Res Paper Final Draft

Introduction

The quality of any study is dependent on the validity and reliability of the data collected. With that in mind, the focus of this paper is to discuss the data collection methodology to be used in the study aimed at exploring how e-commerce companies address privacy issues in their policies, which is a case study approach.

Data collection methodology

Several methods can be used to collect data for qualitative studies. These are interviews, focused group discussions, and observations all used to collect primary data and document review used to collect secondary data (Tracy, 2019).

· Interviews: Interviews as a qualitative data collection method requires that the person conducting the study to ask questions to a select population or a sample selected from a community to obtain their views or opinions regarding a particular subject (Walliman, 2017). Interviews can be conducted through face-to-face conversations and even though information technology devices such as phones.

· Observations: Data for qualitative studies can also be collected through observations. In this, the researcher or the person conducting the research observes the behavior of individuals belonging to the interest population and records their findings. He can be an active participant within the community or an outside observer (Morgan, et.al. 2017).

·  Focused group discussions: In concentrated group discussions, the study researcher administers questions to a select group of select respondent or study participants ranging from 5 to 15 individuals at the same time.

· Document Review: This involves a review of documentation and literature is related and relevant to the study. It consists of a review of historical and archived studies and documents with information or data pertinent to the study questions and forms the primary basis upon which secondary data required for the survey is collected.

In conducting, the study on how e-commerce companies address privacy issues in their policy, a case study approach will be used. It is a qualitative study, and then the researcher will be the leading and most valuable resource (Tracy, 2019). Consequently, the researcher will use convenience and purposeful sampling to select e-commerce companies for review. 

Also, the researcher will conduct extensive desk research, which guided by the research question will involve a review of select e-commerce companies documents regarding their methods of addressing privacy issues in their policies to collect data necessary in answering the research question (Morgan, et.al. 2017). Additional desk review will be carried out to establish the necessity for privacy and legal regulations and requirements for consumer privacy and their implications to e-commerce companies.

The desk research method in addition to collecting data from records, websites has been chosen because it will provide an avenue for the researcher to understand areas that have been already researched before and consequently, avoid repeating work that has already been done and establish areas where further research into the topic is required (Walliman, 2017).

Conclusion

As seen from the discussion, the study on how e-commerce companies address privacy issues in their policies attempts to answer the “how” question making a qualitative approach, in this case, the case study method the most appropriate research method. Therefore, the study is reliant on the skills and abilities of the researcher to collect data. Despite the existence of various methods for collecting data such as interviews, observations and focused group discussions, data for the study will be collected through document or literature review.

References

Tracy, S. J. (2019). Qualitative research methods: Collecting evidence, crafting analysis, communicating impact. John Wiley & Sons.

Walliman, N. (2017). Research methods: The basics. Routledge.

Morgan, S. J., Pullon, S. R., Macdonald, L. M., McKinlay, E. M., & Gray, B. V. (2017). Case study observational research: A framework for conducting case study research where observation data are the focus. Qualitative health research, 27(7), 1060-1068.