Bachelor's thesis (Turku University of Applied Sciences) Degree Program in Business Management

2 METHODOLOGY 
In order to support the findings of current research, it might be imperative first 
to:
underline the prevailing study techniques that comprise the foundation of 
the whole work;
point out additional differences between corresponding research 
methods that were used;
describe comparative data analysis tools;
define review techniques that served as the basis for the Thesis 
questionnaire and also helped to implement the interpretation of annual 
investment reports and statistics published by major financial institutions.
2.1 Review of the research process
As is usually the case with every major research process, certain data had to be 
collected and carefully analysed in order to present a sufficient supplement to 
some of the ideas mentioned in this paper.

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TURKU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES THESIS | Artem Vorobyev 
However, before proceeding with the overview of research methods, it might be 
wise to try to visualize the research process, since it will present readers with 
the opportunity to understand the stages at which the data was collected and, 
therefore, how it had been obtained.
For the above mentioned purposes, please refer to 
Appendix 2
loosely based 
on the work of Rajendar Kumar (Kumar, 2008, p. 11). 
As you can probably conclude from the chart, initial research process has been 
specifically divided into seven definitive steps. While it is possible to go into 
particular details concerning each of them, I will just briefly touch upon most 
essential ones.
In principle, steps 1-3 are primarily concerned with the basic theoretical outline 
of the project. Serving as a core of the scientific foundation of the research, they 
provide prediction (feed forward) possibilities that in many ways allow defining 
the later stages of the research.
During these steps information necessary for the representation of the 
theoretical part has been acquired and following research questions were 
answered: 
What sources of information would be most appropriate to serve as a 
foundation for the Thesis (based on criteria of relevance, date of 
publication, trustworthiness of the author, etc.)? 
How would it be possible to acquire access to these sources? 
What would be the criteria on the basis of which theoretical 
hypotheses could be created? 
While mostly dedicated to empirical component of the research, stages 4-7 
have also been useful not just in terms of feedback provided for the previous 
steps, rather presenting additional possibilities to evaluate the level of progress.
Starting with the planning of research methods for empirical assignments, 
necessary data has been collected and analysed in respect to hypotheses 
presented in previous sections.

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TURKU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES THESIS | Artem Vorobyev 
Finally, interpretation of collected information has been used to present the 
concluding judgements. The following research questions were seen as a 
motivation behind these steps: 
Which data should be collected in order to supplement the outlined 
hypotheses? 
What are the most efficient research methods that could be used in 
order to achieve this? 
How could these research methods be carried out on practice? 
What would serve as criteria for evaluation and consequent 
interpretation of the collected data? 
2.2 Research methods applied in the course of the Thesis work 
According to the works of Rajendar Kumar, Jill Collis and Roger Hussey, 
various types of research could be singled out in order to diversify among 
research purposes, structure of the work and required research methods 
(Kumar, 2008, p. 11; Collis and Hussey, 2003, p. 10).
In order to see the significance of this fact for my research, let us first try to 
identify differentiation principles that serve as a basis for this classification. 
On the surface, while the purpose of research merely revolves around basic 
motivational factors, research methods (processes of research) deal with the 
ways that might be useful to achieve stated objectives (Collis and Hussey, 
2003, p. 10).
Additionally, it is possible to talk about the logic behind the research process, 
which is more dedicated to structural organization of presented information: 
whether the train of thought is inductive or deductive and so on.
In order to summarize the ideas of the above paragraphs, let us refer to the 
classification table presented by Jill Collins and Roger Hussey (Collis and 
Hussey, 2003, p. 10): 

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TURKU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES THESIS | Artem Vorobyev