| Course | DOC 715 Doctoral Seminar I (DOC/715) |
|---|---|
| Week | 2 |
| Paper type | Doctoral purpose and research question refinement |
| Length | about 1,150 words, 4 double-spaced pages plus title page and references |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | University of Phoenix |
| Program | DBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for DOC 715 Week 2
Questions the Data Can Answer: Refining Purpose and Research Questions for an Onboarding Study
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
DOC/715: Doctoral Seminar I
Week 2 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The learner, the company, its customers and all figures are composites written for a model paper.
Week 1 sharpened the problem statement for the fictional Austin software company's customer success leader: subscription software firms lose many small-business customers in their first year, and research has not established whether proactive onboarding by customer success managers affects that loss. This paper refines the purpose and research questions that follow from that problem, testing each against the records the company actually keeps.
Draft One
"This study will explore why small businesses churn and to design a solution that improves retention." The draft has three problems. "Explore why" signals a qualitative inquiry into reasons, but the Week 1 problem concerns whether a practice affects an outcome, a quantitative question. "Design a solution" describes an action project, not research. And the draft names no population, setting, variables or design.
Draft Two
"This quantitative study will determine whether proactive onboarding causes higher retention among small-business customers." This version chose a method but overreached. Customers were not randomly assigned to onboarding; assignment depended on staffing and sales region. Without random assignment, the design can reduce bias but not eliminate it, so "causes" promises more than the study can deliver.
The Refined Purpose Statement
Creswell and Creswell (2018) recommend that quantitative purpose statements identify the theory if any, the independent and dependent variables, any mediating, moderating or control variables, the design, the participants and the research site, using precise language consistent with the design.
"This quantitative quasi-experimental study aims to examine whether proactive onboarding by customer success managers, compared with automated onboarding only, is associated with twelve-month retention and ninety-day feature adoption among small service businesses that subscribed to Hill Country Software between 2023 and 2025, and whether these associations differ by business size."
Research Questions and Hypotheses
RQ1: Is proactive onboarding associated with twelve-month retention among small service business customers, compared with automated onboarding, after accounting for differences between the groups?
- H1: Customers who receive proactive onboarding have a higher probability of retention at twelve months than comparable customers who receive automated onboarding.
RQ2: Is proactive onboarding associated with the number of core features adopted within ninety days?
- H2: Customers who receive proactive onboarding adopt more core features within ninety days than comparable customers.
RQ3: Does the association between proactive onboarding and retention differ by business size?
- H3: The association is stronger for businesses with one to four employees than for businesses with five to nineteen.
Null hypotheses state no association or no difference between the two groups being compared.
The smallest businesses, with no one to spare for learning software, may be the ones a human guide helps most.
Why These Questions
RQ1 answers the core of the Week 1 gap: whether the practice affects first-year retention. RQ2 tests a plausible pathway, since Week 1 found that customers who left early used few features; if onboarding raises adoption, that helps explain any retention effect. RQ3 answers the call in retention research to target interventions by whom they help (Ascarza et al., 2018), since customer success managers are a limited resource.
Defining the Variables
Proactive onboarding: assignment of a customer success manager who held at least one onboarding session within thirty days of subscription, coded 1; automated email onboarding only, coded 0.
Twelve-month retention: active subscription twelve months after the start date, coded 1, or cancellation before then, coded 0.
Feature adoption: number of the eight core features used at least three times in the first ninety days, from 0 to 8.
Business size: employees reported at signup, grouped as one to four or five to nineteen.
Covariates: industry, region, plan tier, sales channel, signup month and whether the customer previously used scheduling software.
Checking Questions Against Data
The learner examined the company's records. Subscription start and end dates, plan tier, region, sales channel and signup answers about size, industry and prior software are stored for every customer. Feature use is logged by the product. Customer success manager assignment and session dates are recorded in the customer relationship management system from 2023 onward, which is why the study window begins then. Each question can be answered from existing records, without new data collection, which also keeps the burden on customers at zero and shortens the timeline.
Hochstein et al. (2020) described the core of customer success management as proactive engagement to help customers realize value from a product. The operational definition of proactive onboarding, a manager-led session early in the subscription, matches that description while being measurable in company records.
Why Not More Questions?
An earlier list included questions about customer satisfaction, support tickets and expansion to higher plans. Each is interesting, and each would add analysis, variables and pages. The learner kept three questions because they answer the problem directly, can be tested with clean records and fit a dissertation timeline. The others are listed in a future research section of the plan.
Directional or Not?
H1 and H2 are directional, predicting that onboarding helps, because the logic of customer success and prior practice reports suggest a positive effect, and because a negative effect, while possible, would be surprising. Directional hypotheses still will be tested with two-tailed tests, so a harmful effect would be detected. H3 is also directional, based on the reasoning that very small businesses lack staff to learn software on their own. If the data show the opposite, the study will report it as a finding, not an error.
A Note on the Comparison Group
Customers in the comparison group did receive onboarding, in the form of automated emails, videos and help articles. The study therefore compares two forms of onboarding, not onboarding with nothing. That framing is more accurate and more useful to firms, since few subscription companies offer no onboarding at all. It also means any effect found is the added value of a human guide over automated help.
What the Questions Leave Out
The questions do not ask why customers leave, which the records cannot show, or how customers experience onboarding, which would require interviews. Those questions matter, and the learner notes them as possible follow-up research, perhaps a qualitative study of how small-business owners describe their first months with the software.
Alignment With the Problem
The problem names first-year loss of small-business customers, the cost of that loss and the unknown effect of proactive onboarding. The purpose names those same elements; RQ1 addresses the effect on loss, RQ2 a mechanism and RQ3 the targeting question the gap raised. No question introduces a variable the problem does not justify, and none leaves part of the problem unaddressed.
Conclusion
Two earlier drafts mixed methods and overclaimed causation. The refined purpose names a quantitative quasi-experimental design, variables, population and setting; three questions with hypotheses follow from it; variables are defined operationally; and each question can be answered from records the company already keeps. Week 3 will evaluate alignment among all components.
References
Ascarza, E., Neslin, S. A., Netzer, O., Anderson, Z., Fader, P. S., Gupta, S., Hardie, B. G. S., Lemmens, A., Libai, B., Neal, D., Provost, F., & Schrift, R. (2018). In pursuit of enhanced customer retention management: Review, key issues, and future directions. Customer Needs and Solutions, 5(1-2), 65-81. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40547-017-0080-0
Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). Sage.
Hochstein, B., Rangarajan, D., Mehta, N., & Kocher, D. (2020). An industry/academic perspective on customer success management. Journal of Service Research, 23(1), 3-7. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670519896422
What the DOC 715 Week 2 instructions ask
The second DOC 715 paper asks doctoral learners to refine their purpose statement and research questions. Learners usually revise the purpose so that it states the method, design, key variables or phenomenon, population and setting; write research questions, and hypotheses for quantitative studies, that follow from the purpose; define terms and variables; and explain how the questions address the problem and gap from Week 1. Some versions ask for a comparison of question wording across methods or a table of variables. Show earlier drafts and what changed, cite methodological sources in APA and confirm that each question can be answered with data the learner can realistically obtain within the dissertation's scope.
How this DOC 715 Week 2 example is built
Our worked paper starts with a purpose that promised to "explore why small businesses churn and design a solution," which mixed qualitative wording, a quantitative problem and an action project. A second draft asked whether onboarding "causes" retention without a design that could support the word. The final purpose names a quantitative quasi-experimental study of whether proactive onboarding by customer success managers is associated with twelve-month retention and ninety-day feature adoption among small service businesses, and whether effects differ by business size. Guidance from a standard research design text shapes the wording, and research on customer success and retention management grounds the variables. Each question is checked against fields in the company's records.
DOC 715 Week 2 grading rubric: where the points go
Doctoral graders reward purpose statements and research questions that align tightly with the problem and design. Strong papers name the method, design, variables, population and setting in the purpose, write questions and hypotheses that follow from it and define each variable operationally. Credit goes to showing revision, to wording that matches what the design can support, such as avoiding causal claims a design cannot make, and to confirming that data exist for each question. Graders also value concise questions a committee can evaluate at a glance, with hypotheses stated in both directional and null form. Research design sources in APA support a strong paper.
DOC 715 Week 2 help: mistakes to avoid
Purpose statements often mix methods, promising to "explore" a relationship that a survey will test, or to "determine the cause" of something a correlational design cannot establish. Match the verbs to the design. Another frequent gap is research questions that drift from the purpose, adding variables never mentioned. Keep them aligned. Learners also write questions the data cannot answer, such as asking why customers left when the data contain only whether they left. Check each question against your sources. Some papers omit hypotheses in quantitative studies or state them only in the null form. Finally, define every variable in terms of where its data come from. A tutor can help you align your purpose and questions.
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DOC 715 Week 2 questions, answered
What does DOC 715 Week 2 usually cover?
It usually covers refining the purpose statement and research questions so they name the method, design, variables and population and align with the problem.
Where can I find a free DOC 715 Week 2 sample paper?
The DOC 715 Week 2 paper on purpose and questions for an onboarding study is above, open to all readers.
What should a quantitative purpose statement include?
The method and design, the independent and dependent variables, any moderators or controls, the population and the setting.
Should a quasi-experimental study use causal language?
With care; quasi-experiments can support stronger inferences than correlational studies, but wording should acknowledge that groups were not randomly assigned.
How many research questions should a dissertation have?
Usually two to four, each tied to the purpose and answerable with the planned data.
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