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Week 015-Data Gathering Procedure

The document discusses different quantitative data gathering methods including observation, interviews, questionnaires, and psychological testing. It provides details on structured interviews, telephone interviews, face-to-face interviews, mail questionnaires, web-based questionnaires, participant observation, and the administration of psychological tests.

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295 views13 pages

Week 015-Data Gathering Procedure

The document discusses different quantitative data gathering methods including observation, interviews, questionnaires, and psychological testing. It provides details on structured interviews, telephone interviews, face-to-face interviews, mail questionnaires, web-based questionnaires, participant observation, and the administration of psychological tests.

Uploaded by

Irene Payad
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Data Gathering Procedure

Learning Objectives:
At the end of the topic the students should be able to:
• Discuss the observation method;
• Discuss the interview method;
• Discuss the questionnaire method; and
• Discuss the psychological test method
• You want to satisfy your curiosity about a certain subject matter. The only
way to do this is to link yourself with people, tings, and other elements in
your surroundings because, by nature, research involves interdependence
or interactions among people and things on earth. The answers to your
investigate acts about the topic you are interested in come from people
you get to communicate with and from things you subject to observation.
Research is an act of gathering opinions, facts and information to prove
your point or to discover truths about your research problem or topic.
• Quantitative data collection methods rely on random sampling and
structured data collection instruments that fit diverse experiences into
predetermined response categories.
• They produce results that are easy to summarize, compare, and
generalize.
• Quantitative research is concerned with testing hypotheses derived from
theory and/or being able to estimate the size of a phenomenon of
interest. Depending on the research question, participants may be
randomly assigned to different treatments. If this is not feasible, the
researcher may collect data on participant and situational characteristics in
order to statistically control for their influence on the dependent, or
outcome, variable. If the intent is to generalize from the research
participants to a larger population, the researcher will employ probability
sampling to select participants.
• A probability sampling method is any method of sampling that utilizes
some form of random selection
(http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/sampprob.php).
• In order to have a random selection method, you must set up some
process or procedure that assures that the different units in your
population have equal probabilities of being chosen.
• Simple examples of random selection are picking a name out of a hat or
choosing the short straw. Computers are used for generating random
selection in more complex projects.
Typical quantitative data gathering strategies include:
 Administering surveys with closed‐ended questions (e.g., face‐to face and
telephone interviews, mail questionnaires, etc.)
(http://www.achrn.org/quantitative_methods.htm)
 Experiments/clinical trials.
 Observing and recording well‐defined events (e.g., counting the number of
patients waiting in emergency at specified times of the day).
 Obtaining relevant data from management information systems.
Interview Method
• In Quantitative research (survey research), interviews are more structured than in
Qualitative research. http://www.stat.ncsu.edu/info/srms/survpamphlet.html
• In a structured interview, the researcher asks a standard set of questions and nothing
more. (Leedy and Ormrod, 2001)
• 5 Telephone interviews
• Advantages:
•  Less time consuming
•  Less expensive
•  Researcher has ready access to anyone who has a landline telephone.
•  Higher response rate than the mail questionnaire.
•  Can be fully automated using CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) saving
data processing time.
•
• Disadvantages:
•  The response rate is not as high as the face‐to‐face interview.
•  The sample may be biased as only those people who have landline phones are
contacted (excludes people who do not have a phone, or only have cell phones).
• Face‐to‐face interviews (Leedy and Ormrod, 2001)
• Advantages:
•  Enables the researcher to establish rapport with potential participants and therefore gain their cooperation.
•  Yields the highest response rates in survey research.
•  Allows the researcher to clarify ambiguous answers and when appropriate, seek follow‐ up information.
•
• Disadvantages:
•  Impractical when large samples are involved
•  Can be time consuming and expensive.
• Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI): is a form of personal interviewing, but instead of completing a
questionnaire, the interviewer brings along a laptop or hand‐held computer to enter the information directly into the
database.
• Advantages:
•  Saves time involved in processing the data.
•  Saves the interviewer from carrying around hundreds of questionnaires.
• Disadvantages:
•  Can be expensive to set up.
•  Requires that interviewers have computer and typing skills.
Questionnaires Method

• Questionnaires often make use of checklist and rating


scales. These devices help simplify and quantify people's
behaviors and attitudes. A checklist is a list of behaviors,
characteristics, or other entities the researcher is looking
for. Either the researcher or survey participant simply checks
whether each item on the list is observed, present or true or
vice versa. A rating scale is 6 more useful when a behavior
needs to be evaluated on a continuum. They are also known as
Likert scales. (Leedy and Ormrod, 2001)
• Mail questionnaires
• Advantages:
•  Can be sent to a large number of people.
•  Saves the researcher time and money compared to interviewing.
•  People are more truthful while responding to the questionnaires regarding
controversial issues in particular due to the fact that their responses are
anonymous.
•  Allow the respondent to answer at their leisure.
• Disadvantages:
•  In most cases, the majority of people who receive questionnaires don't return
them. Therefore: o Over‐sampling may be necessary if doing a one‐time mail
out in order to get enough completed questionnaires to be generalizable to the
population. o Follow‐up reminders to participants encouraging them to complete
the questionnaire may be necessary, thereby increasing the time and cost to
conduct the study. o May need to offer incentives to increase response rate.
•  Time – mail surveys take longer than other types of surveys.
• Web‐based questionnaires: A new and inevitably growing methodology is the
use of Internet based research. This would mean receiving an e‐mail on which
you would click on an address that would take you to a secure web‐site to fill in a
questionnaire.
• Advantages:
•  This type of research is often quicker and less detailed.
•  Very cost effective.
• Disadvantages:
•  Excludes people who do not have a computer or are unable to access a
computer.
•  Need to have access to email addresses.
•  Many worksites have screening mechanisms in place blocking access to
employee emails.
•  The validity of such surveys may be in question as people might be in a hurry to
complete it and so might not give accurate responses.
(http://www.statcan.ca/english/edu/power/ch2/methods/methods.htm)
Observation Method
• One of the most common methods for qualitative data collection, participant
observation is also one of the most demanding. It requires that the
researcher become a participant in the culture or context being
observed. Participant observation often requires months or years of intensive
work because the researcher needs to become accepted as a natural part of
the culture in order to assure that the observations are of the natural
phenomenon. http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/qualmeth.php
Psychological Testing Method
• Psychological testing refers to the administration of psychological tests.
A psychological test is "an objective and standardized measure of a
sample of behavior". The term sample of behavior refers to an individual's
performance on tasks that have usually been prescribed beforehand. The
samples of behavior that make up a paper-and-pencil test, the most
common type of test, are a series of items.
• Performance on these items produce a test score. A score on a well-
constructed test is believed to reflect a psychological construct such as
achievement in a school subject, cognitive ability, aptitude, emotional
functioning, personality, etc. Differences in test scores are thought to
reflect individual differences in the construct the test is supposed to
measure. The technical term for the science behind psychological testing
is psychometrics.

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