RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS YRG

RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS YRG

1. QUESTIONNARES

   • Questionnaires can be designed and used to collect vast quantities of data from a variety of respondents. They have a number of benefits over other forms of data collection: they are usually inexpensive to administer; very little training is needed to develop them; and they can be easily and quickly analysed once completed.

2. INTERVIEW

   • The interview development process begins by broadly indicating the questions which you’d like to ask. The number, type and format of your questions will be informed by the level of structure to be imposed on the interview. Interviews are traditionally less structured than other research instruments, such as questionnaires. However, three models for interviews exist: the unstructured interview; the semi-structured interview; and the structured interview

3. OBSERVATIONS

   • Picture this: You want to know how to drive a car or to score a penalty in a game of football. You have never done either of these things yourself so in order to find out how these things are done, and what it is like to do them, you decide to ask people who are adept at one or the other a series of questions, either in person in the form of a short interview or on paper by means of a quick

4. CONTENT ANALYSIS

   • interviews and focus groups. Within these instruments we have also discussed and detailed the procedures and conventions for recording responses to open-ended questions. Usually, such responses are transcribed for subsequent analysis. But what form should this analysis take? How is the content of your collected data best analysed? With closed interview or questionnaire questions it is relatively easy to begin

5. FOCUS GROUPS

   • Focus-group interviews are at the opposite end of the spectrum altogether, modified yet further until they resemble hardly at all the kinds of interviews you are obliged to endure in your efforts to find your ideal job. Focus-group research is a form of qualitative method used to gather rich, descriptive data in a smallgroup format from participants who have agreed to ‘focus’ on a topic of mutual interest. The emphasis is on understanding participants’ experiences, interests, attitudes, perspectives and assumptions.