Page 49 - DMGT404 RESEARCH_METHODOLOGY

Unit 3: Research Design

1. Costs: Cost is often the major determining factor in selecting survey type. You might Notes
prefer to do personal interviews, but can't justify the high cost of training and paying for
the interviewers. You may prefer to send out an extensive mailing but can't afford the
postage to do so.
2. Facilities: Do you have the facilities (or access to them) to process and manage your study?
In phone interviews, do you have well-equipped phone surveying facilities? For focus
groups, do you have a comfortable and accessible room to host the group? Do you have
the equipment needed to record and transcribe responses?
3. Time: Some types of surveys take longer than others. Do you need responses immediately
(as in an overnight public opinion poll)? Have you budgeted enough time for your study
to send out mail surveys and follow-up reminders, and to get the responses back by mail?
Have you allowed for enough time to get enough personal interviews to justify that
approach?
4. Personnel: Different types of surveys make different demands of personnel. Interviews
require interviewers who are motivated and well-trained. Group administered surveys
require people who are trained in group facilitation. Some studies may be in a technical
area that requires some degree of expertise in the interviewer.
Clearly, there are lots of issues to consider when you are selecting which type of survey you
wish to use in your study. And there is no clear and easy way to make this decision in many
contexts. There may not be one approach which is clearly the best. You may have to make
tradeoffs of advantages and disadvantages. There is judgment involved. Two expert researchers
may, or the very same problem or issue, select entirely different survey methods. But, if you
select a method that isn't appropriate or doesn't fit the context, you can doom a study before you
even begin designing the instruments or questions themselves.

3.3.4 Observation Studies

An observational study draws inferences about the possible effect of a treatment on subjects,
where the assignment of subjects into a treated group versus a control group is outside the
control of the investigator. This is in contrast with controlled experiments, such as randomized
controlled trials, where each subject is randomly assigned to a treated group or a control group
before the start of the treatment.

Observational studies are sometimes referred to as natural experiments or as quasi-experiments.
These differences in terminology reflect certain differences in emphasis, but a shared theme is
that the early stages of planning or designing an observational study attempt to reproduce, as
nearly as possible, some of the strengths of an experiment.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
9. ................................. studies are the studies in which an event or occurrence is measured
again and again over a period of time.
10. Longitudinal study is also known as ...................................
11. True panel involves .......................... measurement of the same variables.

12. The biggest limitations of field survey are ...................... and ............................

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