Research models

This category covers the theories and models that appear most often in management, marketing, and information systems research: TAM, the theory of planned behaviour, UTAUT, SERVQUAL, expectation confirmation, and the families of models around motivation, commitment, and behavioural intention. Each post gives the origin of the model with its original citation, the constructs and hypotheses it is normally used with, established scales for each construct, and the questions worth asking before transplanting a model into a context different from the one it was validated in.

Alongside those are posts on the ideas underneath: independent and dependent variables, mediators, moderators, control variables, drawing a model so that the diagram and the hypotheses agree with each other, and stating a hypothesis so that it can actually be tested.

Once the model is settled, the Surveys category covers turning it into an instrument and the SmartPLS category covers estimating it. If you are still choosing a question, start in Research methods instead.

Where to start. Read the post on variable roles first, since confusing a mediator with a moderator, or a control with a predictor, is the most common error in a first model diagram and it propagates into everything after it. Then pick a base model that suits your question: TAM or UTAUT for intention to use a technology, the theory of planned behaviour for behavioural intention more generally, SERVQUAL for service quality and satisfaction. The post on building a research model covers combining and adapting published models without losing the theoretical grounding that justified them in the first place. Read the post on writing hypotheses before you finalise the diagram, so that every arrow in it corresponds to something you can test.