the parent and the child, noting that certain types of parents are more likely to abuse, and certain types of children are more likely to be abused, and when these less-skilled parents are coupled with these more difficult children, child abuse is the most likely to occur. Discussion here focuses on what makes a parent less skilled, and what makes a child more difficult. Characteristics of unskilled parents are likely to include such traits as only pointing out what children do wrong and never giving any encouragement for good behavior, and failing to be sensitive to the emotional needs of children. Less skilled parents tend to have unrealistic expectations of children. They may engage in role reversal— where the parents make the child take care of them—and view the parent’s happiness and well-being as the responsibility of the child. Some parents view the parental role as extremely stressful and experience little enjoyment from being a parent. Finally, less-skilled parents tend to have more negative perceptions regarding their child(ren). For example, perhaps the child has a different shade of skin than they expected and this may disappoint or anger them, they may feel the child is being manipulative (long before children have this capability), or they may view the child as the scapegoat for all the parents’ or family’s problems. Theoretically, parents with these characteristics would be more likely to abuse their children, but if they are coupled with having a difficult child, they would be especially likely to be abusive. So, what makes a child more difficult? Certainly, through no fault of their own, children may have characteristics that are associated with child care that is more demanding and difficult than in the “normal” or “average” situation. Such characteristics can include having physical and mental disabilities (autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], hyperactivity, etc.); the child may be colicky, frequently sick, be particularly needy, or cry more often. In addition, some babies are simply unhappier than other babies for reasons that cannot be known. Further, infants are difficult even in the best of circumstances. They are unable to communicate effectively, and they are completely dependent on their caretakers for everything, including eating, diaper changing, moving around, entertainment, and emotional bonding. Again, these types of children, being more difficult, are more likely to be victims of child abuse.

Nonetheless, each of these types of parents and children alone cannot explain the abuse of children, but it is the interaction between them that becomes the key. Unskilled parents may produce children that are happy and not as needy, and even though they are unskilled, they do not abuse because the child takes less effort. At the same time, children who are more difficult may have parents who are skilled and are able to handle and manage the extra effort these children take with aplomb. However, risks for child abuse increase when unskilled parents must contend with difficult children.

Social learning or past abuse in the family is a third common explanation for child abuse. Here, the theory concentrates not only on what children learn when they see or experience violence in their homes, but additionally on what they do not learn as a result of these experiences. Social learning theory in the context of family violence stresses that if children are abused or see abuse (toward siblings or a parent), those interactions and violent family members become the representations and role models for their future familial interactions. In this way, what children learn is just as important as what they do not learn. Children who witness or experience violence may learn that this is the way parents deal with children, or that violence is an acceptable method of child rearing and discipline. They may think when they become parents that “violence worked on me when I was a child, and I turned out fine.” They may learn unhealthy relationship interaction patterns; children may witness the negative interactions of parents and they may learn the maladaptive or violent methods of expressing anger, reacting to stress, or coping with conflict.

What is equally as important, though, is that they are unlikely to learn more acceptable and nonviolent ways of rearing children, interacting with family members, and working out conflict. Here it may happen that an adult who was abused as a child would like to be nonviolent toward his or her own children, but when the chips are down and the child is misbehaving, this abused-child-turned-adult does not have a repertoire of nonviolent strategies to try. This parent is more likely to fall back on what he or she knows as methods of discipline.

Something important to note here is that not all abused children grow up to become abusive adults. Children who break the cycle were often able to establish and maintain one healthy emotional relationship with someone during their childhoods (or period of young adulthood). For instance, they may have received emotional support from a nonabusing parent, or they received social support and had a positive relationship with another adult during their childhood (e.g., teacher, coach, minister, neighbor, etc.). Abused children who participate in therapy during some period of their lives can often break the cycle of violence. In addition, adults who were abused but are able to form an emotionally supportive and satisfying relationship with a mate can make the transition to being nonviolent in their family interactions.

Moving on to a fourth familiar explanation for child abuse, there are some common situational factors that influence families and parents and increase the risks for child abuse. Typically, these are factors that increase family stress or social isolation. Specifically, such factors may include receiving public assistance or having low socioeconomic status (a combination of low income and low education). Other factors include having family members who are unemployed, underemployed (working in a job that requires lower qualifications than an individual possesses), or employed only part time. These financial difficulties cause great stress for families in meeting the needs of the individual members. Other stress-inducing familial characteristics are single-parent households and larger family size. Finally, social isolation can be devastating for families and family members. Having friends to talk to, who can be relied upon, and with whom kids can be dropped off occasionally is tremendously important for personal growth and satisfaction in life. In addition, social isolation and stress can cause individuals to be quick to lose their tempers, as well as cause people to be less rational in their decision making and to make mountains out of mole hills. These situations can lead families to be at greater risk for child abuse.

Finally, cultural views and supports (or lack thereof) can lead to greater amounts of child abuse in a society such as the United States. One such cultural view is that of societal support for physical punishment. This is problematic because there are similarities between the way criminals are dealt with and the way errant children are handled. The use of capital punishment is advocated for seriously violent criminals, and people are quick to use such idioms as “spare the rod and spoil the child” when it comes to the discipline or punishment of children. In fact, it was not until quite recently that parenting books began to encourage parents to use other strategies than spanking or other forms of corporal punishment in the discipline of their children. Only recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics has come out and recommended that parents do not spank or use other forms of violence on their children because of the deleterious effects such methods have on youngsters and their bonds with their parents. Nevertheless, regardless of recommendations, the culture of corporal punishment persists.

Another cultural view in the United States that can give rise to greater incidents of child abuse is the belief that after getting married, couples of course should want and have children. Culturally, Americans consider that children are a blessing, raising kids is the most wonderful thing a person can do, and everyone should have children. Along with this notion is the idea that motherhood is always wonderful; it is the most fulfilling thing a woman can do; and the bond between a mother and her child is strong, glorious, and automatic—all women love being mothers. Thus, culturally (and theoretically), society nearly insists that married couples have children and that they will love having children. But, after children are born, there is not much support for couples who have trouble adjusting to parenthood, or who do not absolutely love their new roles as parents. People look askance at parents who need help, and cannot believe parents who say anything negative about parenthood. As such, theoretically, society has set up a situation where couples are strongly encouraged to have kids, are told they will love kids, but then society turns a blind or disdainful eye when these same parents need emotional, financial, or other forms of help or support. It is these types of cultural viewpoints that increase the risks for child abuse in society.

The consequences of child abuse are tremendous and long lasting. Research has shown that the traumatic experience of childhood abuse is life changing. These costs may surface during adolescence, or they may not become evident until abused children have grown up and become abusing parents or abused spouses. Early identification and treatment is important to minimize these potential long-term effects. Whenever children say they have been abused, it is imperative that they be taken seriously and their abuse be reported. Suspicions of child abuse must be reported as well. If there is a possibility that a child is or has been abused, an investigation must be conducted.

Children who have been abused may exhibit traits such as the inability to love or have faith in others. This often translates into adults who are unable to establish lasting and stable personal relationships. These individuals have trouble with physical closeness and touching as well as emotional intimacy and trust. Further, these qualities tend to cause a fear of entering into new relationships, as well as the sabotaging of any current ones.

Psychologically, children who have been abused tend to have poor self-images or are passive, withdrawn, or clingy. They may be angry individuals who are filled with rage, anxiety, and a variety of fears. They are often aggressive, disruptive, and depressed. Many abused children have flashbacks and nightmares about the abuse they have experienced, and this may cause sleep problems as well as drug and alcohol problems. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and antisocial personality disorder are both typical among maltreated children. Research has also shown that most abused children fail to reach “successful psychosocial functioning,” and are thus not resilient and do not resume a “normal life” after the abuse has ended.

Socially (and likely because of these psychological injuries), abused children have trouble in school, will have difficulty getting and remaining employed, and may commit a variety of illegal or socially inappropriate behaviors. Many studies have shown that victims of child abuse are likely to participate in high-risk behaviors such as alcohol or drug abuse, the use of tobacco, and high-risk sexual behaviors (e.g., unprotected sex, large numbers of sexual partners). Later in life, abused children are more likely to have been arrested and homeless. They are also less able to defend themselves in conflict situations and guard themselves against repeated victimizations.

Medically, abused children likely will experience health problems due to the high frequency of physical injuries they receive. In addition, abused children experience a great deal of emotional turmoil and stress, which can also have a significant impact on their physical condition. These health problems are likely to continue occurring into adulthood. Some of these longer-lasting health problems include headaches; eating problems; problems with toileting; and chronic pain in the back, stomach, chest, and genital areas. Some researchers have noted that abused children may experience neurological impairment and problems with intellectual functioning, while others have found a correlation between abuse and heart, lung, and liver disease, as well as cancer (Thomas, 2004).

Victims of sexual abuse show an alarming number of disturbances as adults. Some dislike and avoid sex, or experience sexual problems or disorders, while other victims appear to enjoy sexual activities that are self-defeating or maladaptive—normally called “dysfunctional sexual behavior”—and have many sexual partners.

Abused children also experience a wide variety of developmental delays. Many do not reach physical, cognitive, or emotional developmental milestones at the typical time, and some never accomplish what they are supposed to during childhood socialization. In the next section, these developmental delays are discussed as a means of identifying children who may be abused.

There are two primary ways of identifying children who are abused: spotting and evaluating physical injuries, and detecting and appraising developmental delays. Distinguishing physical injuries due to abuse can be difficult, particularly among younger children who are likely to get hurt or receive injuries while they are playing and learning to become ambulatory. Nonetheless, there are several types of wounds that children are unlikely to give themselves during their normal course of play and exploration. These less likely injuries may signal instances of child abuse.

While it is true that children are likely to get bruises, particularly when they are learning to walk or crawl, bruises on infants are not normal. Also, the back of the legs, upper arms, or on the chest, neck, head, or genitals are also locations where bruises are unlikely to occur during normal childhood activity. Further, bruises with clean patterns, like hand prints, buckle prints, or hangers (to name a few), are good examples of the types of bruises children do not give themselves.

Another area of physical injury where the source of the injury can be difficult to detect is fractures. Again, children fall out of trees, or crash their bikes, and can break limbs. These can be normal parts of growing up. However, fractures in infants less than 12 months old are particularly suspect, as infants are unlikely to be able to accomplish the types of movement necessary to actually break a leg or an arm. Further, multiple fractures, particularly more than one on a bone, should be examined more closely. Spiral or torsion fractures (when the bone is broken by twisting) are suspect because when children break their bones due to play injuries, the fractures are usually some other type (e.g., linear, oblique, compacted). In addition, when parents don’t know about the fracture(s) or how it occurred, abuse should be considered, because when children get these types of injuries, they need comfort and attention.

Head and internal injuries are also those that may signal abuse. Serious blows to the head cause internal head injuries, and this is very different from the injuries that result from bumping into things. Abused children are also likely to experience internal injuries like those to the abdomen, liver, kidney, and bladder. They may suffer a ruptured spleen, or intestinal perforation. These types of damages rarely happen by accident.

Burns are another type of physical injury that can happen by accident or by abuse. Nevertheless, there are ways to tell these types of burn injuries apart. The types of burns that should be examined and investigated are those where the burns are in particular locations. Burns to the bottom of the feet, genitals, abdomen, or other inaccessible spots should be closely considered. Burns of the whole hand or those to the buttocks are also unlikely to happen as a result of an accident.

Turning to the detection and appraisal of developmental delays, one can more readily assess possible abuse by considering what children of various ages should be able to accomplish, than by noting when children are delayed and how many milestones on which they are behind schedule. Importantly, a few delays in reaching milestones can be expected, since children develop individually and not always according to the norm. Nonetheless, when children are abused, their development is likely to be delayed in numerous areas and across many milestones.

As children develop and grow, they should be able to crawl, walk, run, talk, control going to the bathroom, write, set priorities, plan ahead, trust others, make friends, develop a good self-image, differentiate between feeling and behavior, and get their needs met in appropriate ways. As such, when children do not accomplish these feats, their circumstances should be examined.

Infants who are abused or neglected typically develop what is termed failure to thrive syndrome. This syndrome is characterized by slow, inadequate growth, or not “filling out” physically. They have a pale, colorless complexion and dull eyes. They are not likely to spend much time looking around, and nothing catches their eyes. They may show other signs of lack of nutrition such as cuts, bruises that do not heal in a timely way, and discolored fingernails. They are also not trusting and may not cry much, as they are not expecting to have their needs met. Older infants may not have developed any language skills, or these developments are quite slow. This includes both verbal and nonverbal means of communication.

Toddlers who are abused often become hypervigilant about their environments and others’ moods. They are more outwardly focused than a typical toddler (who is quite self-centered) and may be unable to separate themselves as individuals, or consider themselves as distinct beings. In this way, abused toddlers cannot focus on tasks at hand because they are too concerned about others’ reactions. They don’t play with toys, have no interest in exploration, and seem unable to enjoy life. They are likely to accept losses with little reaction, and may have age-inappropriate knowledge of sex and sexual relations. Finally, toddlers, whether they are abused or not, begin to mirror their parents’ behaviors. Thus, toddlers who are abused may mimic the abuse when they are playing with dolls or “playing house.”

Developmental delays can also be detected among abused young adolescents. Some signs include the failure to learn cause and effect, since their parents are so inconsistent. They have no energy for learning and have not developed beyond one- or two-word commands. They probably cannot follow complicated directions (such as two to three tasks per instruction), and they are unlikely to be able to think for themselves. Typically, they have learned that failure is totally unacceptable, but they are more concerned with the teacher’s mood than with learning and listening to instruction. Finally, they are apt to have been inadequately toilet trained and thus may be unable to control their bladders.

Older adolescents, because they are likely to have been abused for a longer period of time, continue to get further and further behind in their developmental achievements. Abused children this age become family nurturers. They take care of their parents and cater to their parents’ needs, rather than the other way around. In addition, they probably take care of any younger siblings and do the household chores. Because of these default responsibilities, they usually do not participate in school activities; they frequently miss days at school; and they have few, if any, friends. Because they have become so hypervigilant and have increasingly delayed development, they lose interest in and become disillusioned with education. They develop low self-esteem and little confidence, but seem old for their years. Children this age who are abused are still likely to be unable to control their bladders and may have frequent toileting accidents.

Other developmental delays can occur and be observed in abused and neglected children of any age. For example, malnutrition and withdrawal can be noticed in infants through teenagers. Maltreated children frequently have persistent or untreated illnesses, and these can become permanent disabilities if medical conditions go untreated for a long enough time. Another example can be the consequences of neurological damage. Beyond being a medical issue, this type of damage can cause problems with social behavior and impulse control, which, again, can be discerned in various ages of children.

Once child abuse is suspected, law enforcement officers, child protection workers, or various other practitioners may need to interview the child about the abuse or neglect he or she may have suffered. Interviewing children can be extremely difficult because children at various stages of development can remember only certain parts or aspects of the events in their lives. Also, interviewers must be careful that they do not put ideas or answers into the heads of the children they are interviewing. There are several general recommendations when interviewing children about the abuse they may have experienced. First, interviewers must acknowledge that even when children are abused, they likely still love their parents. They do not want to be taken away from their parents, nor do they want to see their parents get into trouble. Interviewers must not blame the parents or be judgmental about them or the child’s family. Beyond that, interviews should take place in a safe, neutral location. Interviewers can use dolls and role-play to help children express the types of abuse of which they may be victims.

Finally, interviewers must ask age-appropriate questions. For example, 3-year-olds can probably only answer questions about what happened and who was involved. Four- to five-year-olds can also discuss where the incidents occurred. Along with what, who, and where, 6- to 8-year-olds can talk about the element of time, or when the abuse occurred. Nine- to 10-year-olds are able to add commentary about the number of times the abuse occurred. Finally, 11-year-olds and older children can additionally inform interviewers about the circumstances of abusive instances.

A conclusion is not a summary of what a writer has already mentioned. On the contrary, it is the last point made. Taking every detail of the investigation, the researcher makes the concluding point. In this part of a paper, you need to put a full stop in your research. You need to persuade the reader in your opinion.

Never add any new information in the conclusion. You can present solutions to the problem and you dwell upon the results, but only if this information has been already mentioned in the main body.

Child advocates recommend a variety of strategies to aid families and children experiencing abuse. These recommendations tend to focus on societal efforts as well as more individual efforts. One common strategy advocated is the use of public service announcements that encourage individuals to report any suspected child abuse. Currently, many mandatory reporters (those required by law to report abuse such as teachers, doctors, and social service agency employees) and members of communities feel that child abuse should not be reported unless there is substantial evidence that abuse is indeed occurring. Child advocates stress that this notion should be changed, and that people should report child abuse even if it is only suspected. Public service announcements should stress that if people report suspected child abuse, the worst that can happen is that they might be wrong, but in the grander scheme of things that is really not so bad.

Child advocates also stress that greater interagency cooperation is needed. This cooperation should be evident between women’s shelters, child protection agencies, programs for at-risk children, medical agencies, and law enforcement officers. These agencies typically do not share information, and if they did, more instances of child abuse would come to the attention of various authorities and could be investigated and managed. Along these lines, child protection agencies and programs should receive more funding. When budgets are cut, social services are often the first things to go or to get less financial support. Child advocates insist that with more resources, child protection agencies could hire more workers, handle more cases, conduct more investigations, and follow up with more children and families.

Continuing, more educational efforts must be initiated about issues such as punishment and discipline styles and strategies; having greater respect for children; as well as informing the community about what child abuse is, and how to recognize it. In addition, Americans must alter the cultural orientation about child bearing and child rearing. Couples who wish to remain child-free must be allowed to do so without disdain. And, it must be acknowledged that raising children is very difficult, is not always gloriously wonderful, and that parents who seek help should be lauded and not criticized. These kinds of efforts can help more children to be raised in nonviolent, emotionally satisfying families, and thus become better adults.

Bibliography

When you write a paper, make sure you are aware of all the formatting requirements. Incorrect formatting can lower your mark, so do not underestimate the importance of this part.

Organizing your bibliography is quite a tedious and time-consuming task. Still, you need to do it flawlessly. For this reason, analyze all the standards you need to meet or ask professionals to help you with it. All the comas, colons, brackets etc. matter. They truly do.

Bibliography:

• American Academy of Pediatrics: https://www.aap.org/
• Bancroft, L., & Silverman, J. G. (2002). The batterer as parent. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, 42 U.S.C.A. § 5106g (1998).
• Childhelp: Child Abuse Statistics: https://www.childhelp.org/child-abuse-statistics/
• Children’s Defense Fund: https://www.childrensdefense.org/
• Child Stats.gov: https://www.childstats.gov/
• Child Welfare League of America: https://www.cwla.org/
• Crosson-Tower, C. (2008). Understanding child abuse and neglect (7th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
• DeBecker, G. (1999). Protecting the gift: Keeping children and teenagers safe (and parents sane). New York: Bantam Dell.
• Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire: https://cola.unh.edu/family-research-laboratory
• Guterman, N. B. (2001). Stopping child maltreatment before it starts: Emerging horizons in early home visitation services. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Herman, J. L. (2000). Father-daughter incest. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Medline Plus, Child Abuse: https://medlineplus.gov/childabuse.html
• Myers, J. E. B. (Ed.). (1994). The backlash: Child protection under fire. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
• National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: https://www.missingkids.org/home
• National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. (2006). Child maltreatment 2006: Reports from the states to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.
• New York University Silver School of Social Work: https://socialwork.nyu.edu/
• Pitzer, R. L. (1997). Corporal punishment in the discipline of children in the home: Research update for practitioners. Paper presented at the National Council on Family Relations Annual Conference, Washington, DC.
• RAND, Child Abuse and Neglect: https://www.rand.org/topics/child-abuse-and-neglect.html
• Richards, C. E. (2001). The loss of innocents: Child killers and their victims. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources.
• Straus, M. A. (2001). Beating the devil out of them: Corporal punishment in American families and its effects on children. Edison, NJ: Transaction.
• Thomas, P. M. (2004). Protection, dissociation, and internal roles: Modeling and treating the effects of child abuse. Review of General Psychology, 7(15).
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/

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Crafting a comprehensive research paper can be daunting. Understanding diverse citation styles and various subject areas presents a challenge for many.

Without clear examples, students often feel lost and overwhelmed, unsure of how to start or which style fits their subject.

Explore our collection of expertly written research paper examples. We’ve covered various citation styles and a diverse range of subjects.

So, read on!

• 1. Research Paper Example for Different Formats
• 2. Examples for Different Research Paper Parts
• 3. Research Paper Examples for Different Fields
• 4. Research Paper Example Outline

Research Paper Example for Different Formats

Following a specific formatting style is essential while writing a research paper . Knowing the conventions and guidelines for each format can help you in creating a perfect paper. Here we have gathered examples of research paper for most commonly applied citation styles :

Social Media and Social Media Marketing: A Literature Review

APA Research Paper Example

APA (American Psychological Association) style is commonly used in social sciences, psychology, and education. This format is recognized for its clear and concise writing, emphasis on proper citations, and orderly presentation of ideas.

Here are some research paper examples in APA style:

Research Paper Example APA 7th Edition

Research Paper Example MLA

MLA (Modern Language Association) style is frequently employed in humanities disciplines, including literature, languages, and cultural studies. An MLA research paper might explore literature analysis, linguistic studies, or historical research within the humanities. 

Here is an example:

Found Voices: Carl Sagan

Research Paper Example Chicago

Chicago style is utilized in various fields like history, arts, and social sciences. Research papers in Chicago style could delve into historical events, artistic analyses, or social science inquiries. 

Here is a research paper formatted in Chicago style:

Chicago Research Paper Sample

Research Paper Example Harvard

Harvard style is widely used in business, management, and some social sciences. Research papers in Harvard style might address business strategies, case studies, or social policies.

View this sample Harvard style paper here:

Harvard Research Paper Sample

Examples for Different Research Paper Parts

A research paper has different parts. Each part is important for the overall success of the paper. Chapters in a research paper must be written correctly, using a certain format and structure.

The following are examples of how different sections of the research paper can be written.

Research Proposal

The research proposal acts as a detailed plan or roadmap for your study, outlining the focus of your research and its significance. It's essential as it not only guides your research but also persuades others about the value of your study.

Example of Research Proposal

An abstract serves as a concise overview of your entire research paper. It provides a quick insight into the main elements of your study. It summarizes your research's purpose, methods, findings, and conclusions in a brief format.

Research Paper Example Abstract

Literature Review 

A literature review summarizes the existing research on your study's topic, showcasing what has already been explored. This section adds credibility to your own research by analyzing and summarizing prior studies related to your topic.

Literature Review Research Paper Example

Methodology

The methodology section functions as a detailed explanation of how you conducted your research. This part covers the tools, techniques, and steps used to collect and analyze data for your study.

Methods Section of Research Paper Example

How to Write the Methods Section of a Research Paper

The conclusion summarizes your findings, their significance and the impact of your research. This section outlines the key takeaways and the broader implications of your study's results.

Research Paper Conclusion Example

Research Paper Examples for Different Fields

Research papers can be about any subject that needs a detailed study. The following examples show research papers for different subjects.

History Research Paper Sample

Preparing a history research paper involves investigating and presenting information about past events. This may include exploring perspectives, analyzing sources, and constructing a narrative that explains the significance of historical events.

View this history research paper sample:

Many Faces of Generalissimo Fransisco Franco

Sociology Research Paper Sample

In sociology research, statistics and data are harnessed to explore societal issues within a particular region or group. These findings are thoroughly analyzed to gain an understanding of the structure and dynamics present within these communities. 

Here is a sample:

A Descriptive Statistical Analysis within the State of Virginia

Science Fair Research Paper Sample

A science research paper involves explaining a scientific experiment or project. It includes outlining the purpose, procedures, observations, and results of the experiment in a clear, logical manner.

Here are some examples:

Science Fair Paper Format

What Do I Need To Do For The Science Fair?

Psychology Research Paper Sample

Writing a psychology research paper involves studying human behavior and mental processes. This process includes conducting experiments, gathering data, and analyzing results to understand the human mind, emotions, and behavior.

Here is an example psychology paper:

The Effects of Food Deprivation on Concentration and Perseverance

Art History Research Paper Sample

Studying art history includes examining artworks, understanding their historical context, and learning about the artists. This helps analyze and interpret how art has evolved over various periods and regions.

Check out this sample paper analyzing European art and impacts:

European Art History: A Primer

Research Paper Example Outline

Before you plan on writing a well-researched paper, make a rough draft. An outline can be a great help when it comes to organizing vast amounts of research material for your paper.

Here is an outline of a research paper example:

Here is a downloadable sample of a standard research paper outline:

Research Paper Outline

Want to create the perfect outline for your paper? Check out this in-depth guide on creating a research paper outline for a structured paper!

Good Research Paper Examples for Students

Here are some more samples of research paper for students to learn from:

Fiscal Research Center - Action Plan

Qualitative Research Paper Example

Research Paper Example Introduction

How to Write a Research Paper Example

Research Paper Example for High School

Now that you have explored the research paper examples, you can start working on your research project. Hopefully, these examples will help you understand the writing process for a research paper.

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417 Business Topics & Research Titles about Business

The corporate world is the world of the future – there’s no doubt about that. And education in ABM will help you conquer it!

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What is ABM strand, exactly?

ABM stands for Accountancy, Business, and Management. Future leaders and entrepreneurs pursue education in this field to learn the skills essential for their careers. They study how to run a business. How to talk to clients. And, of course, how to come up with strategies to earn money.

Looking for exciting business topics to write about in a paper or dissertation? Here you’ll find a list of research titles about business, as well as ABM qualitative and quantitative research ideas collected by Custom-writing.org experts. We hope that these business and management research topics will inspire you for your own project or for a heated discussion.

❣️ Choosing an ABM Qualitative or Quantitative Research Topic

👔 business topics to write about, 💸 business topics on marketing, 📈 accounting research titles about business, 💫 business management research topics, 👷 business topics on hr, 🤔 abm strand research faq, 🔍 references.

The key part of acquiring any education is writing a research paper . Why do it? First, it’s a test of a student’s analytical, writing, and research skills. Second, being able to conduct business research is paramount to its success.

• It helps you communicate with customers.
• It helps you scan the marketplace for threats and opportunities.
• It helps you understand how to minimize risks.
• It helps you plan your investments effectively.
• It helps you keep your hand on the pulse of the current trends in the market.

The obtained skills will guide you through the entirety of your professional career. It’s an experience that can’t be skipped. We’ve hand-picked 417 research topics related to the ABM strand, just for you. Here, you will find the best ideas for your future ABM research paper masterpiece.

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The first step in writing an ABM research paper is choosing a topic. With the abundance of ABM research topics ideas on the Internet, it’s not an easy task. Simply picking one won’t do the trick. You will need to juggle relevance, applicability, and your own personal interest in the subject.

There are two main types of AMB research methods: qualitative and quantitative.

• Qualitative research answers the why and the how questions. It tests customers’ reaction to new products and studies consumer behaviors. Case studies, interviews, and focus groups are the common methods of collecting such data.
• Quantitative research collects numerical data and analyzes stats. The common methods include various surveys in target groups.

What ABM fields to explore are out there?

• Financial accounting (aka accountancy) is creating financial statements to be distributed within and outside of a company.
• Management accounting is creating operational reports to be distributed only within a company.
• Banking and finance are all about financial services provided to customers, and the laws of investment.
• Business administration is supervising and overseeing various business operations.
• Marketing is all about the promotion of buying and selling services and products.
• Entrepreneurship is all about the process of coming up with, starting and managing a new business.
• Human resource development management is all about reaching the top potential of the employees.
• Hospitality management is overseeing and supervising various administrative tasks of a resort or hotel.
• Tourism is all about attracting, housing, and entertaining tourists, and organizing tours for them.

Getting lost in this embarrassment of riches? Let’s single out the five of the trendiest areas of ABM research. They are: business, marketing, accounting, project management, and human resources. Want to see more examples of research titles about ABM strand? More on them down below!

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Here are some of the freshest ideas for a relevant business research paper. Enjoy our selection of business research topics and research titles for ABM students. Choose one and prove that your finger is on the pulse of the modern market world!

• Is poverty a concern of a corporation? How can corporations contribute to social development? Should they concern themselves with it in the first place, and to what degree? How can corporate social responsibility result in the betterment of the market? How can a corporation’s perceived awareness produce a positive image for the customers?
• Labor relations : the latest tendencies and the predictions for the future. Analyze the contemporary trends in the labor-corporate relationship. What issues are likely to emerge in 2025-2030? Back up your conclusion with real-life examples.
• Diversity as a contemporary working reality. Due to globalization, people of various backgrounds tend to work together, more and more so. Does it influence the working process at all? Does the difference between genders, ages, and ethnicities hinder or facilitate business? Should the companies ensure that there’s diversity among their employees , and why? How should the work environments be organized to maximize efficiency?
• Personal networking : labor-corporate communication tool. How does the number of people you know correlate with the chances of finding the best partners, workers, and customers? Is it an exponential or a sine curve? Produce real-life examples.
• E-business: the world-wide globalization process. Some of the most successful modern businesses operate almost exclusively online. What are the examples? Assess the role of integration in their workflow. What are the overall perspectives of SCM (supply-chain management) in the realities of e-business?
• Leadership and business in the modern world. Is there a significant difference in the styles and strategies implemented by the leaders in the 21 century as compared to the earlier eras? How do modern leaders adjust to contemporary business realia? What are the challenges and opportunities? What are the global trends? Produce real-life examples.
• Copyright law : is it on the side of the artist or the company representing them? How has copyright law evolved through the times? What drove it so? To what extent does it protect modern artists? How can a copyright corporation exploit it, and to what degree? Produce real-life examples. Are there any court precedents?
• Advertisement and consumer behavior . What types of advertisements prove to be the most effective? Back up your data with research results. What are the latest trends in the world of advertisement? What are the advantages and disadvantages of online and offline advertising? What mistakes can be made by a brand that is trying to produce a positive image through advertisement?
• Apple : how to turn your brand into a religion. What are the factors behind the success of the Apple corporation? Is it just clever advertising, or is there something more to that? How does Apple build a following of brand loyalists? Does Apple face any difficulties in the realities of the modern harsh brand competition? What are your predictions for the nearest future of Apple corporation?
• Word of mouth: a fossil or a gem? Who usually relies on this form of advertisement the most? How can an already well-established corporation benefit from it? How does word of mouth differ from other types of advertisement? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Produce real-life examples of a brand’s or organization’s success due to word of mouth.
• Facebook and business . How can Facebook be used as a modern platform for conducting business? Does it have any advantages as compared to other online platforms? What are the disadvantages? What successful companies use Facebook as a business platform?

• Pay for performance: a source of loyalty or displeasure ? What’s the best strategy for an employer to link pay and performance? Should pay increases be dependent on just the performance of an employee, or should other factors also be considered? Back up your reasoning with research results.
• Local customization vs. global standardization. What are the pros and cons of each of the approaches? What companies are known to implement both strategies successfully? Give examples.
• External recruiting vs. Internal promotions . What are the pros and cons of each of the approaches? How can a company implement both strategies successfully? Which is a more cost-effective approach? Why is it impossible to stick to just one of the strategies?
• Does a multinational corporation have a motherland? Is it obligatory for a multinational corporation to have a strong presence in its home country? What are the economic benefits or downsides of it? Produce real-life examples.
• Management by walking around (MBWA). What is the reasoning behind it, and how is it implemented? Is it a boost for productivity or a stress for employees? Who needs it more – the employees or the manager? Is it effective? Illustrate your point with research results.
• The AIDA formula in advertising. What exactly is the AIDA formula? Why is it popular nowadays, and how does it compare to the other formulas for creating advertisements? Is it the key to a successful message broadcasting or a hindrance to creativity?
• Free market : an achievable goal or a utopia? What exactly is the concept of a free market? What are the advantages of such a system? What are the disadvantages? Are there any real-life examples, and what can be learned from them?
• Family business : pros and cons. Are there any modern examples of a successful family business? What might be the downsides of such a business model? What are the advantages? What can be learned from the examples of exercising interpersonal relations in business?
• Franchises vs. “from scratch” businesses. Why having a franchise is a go-to option for a lot of corporations? What benefits does it produce? Are there any downsides? Which business model is easier to maintain? Which business model is more cost-effective?
• Marijuana business in the US: state law vs. federal law. What is the current stand of federal law on the issue? What about state law? What is your prediction for the marijuana-based businesses for the nearest future?
• Governments vs. private businesses. How does the government manage private businesses in your country? What is the best strategy for a government-private business relationship? How does this relationship reflect on the economy of the country?
• The Internet and consumer behavior . How does the Internet shape consumer behavior in modern days? Are there any drastic changes in consumer behavior as compared to ten years ago? Is the Internet just a new platform for advertising, or is there more to that? Produce real-life examples.
• The culture of consumerism . What exactly is this phenomenon? Is it really a thing or just a popular penny dreadful? Is it a natural occurrence or an artificial design created by the major companies for increasing profit? What proofs of the latter can be produced?
• The best countries to invest into in 2020. How can a country be invested into? Why would some corporations choose to do it? What are the criteria? Is it cost-effective? What are the real-life examples?

Here are some more business research topics to explore:

• Outsourcing: its advantages and disadvantages for a business. Is it ethical?
• Authors and copyright: which works better, legal names or nom de plumes?
• Negotiation tactics : understanding authority.
• Oil prices impacts on consumer behavior in Turkey .
• Corruption cases: do state officials have a higher chance of succeeding with a request for dismissal?
• Juicy Fruit: business strategies and product promotion .
• Insider trading : how the nature of the offence and the punishment for it has changed through the decades.
• American Airlines: the secret of success .
• Alcohol: the advantages of the sale and consumption laws for the society’s well-being.
• Organizational change capacity concept .
• Death penalty : should it apply for the most severe corporate crimes?
• The correlation between wages and employee productivity.
• The correlation between strategic management and employee productivity .
• The impact of staff motivation on employee productivity.
• Managing employee retention .
• Low-cost economy: companies benefits and drawbacks .
• Sales letter vs. waste bin: how to avoid spam folder?
• Startups: how to.
• L’Oreal and Procter & Gamble: financial analysis .
• Teenagers vs. business: the phenomenon of teenage business.
• Logistical system: private and public warehouses combining .
• Small business : the basis of economics.
• Coca-Cola and PepsiCo: Comparative Analysis .
• Third-world countries: how is business done there?
• Taxes : types and uses.
• The role of corporate lobbyists in American future .
• Business ethics: is there a difference from general ethics? What are the laws?
• What are the cultural differences of doing business in different countries?
• Roadrunner Sport: social and digital media strategies .
• The target audience : how to define it and how to attract it?
• Crisis management in business.
• Call centers outside the US: pros & cons .
• Risks: how to calculate them in your business endeavor.
• Monopolies : how do they impact the market?
• Business dynasties: how does family business operate?
• Copyright law : how does it operate?
• A gaming lounge: business plan .
• Services: what are the most and least popular in the market?
• Dell Company: global strategies .
• Charity: is it a good advertisement strategy for a business?
• How to balance ecology and increasing production.
• SunTrust: business strategies in banking industry .
• Corporate culture : what company rituals are common in business?
• Negotiation and diplomacy in business.
• TransGlobal Airlines as a monopoly .
• A healthy working environment and its importance in business
• Google’s success: a case study .
• Brands: what’s their place in the modern market?
• American Airlines’ and US Airways merger .
• Military crisis: a hindrance or a boost for business?
• Small enterprises: what are the challenges?
• British Petroleum: the corruption case .
• Internet advertisement: is it overtaking the world of advertising?

• The psychology behind people’s decision to buy a more expensive product or a higher quantity of it.
• Feminism: how does it influence the way women consume?
• Hilton’s investments into the Italian tourism sector: causes and effects .
• Teenagers and brands: what brands are the most popular among modern teenagers?
• Mandatory recycling: how would it affect the prices? Would it be cost-effective in the long term?
• Advertising in schools: is it acceptable?
• Social media: what marketing strategies are used there? Does it influence offline advertisement?
• Tariffs on car imports in Ukraine .
• Employee stress : does every company need to offer services of a psychologist?
• Sports and art: do corporate extracurricular classes enhance employees’ creativity and result in a healthy work environment?
• Walmart company: environmental sustainability .
• Eco-friendliness: how can more eco-friendly policies be encouraged in companies and businesses?
• The concept of perfect competition .
• Personal guns: does the successful handgun production industry depend on their free distribution?
• BMW group sustainability plan .
• Minimum wage : should it be canceled? Why?
• Starbucks, Toyota and Google: missions comparison .
• Commerce and retail: what is the future? Will shopping activity move completely to the Internet?
• Toyota and Plexus: pricing strategies .
• Internet advertising: is it more effective than other types of advertisement?
• Tobacco production: should higher taxes apply to the tobacco companies? Should they be obliged to donate to cancer treatment centers?
• Alcohol production: should higher taxes apply to alcohol companies? Should they be obliged to donate to alcohol treatment centers?
• Xerox: company profile and overview .
• Business ethics: how does it influence important decisions made by a company?
• Ethics and morality in a business-oriented world.
• The rise and fall of Eastman Kodak .
• A museum exhibition: how can it be made marketable?
• The business guide to sustainability .
• Mobile phones: what has facilitated their high sales rates in recent years?
• Under Armour: company analysis and strategic alternatives .
• International human resources : what are the major challenges and pitfalls?
• Corporate rituals: what are the oldest and most rigid ones that are still practiced in companies?
• Brainstorming: how effective is it in producing ideas and business solutions?
• Healthy work environment: what does it look like, and how can it be created?
• Financial crisis: how does it affect business in the US and worldwide?
• Famous brands: what are the associated advantages of owning a product of a recognizable and respectable brand? Why are consumers often willing to pay for it more than for a less well-known alternative?
• Image: how does it affect the modern business culture and consumer behavior?
• Gender: does it influence the ability to manage small and large teams?
• Hiring youth: why certain niche companies prefer to employ young people? What are the examples?
• Differences in ethnic cultures: how do they influence team-building?
• Differences in ages: do they create difficulties in departmental cross-functional cooperation?
• Gender: why certain companies prefer to employ more women than men and vice versa? Are efficiency stereotypes empirically and numerically confirmed?
• Fitness franchises : why are they more and more popular?
• Franchise models: what types are out there? Which would you choose for a coffee house? Other examples are welcome.
• Franchise promotion: is it the responsibility of the franchisee or of the franchise holder?
• Franchise agreement: which items should be included to save from excessive spending with no reward?
• What factors must be considered when choosing the market for business expansion ?
• Globalization and consumer behavior: how does one affect the other?
• Chinese market: how does it benefit from globalization?
• Globalization: will it continue to spread, or will it cease to decrease?
• Business clusters: how do they move globalization?
• Bank mergers : a wise strategy or a result of failure? When should a bank consider this move?
• Bankruptcy : what are the most common reasons for it? Does it necessarily spell the end for a business?
• Big-box stores : how to ensure the success of a big-box retailer?
• Brand awareness: how to make people remember and recognize your brand?
• Competitive intelligence : what are the best ways to gather and analyze information about the business environment?
• Consumer loyalty: how to make a consumer develop a behavioral tendency of favoring one brand’s products over the other?
• Consumer risk management: what are the best ways to minimize the potential risk of a product not meeting quality standards entering the marketplace? How to make it cost-effective?
• Copycat products: why do they enter the market so easily, and what are the ways for a brand to fight for its copyright?
• Corporate crime : how is it best for a company to redeem its reputation after being compromised?
• Corporate social responsibility : how does this business model help make a company be socially accountable?
• People Water: corporate social responsibility .
• Customer competencies: how to enable your customers to learn and engage in an active dialogue?
• Data security : how to protect data from unauthorized access and data corruption?
• Downtown revitalization: how can it be beneficial for a business?
• Ruth’s Chris restaurants: SWOT analysis .
• Employee coaching: how is it different from managing? How is it best to organize employee coaching in a big / small company?
• The “Do no harm” ethical principle in business.
• Green products : are they good for a business? How can a company use less packaging, and reduce the amount of disposed toxics?
• Industry disruptor: what is a disruptive innovation in business?
• Intellectual capital: what are the components and what is the best way to unlock their potential?
• Job sculpting: what is the best way to match a person to a job that unlocks their potential to the fullest degree?
• Marketing ethics : what are the moral principles behind the regulation and operation of marketing in your country?
• Mergers : what are the types, and why do businesses do it?
• Organigraphs: how to graphically represent a company’s structure and processes? How are organigraphs different from a traditional organizational chart?
• Philanthropy: what are the competitive advantages of corporate philanthropy?
• Quality circles: how does it influence business positively?
• Regional planning: how to place infrastructure across a large area of land efficiently?
• Customer service initiatives: how to learn what your customers dislike, tolerate, and actively appreciate?
• Bagel Store vs. Subway: comparative analysis .
• Shared services model: why are they cost-efficient?
• Short-term financing: in what types of businesses does it apply best?
• Starbucks Effect: how does a Starbucks store affect home and property values?
• Groupon: daily deal or lasting success ?
• Strategic planning : how to establish the direction of a small business?
• IBM Corporation: business strategies .
• Labour strikes: what causes them? What are the consequences for a business in particular and for the economy in general?
• Companies’ ethics: concepts and cases .
• Subliminal advertising: how do they work?
• Telemarketing: a thing from the past or a relevant method of advertising?
• Underage workers: how does employment of minors work?
• Underwriting: who provides underwriting services and who receives them?
• Undocumented workers: do they have rights, and what are the risks?
• Unions: what is their stand in your country?
• Whistle blowing: is it regarded ethical in modern business practice?
• Work ethic : what kind of belief system is that? Does it have any downsides?
• Work-life balance : what are the ways of encouraging and maintaining it?
• Business leadership: is it a skill that can be learned?
• Stakeholders : what is their impact on the success of a business?
• Global unemployment: why is it a worldwide phenomenon? What are the solutions to the problem?
• International investment : why is it important to educate the public on its benefits?
• International competition: what are the strategic measures of survival for local companies?
• Job creation : how can big and small businesses create jobs?
• Businesses and oceans: why is it crucial to institute and implement environmentally-friendly approaches?
• Ethical conflicts: how to avoid cultural, religious, and political arguments at work?
• Organizational environmental pollution: how does it affect consumer trust levels?
• Business negotiation: what are the styles of intercultural dialogue?
• Excessive work: what are the consequences of overworking ?

Marketing is one of the most prominent entities that govern our world. It’s the cornerstone of business, serving to identify and satisfy customers’ wants and needs. Without marketing, there is no business!

Here are some of the most relevant marketing research paper topics and ideas. Choose one, and you are bound to impress your professor!

Get an originally-written paper according to your instructions!

• Coronavirus: a case study. How has COVID-19 affected consumer behavior worldwide ? What about your own country? Are there any glaring examples of inadequate consumer behavior? What are the reasons behind them? How do different businesses deal with the consequences of quarantine? Produce examples of marketing centered around Coronavirus.
• Zoom: a case study. How did Zoom manage to become a go-to platform during the Coronavirus outbreak ? Was it the brand’s clever marketing, or did something else influence the consumer choice? How did Zoom manage to outperform the dozens of rival video conferencing services? What are the numbers? Make your predictions on whether the company will be able to sustain its success after quarantine is over.
• Gillette #MeToo commercial: a case study. How did the brand express its political stand on a pressing social subject? Did the campaign ultimately succeed in its goal? Did the backlash harm Gillette’s reputation, or was it a sign of successful branding? How did it ultimately reflect on sales? What can be learned from the data?
• Xbox Series X: a case study. The Xbox Series X is the successor of the popular Xbox One home video game console. It is scheduled for release in late 2020. How is it advertised? How does its marketing campaign impact user behavior? Is it a fast process? Analyze the concept and the marketing campaign of the product.
• Colin Kaepernick in a Nike commercial: a case study. How did the brand use an existing political situation to its advantage? Did the campaign ultimately succeed in its goal, or did it merely taint Nike’s reputation? Was it marketing genius or brand failure? What do the numbers say? What can be learned from the data?
• Brexit and consumer behavior. How has Brexit affected consumer buying behavior in the UK? What about the EU? How did it impact currency exchange rate? What businesses benefited from it? What can be learned from the data?
• Same product, different branding: a comparison. Two companies are selling the same product – only branding and packaging are different. What influences customers’ choice? Is the price relevant in this equation? What can be learned from the data?
• Addictive consumer behavior. What brands are known to inspire addictive consumer behavior? What marketing tools do they employ? Are there any downsides for a business? Should companies be held liable for maniacal consumer behavior?
• Corporate social responsibility as a brand marketing tool. How effective is it? Produce examples of brands whose sales increased after a charity or awareness campaign. What can be learned from the data? What are the pitfalls of the CPR approach?
• The ROI in athletics. What exactly is return on investment? How is it calculated? Why is there close public attention to the ROI factor in athletics? How can ROI be used as a marketing tool? Produce real-life examples.

• Slack: a case study. How popular is Slack as compared to rival platforms offering similar services? How much of its success can be attributed to marketing? Is its success currently on the rise or on the decline?
• Uber : a case study. How has Uber become the leading company in its field? Analyze its history. What role did marketing play in its success? Analyze the company’s exit from the Chinese, Russian, and South Asian markets. Why did the company choose to do it? What benefits did it gain by doing so? What’s the current stand of the company?
• Facebook : a case study. Facebook has faced a lot of backlash in recent years. How did the company manage it? What are the examples of Facebook’s different takes on marketing influenced by the company’s negative publicity?
• Marketing in recession : a case study. The 2008 global financial crisis took a great toll on the markets worldwide. Nevertheless, there are stories of success for new products introduced to the market at the time. What companies managed to successfully roll out a product in the time following the 2008 global financial crisis? Give a case study of such a company.
• Microsoft : a case study. How does Microsoft advertise its products? How are traditional storefronts doing market-wise as compared to the recent advertising trend, mobile phone marketing? What choices does the IT giant make concerning mobile ad targeting? Is it successful?
• Black Friday : what’s the secret behind the phenomenon? Does it offer real value for money or is it simply a psychological trick of clever marketing?
• Digital transformation: how to create an effective digital marketing budget?
• Production expenditure: how does marketing affect it?
• Jeep company’s marketing .
• The Internet of things : what exactly is IoT? What are the examples? How can marketing be incorporated into it?
• Volkswagen company’s information technology .
• Volkswagen in America: managing IT priorities .
• Relationship banking: how has it been influenced by digital promotion and mobile money accessibility? How is mobile banking redefining the customer-bank relationship?
• Apple Computer Inc.: maintaining the music business .
• Credit card responsibility: how to limit compulsive buying behaviors for credit card holders?
• Corporate social responsibility: how do organizations use CSR to reinforce brand equity?
• Servus Credit Union Ltd: marketing strategies .
• Marketing manipulation tactics: what do brands do to get more customers?
• Herfy’s marketing strategy in India .
• Social media marketing as an image builder: different ways of communicating your brand image on the YouTube, Tik Tok, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram platforms.
• Consumer motivation on the BevCo example .
• Influencers: how can Internet-famous people impact the buying choices of consumers ?

• A Coffee shop marketing strategy .
• Direct marketing strategies: are consumers equipped enough to shield themselves from it?
• The “Do no harm” ethical principle in business .
• Maternity: what is the best way to market baby products?
• Family orientation: how does it affect marketing in general?
• Online shopping : what do buyers look for when shopping online? What attributes do they compare when choosing the product?
• Harley Davidson, Naked Juice, and Tropicana Juice: brand perception analysis .
• Global marketing: how does it incorporate standardization?
• Social class differentiation: how do financial institutions market their products and services differently on the basis of social class?
• Snapple Juice: marketing strategies .
• Internet marketing: what trends can be expected to dominate the online world in the future?
• Marketing and culture : how do advertising strategies vary across different cultures?
• The Green Motor Car Company: marketing strategy .
• Political campaigns : how can they impact advertising? Produce real-life examples.
• Impulsive buying : how does it occur, and how do brands exploit it?
• American Marketing Association: promotion strategy .
• Loyalty cards: do they boost sales and encourage customer loyalty?
• Brand trust: is it possible for well-marketed brands to get away with selling products of substandard quality?
• Trust as the way to develop proper company-clients relationships .
• Globalization : what is its impact on consumer behavior?
• Customer loyalty : what brand attributes result in it?
• Market monopoly: what are some of the successful marketing approaches that can help break through it?
• Cause marketing : how does it impact a brand’s affinity with its target audience?
• Brand equity : what is the effect of discount offerings and consumer promotions on it?
• The outcomes of advertising in a recession
• Top-of-mind awareness: how is it best achieved in modern times? Produce real-life data.
• Event sponsorships and customer perceptions: how to?
• Mobile ad targeting: pros and cons of mobile ad targeting based on users’ browser and app history.
• Mortgage marketing: how to make customers be able to differentiate between various mortgage options offered by competing banks?
• Drones production company marketing plan .
• Click baiting: a promising novelty in sponsored posts promotion or a brand-compromising nuisance, best to be avoided for fear of bad associations with the brand?
• Who are the consumers of Nivea?
• Celebrity endorsement : what’s its impact on ROI for CPG brands?
• Comparison advertising: is it effective in building brand equity?
• Do consumers prefer purchasing routine grocery products online?
• Is earned media perceived to be as important as it appears to be?
• Word of mouth: what makes people want to forward content to their friends?
• Viral content: how to?
• Evolving family structures: what has changed and how to address it with marketing?
• Augmented reality : how is it enhancing marketing experiences?
• Artificial intelligence: what role does it play in modern marketing?
• Advertising to children : how to? What are the pitfalls?
• Brand salience: how to?
• Humour in advertising: what’s the impact, and what’s the customer response?

As you are very well aware, accounting is all about numbers and measurements. It’s even been called the language of business! That’s why writing a research paper on one of the accounting research paper topics is such a good idea. You are going to master it in no time!

What are the main fields of accounting?

• Financial Accounting
• Management Accounting
• Accounting Information Systems
• Tax Accounting

There are carefully selected topics down below that explore each of those fields. Just go there and choose one – it’s that easy!

• Taxes and politics. How do organizations fight for the reduction of the taxes they have to pay? How can politicians influence the tax rate in different spheres? Are there any real-life examples of that? How can this situation be curbed? 
• Financial markets. What are commodities and stocks? What is the role of financial markets in the global economy? Why are there few people who understand financial markets? What issues does it raise? What can be done about it? 
• Accounting information systems . What are the most popular accounting systems used by businesses nowadays? What are the most modern ones? How rapid is the flow of information today? How does it influence modern accounting? What can be done to advance it even further? 
• Managing and accounting. How can managerial accounting help a company make better decisions? How does it work? What are the possible examples of successful and unsuccessful decisions made in a company based on the managerial accounting reports? 
• Personal finances . Why should individuals hire personal accountants? How can this practice be systematized? What are the alternatives? Produce examples of modern mobile accounting applications and free online services. What are the pitfalls to be aware of? 
• Debt management. Why does such a serious issue exist in the modern world? Produce the current numbers of people for whom debt is a life-governing factor. What is the reason behind the prevalence of this problem? Who may benefit from this situation? How can this be fixed? 
• Auditing collusion. What is employee / auditing collusion? How can it result in an unfair marketing advantage? Why is it illegal? Produce real-life examples of auditing collusion disrupting marketing equilibrium. What can be done to anticipate and prevent such occurrences in companies? 

Below are some other accounting research topics to explore:

• Accounting decisions: what are the criteria for making them correctly?
• General principles of accounting .

• Forensic accounting : how does the investigation process go? What are the role and essential skills of forensic accountants?
• Accounting theory: how is it influenced by culture?
• Tax assessment: how to correctly assess the tax on organizational earnings?
• The 2008 global financial crisis : what factors were the primary cause?
• What are the steps on the way to becoming a certified accountant ?
• Accounting ethics: what are the modern dilemmas?
• Accounting history : what are the historical prospects for the best accounting practices?
• Accounting systems: what are the risks in the process of developing their design?
• Earnings management: what are the perspectives?
• Tax reduction : what are the most effective ways of doing it for organizations?
• Managerial accounting: what are the effects of financial markets on management accounting?
• Financial fraud : what are the ways to escape it?
• Accounting theories: what is their meaning for business?
• Nortel Networks Corporation Accounting Theory .
• Normative theories: what are the issues with normative theorizing in accounting?
• Theoretical concepts: how to implement them in practical accounting?
• Earnings management: how to best organize it in a company?
• Cash flow: what is the effect of external factors on cash flow in an organization?
• Online accounting: can accountancy be effectively based on the Internet?
• Offshore accounting: how does it work? What are the pros and cons?
• Accounting systems: which are the most effective for accountants?
• Tax code: how to?
• Islamic banking : how is it different from the European approach?
• Financial markets: what are the known commodities?
• Financial markets: what is their role in the global economy?
• Financial transparency: what are the strategies to make organizational finances transparent?
• Cloud computing : what is its role in data management for accounting information systems?
• Personal investment: important factors .
• The ideal framework for AIS: what does an ideal framework for an accounting information system in multinational cooperatives look like?
• Food production company: a financial plan .
• Decision-making process: what is the role of AIS in the decision making process for medium / large economic enterprises?
• Accounting frauds: analyze three major accounting frauds of the last decade in detail. Why is ethical judgment needed in accounting at all times?
• Intellectual capital: how do two major business companies (of your choice) build a relationship between their financial statements and their intellectual capital?
• Education for senior executives: how can business education for senior executives influence hedging behavior?
• Non-profit accounting: what are its financial reporting requirements?

Project management is the cornerstone of doing business. After all, how can you do anything without organizing it first? You may think, “Oh, but that’s easy… I just do it!” But that’s not how it works in modern business.

In big corporations, the way you organize a project is often synonymous with its eventual success or failure. Project managers need all of their knowledge, skills, and techniques to make projects meet the requirements. Want to look deeper into the processes and secrets behind project management? The idea for your perfect project management research paper is waiting for you down below!

• Project management software . Which project management tools dominate the market today? Are they cost-effective? What do they primarily focus on (e.g., cost, scheduling time, etc.)? Analyze different project management software and find out whether they really lead to project success and increase productivity or not.
• Humanitarian logistics. How do system dynamics and project management principles affect logistics operations? The need for humanitarian logistics has increased around the world due to the rise in environmental disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.). How can the sustained damages be reduced? Analyze the collaboration between system dynamics and humanitarian logistics. How does it impact flows in the supply chain, stakeholders, and responses? What are the best adaptations of project management theories?
• Project delay causes. Identify the leading symptoms and causes of project delays. How does it impact the project life cycle? How do global construction companies cope with it? What strategies have they devised to deal with the issue?
• Factors of project selection. What are the primary factors that affect selecting a project? Analyze the shift of project benefits approach towards customer-centricity. What is the reason for it? What is the difference between the two approaches? Which is more effective in modern business?
• IT industry and agile project management . What is the impact of agile project management on productivity in IT companies? Analyze it using quantitative research techniques. Measure improvement of productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction. Analyze and report the outputs of the data using empirical hypothesis testing methods.
• Implementation of project management practices . What is the impact of an organization on how project management practices are implemented? Analyze the more informal and people-focused project management practices that are used in small and medium-sized enterprises. Use mixed methods research techniques such as interviews and surveys. Choose companies from a specific sphere to collect data. Examine the size of the company and how it impacts project management practices.
• Communication and quality. How significant is communication in maintaining timely delivery and quality of project activities? Analyze the importance of communication between the organization of a project and its stakeholders (external and internal). How does efficient communication help an organization meet the expectations?
• Team conflict dynamics model: what conflict types and team conflict profiles are there? How can they produce resolutions that can lead a project to success?
• Culture and conflict management: how different cultures of project managers may influence the methods of conflict resolution they implement? How does a project manager’s background affect the way they identify misdeeds and the way they try to deal with conflicts that arise in their project?
• Project misalignment with business objectives: how does it affect the overall project performance?
• Project management soft skills : how important are they in the context of project success rates? What is the cost of training, and what are the benefits? How do they help the project achieve the desired outcome?
• Psychosocial stressors: how do they impact project manager performance? What types of psychosocial stressors are there? Does organizational culture have any mediating effect? Use real-life data.

• Project management research trends: how do they influence project success? What is the relationship between project management research trends and social-economic trends?
• Project management maturity factors: how do they influence project success in large enterprises? How come the role of projects has increased worldwide, but the overall number of successful projects hasn’t changed? What is the relationship between project performance factors and organizational project management maturity?
• Agile-scrum beyond IT: how can it bring managerial benefits to other sectors? Analyze its potential for the healthcare industry. Illustrate how it may be applied to develop frameworks for quality and timeliness improvement. How can it help deliver healthcare in a large-scale patient setting?
• Project completion rate: how do organizational characteristics influence it in the construction industry? Analyze data on project performance using key performance indicators (KPIs). Use social network analysis tools to document organizational characteristics.
• Leadership style as a mediator: how to connect collaboration satisfaction and emotional intelligence? What leadership styles are there? What are their roles as mediators between emotional intelligence and collaboration satisfaction?
• Effective project scheduling system: what are the effects of the application of this planning and scheduling style in construction projects? Use the critical path method (CPM) in the analysis of drafting and subsequent implementation of an effective project scheduling system for manufacturing renewable energy plants.
• Effective project manager appointment guidelines: how to design and implement them for construction companies in XYZ? How do two types of leadership styles, person-centered and team-centered, differ when used by project managers? How can one balance them? What does Archer say on the topic in her Realist social theory? Use the data from your analysis for designing effective project manager appointment guidelines to be implemented in XYZ construction companies.
• Controlling costs in project management: a systems approach. Analyze the work of the research and development departments for a US-based consumer goods manufacturer.
• Management: power, authority, and influence .
• Culture, project performance, and IT industry: what might be the causes of delay and failure due to cultural factors?
• CISCO Systems Inc: strategies and management .
• Initiation stage of a project: a review. Analyze the work of the US medicine sector.
• Similar but different: review the similarities and differences in how people practice project management across the world.
• Effective teamwork role for organizations performance .
• Competitive advantage: does a company gain a competitive advantage by implementing expert management in a project?
• Canbide Corporation: operations management tools .
• Critical path analysis: how do project managers plan for it and assess it?
• Diversity: management practices and principles .
• The uncertainty: how valid is it in lengthy and difficult projects in the US construction industry?
• Transformational and transactional leadership models .
• The history: investigate and analyze the development and evolution of project management across the past 20 years.
• The qualities of an efficient leader .
• Understanding the intricacies: how important is the grasp of the project’s intricate nature for its effective management?
• McDonalds: management effectiveness .
• Benchmarking project management maturity: analyze the benchmark standard of measuring maturity in project management.
• Shangri-La Hotels: company management .
• Agile project management: how does academic literature help develop its understanding?
• The organization of international business .
• The PMBOK guidelines: do they prepare managers for handling project risks successfully?
• Information management system: practical solutions .
• Project management methodologies: how do various prevailing project management methodologies correspond with efficacy? Review the US market.
• Subway in the US: management strategies in food industry .
• Software development methodologies: how do organizations justify their choices?
• Teamwork on project management : how important is it in the US healthcare system?
• The concept of change in management .
• Software tools: how do different project management software tools correspond with efficacy in the developed world?
• Establishment of Ruth’s Chris Steak House in London: how to make a restaurant chain international?
• Attitude towards risk: how does project management handle possible risks in the US oil and gas sector?

• Package role in design and planning process .
• Public procurement: what are the associated challenges for project management in the US IT sector?
• Humility and its impact in leadership .
• The stakeholder approach: how does a global perspective picture its overall success in adoption and completion of projects?
• Management: Holistic Response to Client Issues .
• Captiva Conglomerate: management strategies .
• Best project management practices: what does the European financial sector tell us about them?
• Hewlett-Packard: global supply chain management .
• Leadership qualities: does successful project management need them?

Human resource management is one of the most interesting spheres of business. After all, it’s all about people!

There are three major areas of a human resource manager’s responsibilities. They are: staffing, allocating compensation and benefits for employees, and administrating work.

There’s so much you can do as an HR specialist. It’s as people-oriented as a profession can get. It’s always a continuous process, too. You’ll never get bored!

There are a number of questions an HR specialist needs to know the answer to. How to select the best recruits? How to encourage team spirit and teamwork among the employees? How to motivate people? How to appraise and how to punish? All of those questions and more are raised in our selection of human resources research topics!

• Training of employees as a performance enhancer. How does training of employees correspond with their performance? Produce real-life data. Use a questionnaire to identify and determine the workforce needs in an organization. Analyze the data by calculating a simple percentage analysis. How much did employee training influence their performance? Was it cost-effective?
• Performance evaluation and its impact on productivity. How does performance evaluation impact employee productivity? What is its purpose? What is the difference between formal and informal evaluations? How should a performance evaluation be carried out? Describe each of the steps. What is the influence of a poor evaluation on an employee’s morale and their absenteeism rate? Produce real-life data.
• Motivation and its impact on morale. What motivation theories are there? Which are the most popular to utilize in organizations today? What does the process of staff motivation look like? Does it influence employee performance? Produce real-life data. Analyze the data by calculating a simple percentage analysis.
• Performance appraisal and its impact on productivity. What is performance appraisal, and how is it different from performance evaluation / employee motivation? Why is it considered to be crucial for the growth and survival of an organization? What is the role of performance appraisal as a strategic factor? Describe what performance appraisal techniques are used in an organization. How does it impact employee productivity? Produce real-life data.
• Human resource and its relevance in modern business. Why are the effective acquisition, utilization, and maintenance of human resources considered to be central to the growth of an organization? How can executive initiative utilize human resources profitably for an organization? What are the techniques of sustaining and developing human resources in an organization? How to achieve maximum cooperation between staff and management?
• Stress and its impact on the employee performance. What is the effect of stress on workers’ performance? Produce real-life data. Collect data using questionnaires and descriptive survey research design. Present the collected data in tables. Analyze it using simple percentages and frequencies.
• Staff training in business organizations. How to identify the training needs of an organization? What is the role of management in staff training and development? What types of training methods are there? What are the effects of training on employee performance? Produce real-life data.

Here are some of the simpler human resources topics to explore:

• Employee loyalty: what are the main factors that can increase it?
• The cost of prejudice and discrimination on the wprkplace .
• Conflicts in the workplace : how to resolve them? What are the most typical ones?
• Cultural differences: how can human resource managers work around cultural differences in an international company?

• Recruiting students: what are the pros and cons? 
• Compensation and benefits are the parts of employment relationship . 
• Employees’ education : should a company pay for it? 
• Harmful outsourcing of United States jobs . 
• Outsourcing and freelance workers: what are the pros and cons? 
• Recruitment : what are the opportunities and risks of recruiting new team members? 
• How to motivate employees effectively?  
• HR managers: how to select, recruit, hire, and educate human resource managers?  
• Legal aspects of human resource management . 
• Overqualified employees: how should an HR manager deal with an overqualified employee? 
• Google company: workforce diversity policy . 
• Talent hunting and management: what’s the human resource manager’s role in this process? 
• Character types: what character types are there, and how do they affect the team-building process in a company? 
• Workplace harassment and bullying: how should a human resource manager deal with such challenges? What strategies of prevention are to be employed? 
• Diversity : how can a company encourage it? What is its impact on the dynamics in the workplace? 
• Communication: how to make it effective? How does it affect a company’s success? 
• Wages : do they affect employee productivity? How to increase employees’ motivation and make it cost-effective? 
• Assessing employee performance : what are the best ways to do it? What tools and criteria are there? 
• The role of diversity in the workplace . 
• Labor laws : what are the most critical issues to be resolved? 
• Company data : how to protect it in the age of technology? 
• Equal pay : are staff members paid equally, and how can HR managers address this issue? 
• Leadership styles . 
• Health problems: how can they affect employees’ productivity, and how can HR managers address this issue? 
• Riordan Manufacturing: HR marketing services . 
• Workplace motivation: what motivates people to work more? 
• Mergers and acquisitions : what is the role of an HR specialist in these processes? 
• Managing a diverse workforce . 
• Employee loyalty: how can HR specialists encourage employee loyalty through developing the job satisfaction factor? 
• Organizational burnout of employees . 
• Employee retention: which factors contribute to it? 
• Salary bonuses: what are their additional benefits? How can an HR specialist identify who is eligible for getting them? 
• Strategic human resources : is there global competitiveness on it, and why? 
• Human resources market: describe its demand and supply circle. 
• Daily childcare: how can it enhance the performance of employees in the company? 
• Compensation packages : what are they and what is their function? How can an HR specialist identify who is eligible for getting them? 
• Career planning : should it be more people-oriented, or is it to be centered around companies? 
• Professional qualities vs. fitting personality: which is more important? 
• Performance tests: how are they to be conducted? 
• Do remote interviews match in their effectiveness with personal ones? 

The Accountancy , Business , and Management (ABM) research focuses on the basic concepts of financial, marketing, and business management. ABM research explores various strategies employed in the business, marketing, and accounting spheres. It helps specialists in the sphere discern which business theories work best when put to practice.

Qualitative research gathers non-numerical data used to uncover customers’ opinions, thoughts, and trends. ABM qualitative studies use focus groups, observations, and interviews. The importance of the qualitative method have been increasingly recognized in the ABM field as a rich in detail and insightful way of analyzing the current market situation.

The nature of business research is the collection, study, and analysis of various business-related data to acquire detailed information and use it to maximize sales and profit of a business. The employed research methods include qualitative and quantitative types. The importance and benefits of business research can’t be overrated.

A marketing research topic is an issue that a researcher is investigating in their marketing research paper. The topic needs to be specific and well-defined to ensure the success of a research project on market and marketing. Selecting a topic is a challenging part of the marketing research.

Learn more on this topic:

• 280 Good Nursing Research Topics & Questions
• 256 Research Topics on Criminal Justice & Criminology
• 224 Research Topics on Technology & Computer Science
• 178 Best Research Titles about Cookery & Food
• 507 Interesting History Topics to Research
• 193 Best Education Research Topics & Ideas
• 120+ Micro- & Macroeconomics Research Topics
• 201 Research Topics on Psychology & Communication
• 512 Research Topics on HumSS
• 301 Best Health & Medical Research Topics
• 521 Research Questions & Titles about Science
• A List of Research Topics for Students. Unique and Interesting
• Good Research Topics, Titles and Ideas for Your Paper
• Gale Databases: Gale
• Writing a Research Paper: Purdue OWL
• What are the Topics used in Research Starters – Business? EBSCO Connect
• What should be a good topic for research related to Accountancy, Business, and Management? Quora
• The difference between quantitative vs. qualitative research: SurveyMonkey
• Understanding Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research: Medium.com
• PhDs in Business & Management: Five Hot Research Topics (TopUniversities)
• All Topics: Harvard Business Review
• Research topics and projects: QUIT Business School
• Browse All Topics: Harvard Business School
• Market Research: Entrepreneur
• Management Accounting Research: Elsevier
• Accounting Research Tutorial: UF Libraries
• What Is Management Research Actually Good For? Harvard Business Review
• What is Management Research? University of Toronto
• The value of management research to managers: The Conversation
• Human Resources: Harvard Business School
• Research & Surveys: SHRM
• Human Resources in Research: UOttawa
• BA (Hons) Business Studies: University of Stirling
• BA Research: University of Newcastle
• Education Studies BA: UCL Institute of Education
• Areas of Research: PhD in Management, Michigan State University
• Research focus areas in business and government: Victoria University of Wellington
• PhD Subject Groups: Business School, University of Edinburgh
• Research areas: The University of Sydney Business School
• Research topics: Leeds University Business School
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