RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS

RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS

1. Focus groups

   • Marketing research technique
     • Collect data
       • Through
         • Interaction
       • In order to
         • Attitudes
         • Opinions
         • Reveal
   • Qualitative method
     • Carefully planned
     • Moderated
     • Advantages
       • Easily measure
       • Time-saving
       • Explores topics
       • Generate hypotheses
       • High face validity
       • Low cost
   • Set of 6-10 people
     • Share characteristics
       • Age
       • Background
       • Opinions
       • Knowledge
       • Geography
       • Insights

2. Questionnaires

   • Definition
     • Set of questions addressed to a specific population in order to obtain information on a topic of interest.
   • Types
     • Mail survey
       • Most common
       • Efficient to collecting large amount fo data
       • Can suffer low response rates.
     • Group-administered
       • Sample of respondents who can be brought together
       • Good response rate
     • Household drop-off survey
       • Hybrid of the two previous ones
         • The researcher delivers the questionnaire by hand to a member of an identified household for collection at some later date.
       • It affords the opportunity to clarify questions posed with the researcher.
   • Issues
     • No brief and clear instructions given to the respondent
       • Nonresponse
   • Data analysis
     • Coding the questions or answers
       • Gather the data
         • Represent them
     • Convert responses to a numerical value
       • Create an average score for each question
     • Use statistical techinques
   • Uses
     • To collect vast quantities of data from a variety of respondents
     • They are usually inexpensive
     • Needs little training to develop them
     • They can be easily and quickly analysed
   • Limitations
     • Product of a poor design
       • Leading questions
       • Complicated questions
       • Irritating questions
       • Ambiguous or unclear questions

3. Observation

   • Planning
     • Focus of study
     • Researh cuestion
   • Implementation
     • Activity
       • Behavior
       • Progress
     • Actor
       • Communication
       • Attitudes
     • Location
       • Society
       • Work Space
   • Data Analysis
     • Structured
       • How often
       • what extent
     • Descriptive
       • Keywords
       • Recording
   • Uses
     • Investigate
       • Conduct
       • Environment
       • Interaction
     • Complement
     • Issues
       • Direct Questions
         • Wrong information
           • Events
           • Activities

4. Content analysis

   • Inferences from the writer's attitude
     • Basic principles
       • 1. Identify the topic
       • 2. Establish content categories
       • 3. Test the categories
       • 4. Collect data
       • 5. Analyse content and provide results
     • Conceptual analysis
       • Frequency of concepts
       • essentially quantitative
       • Stages
         • Decide on the level of analysis
         • Identify the concepts
         • Define the concepts
         • code by incidence or frequency
         • Establish coding rules
         • Trawl through the information
         • Code the information
         • Analyse the results
       • Slower
       • More reosurces
     • Qualitative content analysis
       • Describe complexities of the data.
       • Issues can be more easily determined
       • Faster
       • Fewer resources
       • Relational analysis
         • identifying themes to explore.
         • meaningful relationships
           • Words
           • phrases
         • analysis
           • accurate
         • Approaches
           • affect extraction
           • proximity analysis
           • cognitive mapping
         • Stages
           • Decide on the question
           • Frame the analysis
           • types of relationship to examine
           • Code and categorise the text
           • Explore the relationships
           • Code the relationships
           • Analyse the relationships
           • Map the relationships

5. Interviews

   • Definition
     • Conversation that involves a set of assumptions and understandings about the situation
   • Types
     • Unstructured interview
     • Semi-structured interview
     • Structured interview
   • Procedure
     • Draft the interview
     • Pilot your questions
     • Select a sample group
     • Conduct the interview
     • Analysing the interview data
   • Data analysis
     • For those new to research
       • Anderson G: Using interviews for succesful data collection
     • For the intermediate research
       • The Research Interview, London: Continuum Books
     • For expert
       • Doing Qualitative Research, London: Sage
   • Uses
     • Obtaining detailed information about a topic or subject
     • To produce vast amounts of data
     • Insight into the meaning and significance of what is happening