RES 709 Week 8 Research Plan Example

A Research Plan for Studying Onboarding and Retention of Associates Hired Into Hybrid Work

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

RES/709: Research Conceptualization and Design

Week 8 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The learner, the firms, the planned study and all figures are composites written for a model paper.

Over seven weeks, an invented Ohio audit partner built up a doctoral study on early departures among hybrid-era associates, who leave within two years at nearly twice the earlier rate. This paper assembles the full research plan, revising earlier pieces where needed so the parts fit together.

Problem

Across the profession, public accounting loses many staff in their first years, which drives up hiring and training costs and thins the pipeline of future managers and partners. Within that broad pattern sits the problem this study targets: managing partners at Ohio firms of 50 to 500 people do not know which parts of onboarding keep associates who started under hybrid schedules, or what those associates themselves find helpful. The Week 3 critique showed why that knowledge is missing: published remote work studies mostly followed seasoned employees, seldom recorded onboarding and rarely looked at professional services firms.

Purpose

This convergent mixed methods study will estimate how onboarding practices, early adjustment and embeddedness relate to whether hybrid-era associates are still employed two years after starting at mid-size Ohio firms, and will gather those associates' own descriptions of how they came to feel part of their firms.

Research Questions and Hypotheses

RQ1 asks whether the onboarding an associate received predicts still being employed at 24 months and whether that link runs through adjustment and then embeddedness; H1 to H3 predict a positive link and indirect effects. RQ2 asks how these associates talk about acceptance and connection. RQ3 asks how the interview accounts deepen or qualify what the survey estimates show.

Paradigm and Framework

The study takes a pragmatic stance, choosing methods by their fit with the questions. Its conceptual framework integrates organizational socialization research, including evidence that adjustment mediates the effects of onboarding on outcomes (Bauer et al., 2007), with job embeddedness theory, which explains staying through links, fit and sacrifice (Mitchell et al., 2001). Hybrid schedules are expected to make it harder for onboarding to translate into acceptance.

Design and Methods

Quantitative strand: a correlational survey of every eligible associate at roughly 18 firms, about 430 people who started under hybrid schedules in the last three years, with a target of 260 responses from a power analysis. Measures: an onboarding inventory, validated scales for adjustment and embeddedness and retention from firm records. Analysis: logistic regression and serial mediation with bootstrapped indirect effects and cluster-robust standard errors.

Qualitative strand: qualitative description with 20 to 25 semi-structured interviews of stayers and leavers selected from survey respondents and alumni lists, analyzed with reflexive thematic analysis and supported by member reflections, peer debriefing, an audit trail and a reflexive journal.

Integration: connected sampling and a joint display linking survey estimates and themes for each construct and practice, with meta-inferences classified as confirmation, expansion or discordance (Fetters et al., 2013).

Revisions Made While Assembling the Plan

Putting the pieces together revealed inconsistencies that had to be fixed. The Week 4 purpose described the population as associates at mid-size firms, while the Week 5 sampling section used a range of 50 to 500 employees; the plan now defines mid-size that way everywhere. The Week 6 design added interviews with former associates who never completed the survey, which the Week 7 integration plan had not anticipated; the joint display now marks those interviews separately. And the term onboarding practices, used loosely in early weeks, now has a single definition. These revisions are routine but essential, since reviewers read the plan as one document.

Data Management

Survey data will be stored in a university-approved platform; interview recordings will be kept on encrypted storage and deleted after transcription is verified. A data dictionary will define every variable, and code for all analyses will be saved so results can be reproduced. A separate key linking participant codes to names will be stored apart from the data and destroyed after retention records are matched.

Alignment

The problem's two gaps, which practices relate to retention and why, map to RQ1 and RQ2; RQ3 requires integration. The pragmatic paradigm supports both strands; the framework supplies RQ1's constructs and RQ2's sensitizing concepts; the correlational design matches RQ1's language of association; qualitative description matches RQ2's focus on accounts; the joint display answers RQ3.

Every element answers to the problem: two kinds of missing knowledge, two strands and one integration.

Ethical Considerations

Ethics board approval from the university comes first, ahead of any recruitment. Risks include pressure on associates if their employers learn who participated and harm to departed associates who criticize former firms. Protections: no recruitment at the learner's own firm; firms never see individual data; coded linking of survey and records with consent; de-identified quotations; secure storage; and the right to withdraw.

Feasibility

Recruitment through the state society of CPAs and the learner's professional network makes 18 firms realistic. A timeline with buffers, a committee member experienced in mixed methods and training in qualitative analysis address workload and skills. Locke et al. (2014) advise that proposals show reviewers the study can actually be completed, which this plan addresses through its scale and staging.

Limitations and Delimitations

Limitations: the correlational design cannot establish cause; retrospective items for earlier cohorts risk recall bias; firms that volunteer may have stronger onboarding. Delimitations: mid-size Ohio accounting firms; associates who joined on hybrid schedules within the last three years; two-year retention as the outcome. These boundaries keep the study manageable and focused on the setting where the problem appeared.

Anticipated Contributions to Practice

If certain practices, such as assigned mentors with protected time or in-person cohort days built around shared work, relate strongly to retention, firms can redesign onboarding at modest cost. Even null results would help, by telling leaders that onboarding alone will not solve early turnover and that workload or pay deserve more attention.

Significance

For practice, the study will give firm leaders evidence for designing onboarding in hybrid settings. For scholarship, it carries socialization and embeddedness theory into a group earlier studies skipped: new hires at professional services firms who began on hybrid schedules.

Dissemination

Results will be shared with participating firms in an aggregate summary, presented at the state society's annual conference and submitted to a practitioner journal for accountants as well as an academic journal on organizational behavior, so that both audiences named in the problem statement receive them.

Timeline

Months 1 to 3: proposal defense and ethics approval. Months 4 to 6: firm recruitment and survey launch. Months 6 to 11: interviews. Months 10 to 15: separate analyses. Months 16 to 18: integration, writing and defense preparation.

Reflection

The learner began the course expecting to run a survey. Working through paradigms, frameworks, critique and designs led her to a mixed methods plan in which the most important question, why newcomers feel disconnected, gets the method it deserves.

Conclusion

The plan aligns a specific, evidenced problem with a purpose, three research questions, a pragmatic paradigm, an integrated framework and a convergent mixed methods design, supported by ethical safeguards, a feasible scale and an 18-month timeline. It is ready to be developed into a full proposal.

References

Bauer, T. N., Bodner, T., Erdogan, B., Truxillo, D. M., & Tucker, J. S. (2007). Newcomer adjustment during organizational socialization: A meta-analytic review of antecedents, outcomes, and methods. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(3), 707-721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.3.707

Fetters, M. D., Curry, L. A., & Creswell, J. W. (2013). Achieving integration in mixed methods designs: Principles and practices. Health Services Research, 48(6pt2), 2134-2156. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.12117

Locke, L. F., Spirduso, W. W., & Silverman, S. J. (2014). Proposals that work: A guide for planning dissertations and grant proposals (6th ed.). Sage.

Mitchell, T. R., Holtom, B. C., Lee, T. W., Sablynski, C. J., & Erez, M. (2001). Why people stay: Using job embeddedness to predict voluntary turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 44(6), 1102-1121. https://doi.org/10.5465/3069391