Research techniques

Research techniques

Data collection

According to Kothari (2011) once the problem is well defined and the research plan is checked out the next step is to collect data in order to support or to be used for the study. There are two techniques used for data collection.

Primary data collection

According to Kothari (2011) primary data is the data that have been collected newly for the purpose of the research; this data is considered to be "original in character"

Furthermore as stated by My market research methods (2014) primary data is the data that is collected by the author who is doing the research or an assistant, this data is collected specifically for an objective.

Secondary data collection

According to Kothari (2011) secondary data is the data that have been already collected by another party and have been passed through a statistical process.

To support the above statement as stated by My market research methods (2014) secondary data is the searching of data that has been collected by someone else; this data can be collected from various sources like journals, books, and census.

 

Figure 1.Primary and Secondary Data Collection

The lecturer started by explaining what primary research is and then went on to explain the few methods of primary research.

Face to face interview

According to The qustion bank (2014) these interviews are conducted face to face with the interviewee, a series of questions are asked; it can be either close ended questions or open ended questions. The questions posed should be clear and understandable; this is mainly used to collect qualitative information. The interview can be done formally (structured) or informally (semi structured).

Telephone interviews

According to The qustion bank (2014) these are done if the face to face interview cannot be done; this is done as a last resort to a face to face interview. A basic questionnaire will be used to carry out this interview through the phone. This is also known as “proxy telephone interview”

This is usually done by a call center operator who talks to the interviewee through the phone with a list of pre-prepared questions, the questionnaire should be shorter than what is asked while having face to face interview. At times it’s noticed that people won’t be willing to give personal information during a telephone interview.

Mail surveys

These are done in order to collect quantitative data; usually a questionnaire is sent through a postal service and then is filled by the respondent and returned to the research party/team. The analysis of the data is much easier compared to qualitative data collection. The important part to be considered is the design of the questionnaire; this is because while responding to the questionnaire the respondent does not have any guidance from the researcher/team. (The qustion bank  2014)

Web survey and email data collection

According to The qustion bank (2014) this is a very useful and effective method due to the popularity of the internet; data can be collected from any part of the world without the need to consider the boundaries. This is a cost effective data collection method to collect large amounts of data.

Typically there are two methods to do this

1. Email
• The respondent receives an embedded questionnaire by the researcher and then that questionnaire is filled and sent back to the researcher by clicking on “send”
2. Web surveys

• This type of questionnaire is created with a help of on-line internet software that enables the researcher to create a survey, the questions should be understandable and precise. Once this is done the survey is then sent as a link to various parties using email, social networking sites etc or as a pop up in a website.

Figure 2.Summary of surveys

Types of questionnaires

As stated by Outsource to india (2015) there are two types of questionnaires known as open-ended and close-ended.

Open ended

According to Outsource to india (2015) this type of questionnaire allows the respondents to give his/her true opinion in words rather than having a set of choices to choose from. This is done usually to collect qualitative information rather than quantitative.

These typically contains a question and expects a genuine response by the respondent

Figure 3.open ended question example

Close ended

According to Outsource to india (2015) these are basically questionnaires that have a set of answers where the respondent chooses a particular answer based on the question, this is done to collect and analyze the responses in a quantitative manner.

These are further classified into 7 types.

• Leading questions

Figure 4.Close end leading question

• Importance questions

Figure 5.Close end importance question

• Likert questions

Figure 6.close end likert question

• Dichotomous Questions

Figure 7.close end Dichotomous Questions

• Bipolar questions

Figure 8.close end bipolar question

• Rating scale questions

Figure 9.close end rating scale question

• Buying Propensity Questions

Figure 10.close end buying propensity question

3 survey approaches explained by the lecturer

1.       Pyramid approach

Starts with closed end question and arrive at open ended questions where the respondent can freely express his/her opinion. Drawback is the respondent might get tired when it comes to answering the open ended questions.

2.       Funnel approach

Start with open ended questions and narrow it down with close ended question’s where the respondent will answer all the open ended questions first, drawback is if the respondent isn’t familiar with the area he/she may get stuck at a point and might not be willing to answer the close ended questions.

3.       Fusion approach

This is a combination of both approaches where the start is based broad close ended questions to narrow it down to a specific, filters can be placed to get a more specific subject related understanding.

The lecturer then explained what a Likert scale is, according to Bright hub education (2015) Likert scale is type of scale that measures the questions response in a scale of 1 to 5, 1 to 10 etc. there is a format for these types of questions. The question should be asked in a manner so that there is an “agreement” or “disagreement” an example of a likert questions is discussed above in the close-ended question types section.

Primary scales of measurement

• Nominal - Numbers assigned to runners
• Ordinal – rank order of winners
• Interval – perform rating on a 0 to 10 scale (subsection of ordinal)
• Ratio – time to finish in seconds

Evaluation and pilot study

The lecturer then gave points on doing a pilot survey for the ARMPD assignment.

1.       What are the techniques used?

·         Survey

·         Interview – structured/unstructured

2.       How you use them (objectives)

3.       Who are you going to give it to

·         Sample size

·         Sample description

4.       The order on how it’s going to be used?

·         Which 1^st which 2^nd

o   Eg:- interview 1^st, survey 2^nd

5.       What kind of data is going to be included?

·         Nominal

·         Ordinal

Pilot study

1.       How many people are you going to involve

2.       How are you going to deploy

·         Face to face

·         Online

·         Telephone

How the results are analyzed?

Learning outcomes

·         Understanding of the importance of data collection

·         Understanding of the methods of collecting data (primary/secondary)

·         Insight and the ability to understand the methods of primary data collection

·         Understanding of the two different types of questionnaires (open/closed)

·         Individual research on the different types of closed questionnaire’s

·         Understanding of the 3 different approaches for surveys

·         Insight on the likert scale and the measurement techniques

·         Insight on the evaluation and pilot study for the project