research projrct for hifsa shaukat
chintamona
session_07.pdf
CMA306 – Professional Practice Project
Business Research Methods by Christina Quinlan © 2011 Cengage Learning
The distinction between primary and secondary sources can be ambiguous.
A source can be primary in one context and secondary in another context. For example, a recent newspaper article is a secondary source; however a newspaper article from 1929 used to examine the Wall St Crash is a primary source.
Will Hutton, writing in The Observer newspaper, discusses the work of Japanese economist Richard Koo. This is a secondary source. Will Hutton’s article could be a primary source if the researcher was conducting, for example, a content analysis study of major UK newspaper representations of leading economists throughout the year 2009.
The Japanese economist Richard Koo (2008), based his economic theory on study of Japanese economics and the 1929 Wall St. Crash. He used both primary and secondary sources of data in his study.
It is important that in writing up your research you write an explanation of your data set and a defence of it.
The most important issue to be addressed in that defence of your data is the issue of validity.
Try to establish the validity of the data selected out; validity in this context means that the data is valid, credible, reasonable, reasoned, justifiable, and defensible.
How can you establish the validity of the data? The validity of the data is the extent to which the data measures or represents that which it purports to measure.
Observation as a data collection method is a traditional method in ethnographic research.
Ethnography is the methodology in focus in this chapter.
The stage in the research process that we are currently exploring is that of devising data gathering methods.
We are at the stage of finally deciding on the data gathering methods to be used in the research project.
Consider the validity of the observation proposed or carried out, as a means of gathering data for that particular research project.
Consider the rigour with which the observation was designed, constructed and carried out.
Consider how well observation as a means of gathering data fits with the research project, and with the data requirements of the study.
Interviews and focus groups are data gathering methods.
They are two ways through which data can be gathered for a research project.
Interviews are generally used when the researcher can identify key respondents in relation to the phenomenon under investigation and can engage these respondents in an interview process
Focus groups are generally used when the researcher wants the participants to focus on a particular phenomenon and through that focus generate some ideas about and/or insights into that phenomenon.
Focus groups are also used when a group dynamic would be useful to the research agenda, and/or to the participants in the research.
Focus groups are efficient ways of gathering data simultaneously from a range of participants. Focus groups are also used when a group dynamic would be useful to the research agenda.
Decide on what interview technique to use and then plan the interviews.
Plan the interview(s) step-by-step. The research diary should be used for this work. (see Table 11.1 in the textbook for a step-by-step guide to conducting interviews)
Using the research diary will ensure that a secure record is kept of the process. This planning process will help identify any potential issues or problems in the interview process, and it will facilitate proper preparation for the interviews.
The notes from the research diary will be of help in writing up this process in the research methodology chapter of the thesis, or in the research methodology section of the report of the research.
Closed questions are questions which provide respondents with a restricted set of options in terms of possible answers, for example yes/no, or sometimes/often/regularly.
Closed questions elicit short responses. They are often used to gather factual data.
The possible responses to closed questions can be pre-coded to ensure that the data gathered can be easily and quickly analysed.
Open questions are questions which do not anticipate responses; they are questions to which the respondents may respond in any, unique and individual, way.
Open questions are used to explore respondents’ understandings, feelings and beliefs.
They usually require thought and reflection on the part of and they usually generate long responses.
Bias in research is anything that contaminates or compromises the research.
As this broad definition of bias indicates, bias can be introduced to a research project at any stage, at the design stage, during sampling, during data gathering, data analysis and at the stage of developing findings and coming to conclusions about the research.
Bias can refer to a particular perspective that the research takes which highlights some
aspects or findings of the research while ignoring or even hiding others.
Bias can also refer to some systematic error that has somehow been introduced to the research.
A focus group is used in research as a data collection method when there is some advantage, in terms of data gathering or data collection, in bringing a group of people together and facilitating this group in a focussed discussion of the phenomenon under investigation in the research project.
The people invited to participate in the focus group must be expert in some way on the phenomenon under investigation.
A focus group is similar in some respects to a group interview,
and it is very different in other respects.
In a focus group, the researcher facilitates the group in focusing on the phenomenon under investigation in the hope of
developing from that focus new information and new insights into that phenomenon.
In a group interview, the interviewer interviews the group about the phenomenon under investigation.
The issues of validity and reliability are engaged with different in qualitative and in quantitative research (see Table 12.3 in Chapter Twelve).
Qualitative researchers are generally not concerned with measurement.
Qualitative researchers often do not support a scientific perspective that holds that the social world
can be studied in similar fashion to the ways in which the natural world is studied.
Research instrument Survey research
Questionnaires. Quantitative data.
As well as questionnaires and scales researchers also use projective techniques as data gathering methods.
Projective techniques are indirect techniques through which researchers probe the beliefs, attitudes and feelings of respondents.
Vignettes are an example of a projective technique.
Using vignettes in research, the researcher presents the respondent with a story, a narrative, and asks the respondent to explain what is happening in the story or narrative to the researcher.
The data is the response the respondent makes to the story or narrative.
The story or narrative does not need to be verbal, it can be visual. The researcher can present the participant with an image or a series of images, or a series of cartoons, or an advertisement or a series of advertisements (and so on) and ask the respondent to explain some aspect of the image(s).
The data, as above, is the response the respondent makes.
The key issues when designing a questionnaire are: The content of the questions; The construction and presentation of each of the questions; The order of the questions; The length of the questionnaire.
When you begin to design a questionnaire or a scale for your research, you
look at your research statement/question and from that you decided what it is precisely that you need to know.
Look next at the aim and objectives of your research. Then consider the literature you have reviewed for the research project. Then, drawing on the literature, set about designing the series of questions (for the questionnaire) and/or items (for the scale) that will elicit responses that will provide you with the data you need to complete your research.
A pilot study is a test of the design of the research project, or a test of the data gathering instrument(s) designed for the research.
In general, all data gathering methods should be tested, and in your reading for the literature review and for the research methods element of your research, you will notice that almost every data collection method you come across will be subjected to a pilot study.
This is because the assumptions researchers make about how research subjects will respond to the questions and items presented to them in the data gathering methods designed for the research project are not always correct.
So, researchers test the data collection methods they design. They test them to find out how, in reality, participants will respond to their questions.
Generalisability in research
Bigger the sample population of the study, the more you
can generalise.
Focus on getting good response rates.
