Research Techniques

Using Different Types of Surveys for Data Collection in Research

Surveying means contacting for getting certain information. Survey method is a method of collecting data for research  purpose.  There are personal surveys, mail surveys, telephone surveys and internet surveys. Survey may be sample survey or census survey.

The features of each of surveys are given below:

Personal Survey

Personal survey involves meeting personally every number who has to be surveyed. The features of this method of data collection are as follows.

  • The number of respondents that can be contacted is not very high, as the time taken to contact the respondent, and the time spent on the interview itself is very high in relative terms.
… Read the rest
Abey Francis

The Case Method in Research

Case study method is one of the methods of investigation. Originally case method was used in medicine. The physician used to maintain a record of treatment and health conditions of each patient. Each such record pertains to a ‘case’. The peculiarities of each ‘case’ are known as well as generalities of all cases together. The cause-effect relationship is established and exceptions there to are also noted down.

The basic unit of case study is a case – a particular one of its kind. It may be a single business unit or a whole group of business units in an area or a single producer or a group of producers or a single consumer or a group of consumers and so on.… Read the rest

Abey Francis

Basic Laws of Sampling

Sometimes it is possible to obtain sufficiently accurate results by studying a part/a segment of the population. Thus the few items are selected from the population in such a way that they are the representative of the universe and these representatives in research are called as ‘sample’. The process of selecting the representatives from the population is called ‘sampling’. Thus sampling is simply the process of learning about population on the basis of sample drawn from it. Under this method a small group of universe is taken as the representative of the whole mass and the results are drawn. It is the method to make social/business investigation practicable and easy.… Read the rest

Abey Francis

Sample Design

A sample design is a definite plan for obtaining a sample from a given population. It refers to the technique or the procedure the researcher would adopt in selecting items for the sample. Sample design also leads to a procedure to tell the number of items to be included in the sample i.e., the size of the sample. Hence, sample design is determined before the collection of data. Among various types of sample design technique, the researcher should choose that samples which are reliable and appropriate for his research study.

Steps in Sample Design

There are various steps which the researcher should follow.… Read the rest

Abey Francis

Simple Random Sampling in Research

In probability sampling, each element of the population has a known non-zero chance of being selected for the sample. Among the probability sampling methods, simple random sampling is simplest as its name indicate and it underlies many of the more complex methods.

In a simple random sample of a given size, all such subsets of the frame are given an equal probability. Each element of the frame thus has an equal probability of selection: the frame is not subdivided or partitioned. Furthermore, any given pair of elements has the same chance of selection as any other such pair (and similarly for triples, and so on).… Read the rest

Abey Francis

Standard Error in Hypothesis Testing

The standard error is an indispensable tool in the kit of a researcher, because it is used in testing the validity of statistical hypothesis. The standard deviation of the sampling distribution of a statistic is called the standard error. The standard error is important in dealing with statistics (measures of samples) which are normally distributed.

Here the use of the word “error” is justified in this connection by the fact that we usually regard the expected value to be true value and the divergence from it as error of estimation due to sampling fluctuations. The term standard error has a wider meaning than merely the standard deviation of simple sampling because of the following reasons;

  1. The standard error is mainly employed for testing the validity of a given hypothesis.
… Read the rest
Abey Francis