Research Design
Week Three Assignment
Lisa Titlat
BUS642 Business Research Methods and Tools
Prof. Dr. Lisa Wallace
June 23, 2013
Week Three Assignment
Chapter 12 – Discussion Questions (Making Research Decisions) # 5 The purpose of conducting research is to collect data to satisfy a research question. In the design of the study, researchers must carefully construct not only the design of the survey questions, but the answer choices too. Researchers must design answer choices that minimizes, if not eliminates, the chance of bias or errors. Without such preventative measures the results would be erroneous, bias, and therefore useless. In order to accurately measure the responses of subjects, researchers use one or more methods of data collection including rating, ranking, categorization, and sorting. The answer choices are set up according to the collection method chosen. Perhaps one of the most frequently used data collect methods is rating, which allows the subject to select an answer based on a scale of good to bad. However, the results of the rating system are only good when set up to eliminate bias. Researchers can use the rating system in several different ways and those researchers who do not use a balanced rating scale will collect data with more bias than the researchers who do not. One of the problems with developing a rating system is the choice of response terms. The example below demonstrates some of the widely used scaling codes used by researchers. a Yes—Depends—No - not balanced b Excellent—Good—Fair—Poor c Excellent—Good—Average—Fair—Poor d Strongly Approve—Approve—Uncertain—Disapprove—Strongly Disapprove In order for the scale to be balanced it must have an equal number of both favorable and unfavorable responses. Responses “B” and “C” are not balanced because they provide more favorable responses than unfavorable ones. Another issue facing researchers is not being able to measure the response due to the input of answers that
Lisa Titlat
BUS642 Business Research Methods and Tools
Prof. Dr. Lisa Wallace
June 23, 2013
Week Three Assignment
Chapter 12 – Discussion Questions (Making Research Decisions) # 5 The purpose of conducting research is to collect data to satisfy a research question. In the design of the study, researchers must carefully construct not only the design of the survey questions, but the answer choices too. Researchers must design answer choices that minimizes, if not eliminates, the chance of bias or errors. Without such preventative measures the results would be erroneous, bias, and therefore useless. In order to accurately measure the responses of subjects, researchers use one or more methods of data collection including rating, ranking, categorization, and sorting. The answer choices are set up according to the collection method chosen. Perhaps one of the most frequently used data collect methods is rating, which allows the subject to select an answer based on a scale of good to bad. However, the results of the rating system are only good when set up to eliminate bias. Researchers can use the rating system in several different ways and those researchers who do not use a balanced rating scale will collect data with more bias than the researchers who do not. One of the problems with developing a rating system is the choice of response terms. The example below demonstrates some of the widely used scaling codes used by researchers. a Yes—Depends—No - not balanced b Excellent—Good—Fair—Poor c Excellent—Good—Average—Fair—Poor d Strongly Approve—Approve—Uncertain—Disapprove—Strongly Disapprove In order for the scale to be balanced it must have an equal number of both favorable and unfavorable responses. Responses “B” and “C” are not balanced because they provide more favorable responses than unfavorable ones. Another issue facing researchers is not being able to measure the response due to the input of answers that
References: Cooper, D.R. and Schindler, P.S. (2011). Business research methods (11th ed.). New York : McGraw-Hill Irwin. ISBN: 9780073373706