BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS: INDIVIDUAL

ASSIGNMENT
INTRODUCTION

Reasoning is the process of thinking about things in a logical, rational way. It is considered
an innate human ability that has been formalized by fields such as logic, mathematics and
artificial intelligence. The process of reasoning is used to make decisions, solve problems and
evaluate things. It can be formal or informal, top-down or bottom-up and differs in terms of
handlings of uncertainty and partial truths.

Deductive Reasoning

It is a formal method of top-down logic that seeks to find observations to prove a theory. It
uses formal logic and produces logically certain results. According to [ CITATION Tho17 \l 2057
] it is a reasoning method that deals with certainty.it is a reasoning method that deals with
certain conclusions. It reasons from certain rules and facts down to logically certain
conclusions that necessarily follow the premises of an argument. It is often called top-down
reasoning because it generally starts with a certain rule about a class of things, compares that
to a certain fact about a specific thing and then reasons down towards a certain conclusion
about a certain things. It is a type of analysis that is closely related to rationalism as it looks at
what is logically and necessarily true about a given system. An example of deductive
reasoning can be “my boss said the person with the highest sales would eta promotion at the
end of the year” however this statement is a thesis that the employee with the highest sales
gets a promotion however this thesis need to be proved and doing so, the employees should
accumulated as many sales as possible to get a confirmation of the thesis. [ CITATION
Uma2003 \l 2057 ] Also gave an example stating that, high performers are highly proficient in
their jobs. If John is a high performer, we then conclude that e is highly proficient in his job.

Inductive Reasoning

According to [ CITATION Uma2003 \l 2057 ] induction is a process where we observe certain

phenomena and on this basis arrive at conclusions.[ CITATION Uma2003 \l 2057 ] Further stated
that, in induction we logically establish a general proposition based on observed facts for
instance, we see that the production processes are the prime features of factories or
manufacturing plants, we therefore conclude that factories exist for production purposes. It is
also considered a bottom-up logic that seeks theories to explain observations. It is exploratory
1|Page
in nature and allows for uncertain but likely results. [ CITATION Tho17 \l 2057 ] The reasoning
method that deals with probability. Inductive reasoning is a reasoning method that deals
probable conclusions. It reasons from specific facts and probable rules “up” toward probable
conclusions that don’t necessarily follow from the premises it looks for patterns in data,
reasoning by consistency. It is often called bottom-up reasoning because it generally starts
with specifics facts/ observations/ measurements and or probable rule and reasons towards a
generalization. Since induction deals with likelihood, it can produce logically strong and
cogent arguments with false conclusions and it can also produce weak arguments with
accidentally true conclusions as well. An example of inductive reasoning can be “all of the
managers at my office have college degrees. Therefore you must have a college degree to
become a manager” this reasoning statement how inductive reasoning is about probability
and generalization therefore because of the uncertainty the final conclusions maybe or maybe
not be true hence the conclusion is not certain.

The illustration above shows the sequence in which the deductive an inductive methods of reasoning
follow.

Deductive-Inductive Reasoning

This is a combination of both the deductive and inductive reasoning hence both methods are used to
make decisions, solve problems and evaluate things. There for both inductive and deductive reasoning
patterns are used to come up with a conclusion. According to a researcher (Prinsen) using a grounded
theory may be applicable that is discovering theory through the analysis of data. This is an inductive
approach in a sense but this does not mean you won’t have deduced hypothesis before you start
collecting data, it means ones has the freedom of retrospectively formulating new hypotheses to fit the

2|Page
data. An example of deductive-inductive reasoning can be the use of both quantitative and qualitative
data collection methods where surveys and structured observations can be used to reach a final
conclusion.

CONCLUSION

Reasoning in research is very important has it helps research with their decision making process as
they will be able to be logical. It is also beneficial when trying to solve problems or evaluating events.
There are different types of research reasoning hence researchers such as Deductive and Inductive
reasoning with may help researcher’s on their research projects.

3|Page
References
DeMichele, Thomas. "FACT/MYTH." 15 June 2017. http://factmyth.com/the-different-types-of-
reasoning-methods-explained-and-compared/. phones. 30 August 2019.

Sekaran, Uma. RESEARCH METHODS FOR BUSINESS. A Skill Building Approach. London: John Wiley &
Sons, Inc, 2003. book.

4|Page