Introduction and BackgroundWhen approaching any type of research, there is an end goal that the researcher(s) wishes to achieve, whether there is a hypothesis to test or exploratory data to collect and analyze. With my research, I wanted to connect it to my current position at work and future promotion opportunities. In my current role as a Project Engineer, I have responsibility for managing a project from start to finish while working with a cross-functional team. Often when working on a project, certain items need to be assigned and/or completed and I may have difficulty doing this because I have no direct reports. By creating and maintaining good relationships, I can ask some employees to do the things I ask of them, but there are always a few who will wait for their supervisor to give them the task. As defined by Dr. Paul Mullen, motivation is the inner motivation that drives a person to act (Mullen, 1993). With this story, I wanted to focus on how I can motivate employees to do their best - which pushes employees to produce high work performance. Research Design When I first presented my research project, I wanted to use my current employer as my population. This would allow me to obtain a very large population with an assortment of variables that I could evaluate to see if there are any trends between the motivators and the selected variables. These variables would include the factory in which the employee works; which would include a geographic variable since my employer has factories in three different states; what department the employee works in, what team they work in, what gender they are and what age group they belong to. I presented this proposal to my ...... middle of paper ......ons for future research starting with a more defined population sample. A better defined population sample would include a larger population sample for better statistical analysis and to find trends. Additionally, by defining population, research can focus on a company or region, such as a city or state. If the population is concentrated in one region, the sample population should be compared to the region's demographics, similar to how I compared my research to Wisconsin demographics in terms of gender and age. This would provide a level of confidence to research based on demographic data. ReferencesMullen, P. (1993). EMPLOYEE MONETARY SYSTEMS: THE PAST OR THE FUTURE IN EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION. Industrial Management, 35(6), 6.US Census Bureau. (nd). American Fact Finder. Retrieved March 12, 2014 from http://eadiv.state.wy.us/demog_data/pop2010/Profile/WI.pdf