Transcript Research Methodology: Data Collection

Research Methodology:
Data Collection
Presented by
Dr. Chan Chang Tik
Research Process
(Recall)
Research
Topic
Literature
Review
Research
Strategy
Data
Analysis
Data
Collection
Negotiating
Access
Project
Report
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Contents
• Negotiating Access
• Data Collection
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Negotiating Access
• The following strategies may be
used to help you gain physical and
cognitive access in the form of
personal entry to an organization:
– Allowing yourself sufficient time.
– Using existing contacts and
developing new ones.
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Negotiating Access (2)
• Strategies to gain access:
– Clear account of purpose and type of
access required.
– Overcoming organizational
concerns.
– Identifying possible benefits.
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Negotiating Access (3)
• Strategies to gain access:
– Using suitable language.
– Facilitating ease of reply.
– Developing access on an
incremental basis.
– Establishing your credibility.
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Sufficient Time
• Physical access may take weeks or even
months to arrange.
• You may have to necessitate several
telephone calls simply to make the contact
with the appropriate person. You may send
emails too.
• Once a contact is made it may take a number
of weeks before you conduct the actual
interviews, engage in observations or use the
secondary data.
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Existing Contacts
• Use your existing contacts to gain
access.
• The use of known contacts is
suitable for case study strategy
and non-probability sampling.
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Existing Contacts (2)
• Using your work placement
organization for your research project.
• To develop new contacts you may
consider:
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–
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Professional association
Trade union
Employers’ association
Chamber of commerce
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Purpose of Research
• You must be very specific of your
requirements.
• Send an introductory letter requesting
access. Your letter should:
– Outline your proposed research and
requirement.
– How the person being contacted might be able
to help. Refer to Appendix C.
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Organizational Concerns
• The concerns may fall into three categories,
namely:
– Concerns about the amount of time or resources
(avoid multiple requests).
– Sensitivity (avoid presenting the organization in a
bad light).
– Confidentiality of data and anonymity of the
organization or individual participants (make these
assurance repeatedly).
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Organizational Benefits
• Applicability of proposed research
to the organization.
• Report of your findings.
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Suitable Language
• Avoid terms that may be perceived as
threatening or not interesting. For example
– Research  learn from your experience
– Publish  write an account
– Interview  conversation
• Your language should be appropriate to the
person you are contacting so that it does not
sound patronizing or just boring.
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Ease of Reply
• Use a simple pro forma for
recipients.
• Include stamped, addressed
envelope or a fax number or an
email address.
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Incremental Access
• To overcome organizational concerns about
time-consuming and multiple requests,
consider incremental access.
• This strategy allows you the opportunity to
develop positive relationship with the person
who grants you initial access.
• Incremental access is time consuming.
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Establish Credibility
• Once you have gained physical access
you have to establish your credibility in
order to gain cognitive access.
• Provide assurances about
confidentiality and anonymity.
• Consider ethical issues.
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Data Collection
• Questionnaire techniques
• Interviews
• Observations
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Questionnaire Techniques
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When do you use questionnaire?
Types of questionnaire
Designing individual questions
Administrating the questionnaire
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When to Use Questionnaire?
• Suitable for descriptive or explanatory
research.
• Descriptive research
• Using attitude and opinion questionnaires
• Explanatory research
• Cause-and-effect relationships between variables
• Not suitable for exploratory research that
requires large numbers of open-ended
questions.
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Types of Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Self-Administered
Online
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Postal
Interviewer Administered
Delivery
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Telephone
Structured
Interview
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Types of Questionnaire (2)
• Your choice of questionnaire is
influenced by the following factors:
– Importance of reaching a particular
person as respondent.
– Importance of respondent’s answer
not being contaminated.
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Types of Questionnaire (3)
• Factors affecting choice of
questionnaire:
– Size of sample required, taking into
account the likely response rate.
– Types of questions you need to ask to
collect your data.
– Number of questions you need to ask to
collect your data.
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Designing Individual Questions
• Open Questions
– Used widely in exploratory research where you
require a detailed answer or when you want to
find out what is uppermost in the respondent’s
mind.
– Open questions are difficult to analyze and you
are advised to keep them to a minimum.
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Designing Questions (2)
• List Questions
– List questions offer the respondents a list
of responses any of which they can
choose.
– The response categories can include
‘yes/no’, ‘agree/disagree’ and ‘applies/does
not apply’. You can also add a catch-all
category of ‘other’.
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Designing Questions (3)
• Category Questions
– Category questions are designed so that
each respondent’s answer can fit only one
category.
– Useful to collect data about attributes and
behaviour.
– You should have no more than five
response categories.
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Designing Questions (4)
• Ranking Questions
– A ranking question asks the respondent to
place things in rank order. This means that
you can discover their relative importance
to the respondent.
– Keep the list of items to seven or less.
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Designing Questions (5)
• Scale Questions
– Scale questions are often used to collect attitude
and belief data.
– We usually used five-point Likert scale.
– You can also capture the respondent’s attitude
using a 10-point numeric scale.
Poor value for money
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10 Good value for money
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Designing Question (6)
• Another variation of the scale questions
is the bi-polar scale often used in
consumer research to rate a simple
object or idea. This scale has a pair of
opposite adjectives.
Fast
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Slow
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Open Question
• An example of an open question:
– What do you think of INTI Online?
.………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………….
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List Question
• An example of a list question:
– Please tick the box provided for places you have
visited in Malaysia. For places you have not visited,
please leave the box blank.
KLCC
Museum
Pulau Redang
Ipoh
Other
(please state)
…………………………………………………………
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Category Question
• An example of a category question:
– How often do you login to INTI Online?
never login
1 – 4 times per week
5 – 9 times per week
more than 10 times per week
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Ranking Question
• An example of a ranking question:
– Please number each of the factors listed below in order of
importance to you in your choice of a course. Number the
most important 1, the next 2 and so on. If a factor has no
importance at all, please leave blank.
Lecturer teaching
Course fees
Library facilities
Lab
Other
(please specify)
………………………………………………………………….
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Scale Question
• An example of a scale question:
– For the following statement please tick the box
which matches your view most clearly.
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
I find the course
interesting.
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Administrating the
Questionnaire
• Online questionnaire through email:
– Contact recipients by email and advise them to
expect a questionnaire.
– Email questionnaire with a covering letter (avoid
attachment).
– Email the first follow-up one week after.
– Email the second follow-up after three weeks. This
should include another covering letter and a copy of
the questionnaire.
– A third follow-up can also be used if time allows or
your response rate is low.
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Postal Questionnaire
• Ensure that questionnaire and letter are printed, and
envelopes addressed.
• Pre-survey contact through email, phone or post.
• Post the survey with a covering letter, and a return
envelope.
• Post (or email) the first follow-up one week after using
a postcard.
• Post the second follow-up after three weeks. This
should contain another copy of the questionnaire, a
new return envelope and a new covering letter.
• A third follow-up can also be used if time allows or your
response rate is low. For this it may be possible to use
telephone calls or even call in person.
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Delivery and Collection
Questionnaire
• Ensure that all questionnaires and covering letters are
printed and a collection box is ready.
• Contact respondents and advise them to attend a
meeting.
• At the meeting hand over the questionnaire with a
covering letter to each respondent.
• Introduce the questionnaire and stress its anonymous
or confidential nature.
• Ensure that respondents place their completed
questionnaire in a collection box before they leave the
meeting.
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Telephone Questionnaire
• Ensure that all questionnaires are printed.
• Where possible contact respondents by post, email or
telephone advising them to expect a telephone call.
• Record the date and time of call and whether or not the
questionnaire was completed.
• You should note any specific times that have been
arranged for callbacks.
• For calls that were not successful, you should note the
reason such as no reply or telephone disconnected.
• Make callback calls at the time arranged.
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Interviews
• Interview approach is suitable for
questions which are complex or openended, or large in number.
• In an explanatory study you need to
conduct interview to infer causal
relationships between variables.
• You are likely to include interviews in
an exploratory study too.
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Interviewing Competence
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Opening the interview
Questioning
Listening
Testing and summarizing understanding
Behavioural cues
Recording data
Appropriate language
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Opening Comments
• Thanked the participants.
• The purpose of the research, its funding and progress
to date were briefly outlined.
• Right to confidentiality and anonymity was reiterated.
• Participant’s right not to answer any question was
carefully emphasized.
• Offer of any written documentation.
• Nature of the outputs to which the research was
intended to lead.
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Questioning
• You can use open questions which are
designed to encourage the interviewee to
provide an extensive and developed answer.
• Open questions are likely to start with one of
the following words:
–
–
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What
How
Why
Example: Why did the organization introduce fiveday week?
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Questioning (2)
• Probing questions can be used to explore responses
that are of significance to the research topic.
• Probing questions can also be used to seek
explanation where you do not understand the
interviewee’s meaning.
• Use of reflection may also help you to probe a theme
by paraphrasing their words.
• Specific and closed questions may be used to obtain
specific information or to confirm a fact or opinion.
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Listening Skills
• Listen and build understanding so as to
explore with the interviewee.
• Deliberately holding back own thoughts which
would divert or compete with the other’s.
• Provide the interviewee with reasonable time
to develop their responses.
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Test Understanding
• Summarizing an explanation
provided by the interviewee.
• If possible, ask the interviewee to
read thorough the factual account
that you need to produce of the
interview.
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Interviewer’s
Behaviour
• Comments or non-verbal behaviours which
indicate any bias in your thinking should be
avoided.
• Your posture and tone of voice may
encourage or inhibit the flow of the
discussion.
• Sit slightly inclined towards the interviewee
and adapt an open posture, avoiding folded
arms.
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Recording Data
• A full record of the interview should be
compiled as soon as possible after it
has taken place.
• Permission should always be sought to
tape record an interview. You have to
explain why you need a recorder.
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Observations
• Participant observation
• Structured observation
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Participant
Observation
• Researcher attempts to participate fully in the
lives and activities of subjects and thus
becomes a member of their organization or
community.
• Very commonly used in sociology and
anthropology.
• You can adopt the participant observer role as
an existing member of an organization you
work with.
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Participant Observation (2)
• What participant observers do? There
are four roles to choose from, namely
–
–
–
–
Complete participant
Complete observer
Observer as participant
Participant as observer
• Data Collection
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Complete Participant
• You attempt to become a member
of the group without revealing your
true purpose to the group
members.
• Aware of ethical issues.
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Complete Observer
• You do not take part in the activities of
the group, you merely observe without
revealing your identity to the group.
• You may observe the consumers
behaviours at the checkout of a
supermarket.
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Observer as
Participant
• You observe the participants of the
group without taking part in the
activities in the same way as the ‘real’
participants.
• Your identity as a researcher would be
clear to all concerned.
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Participant as
Observer
• Your purpose as a researcher is
revealed.
• Both you and the subjects are
aware of the fact that it is a
fieldwork relationship.
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Data Collection
• Recording must take place on the same day as the
fieldwork in order that you do not forget valuable data.
• Data may be classified as
– Descriptive observations
– Narrative account
• Descriptive Observations
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Physical setting
Key participants and their activities
Events and their sequence
Emotions involved
• Narrative Account
– Function as investigative journalist and go beyond to
develop a framework of theory to explain your research
setting.
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Structured Observation
• It is systematic and it deals with quantifying
behaviour.
• Data collected can tell you how often things
happen rather than why they happen.
• You can use ‘off-the-shelf’ coding schedule or
design your own to collect data.
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Thank you
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