Method

Participants, materials, and procedure

The Method chapter is the place where you describe the exact steps you will be following to
answer the research questions. It begins with an introductory paragraph that presents the
design of the study and the organization of the chapter. (“This is the Method chapter, this is
how it is organized, and this is the type of design I used.”). The method chapter contains the
following three subsections: Participants, materials, and Procedures.

1. Participants: Population and sample

The population is all individuals of interest to the researcher. For example, a researcher may
be interested in studying motivation among students, the population is all students. In case it
is possible to study the whole population and contact all students, then this is called a census.
However, for obvious reasons, researchers are typically unable to study the entire population.
Therefore, they typically study a subset of the population, called a sample.

a. The population
In your study, you must define the population as follows:
• The geographic range: For example, you will need to consider if your population
is restricted to all the people, events, or workplaces in a particular community, or
whether it extends to the whole region, the entire country, or all developed or
developing countries
• In populations made up of individuals, additional defining characteristics might
include age, class, gender, marital status, and/or race
• Populations made up of organizations: might be defined by number of employees,
years of operation, type of business, etc.
• Events are often defined by both setting and time period.

b. The sample
It is important that the sample be representative of the population from which it was selected.
For example, if the researcher is studying lawyers, the sample of lawyers should be similar to
the population of lawyers. If the population of lawyers is composed mainly of White men
over the age of 35, studying a sample of lawyers composed mainly of ‘black women’ under
the age of 30 would obviously be problematic because the sample is not representative of the
population. Studying a representative sample permits the researcher to draw valid inferences
(conclusions) about the population. In other words, when a researcher uses a representative
sample, if something is true of the sample, it is likely also true of the population.

Sample size in qualitative and quantitative data

• Quantitative research involves studies that make use of statistical analyses to obtain
their findings. Key features include formal and systematic measurement and the use of
statistics. The basic rule is to attempt to get as large a sample as possible within time
and expense constraints. The logic is that the larger the sample, the more likely it can
be representative, and therefore generalizable.
 • Qualitative research: typically involves interviews and observations and seeks a rich
understanding and an explanation that may come from the few rather than the many.
An example of qualitative research is the case study, which is an in-depth examination
of one person, a thing, or a process. Such studies rely on the ability of the researcher to
relate the sample (which could be a single case) to a broader context.

NOTES:
Minimal statistical analysis: when carrying out a quantitative study, a minimum of 30
respondents is needed, in addition to an argument for representativeness.

Systematic Random selection: You sample every nth name until the list is exhausted. for
instance, if the population is ISLN students, and the sample is 50 students out of 500, you
take/make the full list of students and you select every 10th name (10, 20, 30 …490, 500).

2. Materials
Different materials could be used to collect data. The most common ones are interviews,
questionnaires, and observation.

a. The interview
It is basically used for qualitative purposes. It could be structured (with the same
set of questions asked in the same order) or unstructured (where questions are
not prearranged, and one answer might trigger a new question).
b. Observation
This approach is an efficient way to collect data when the researcher is interested
in studying and quantifying some type of behavior. For example, a researcher
might be interested in studying cooperative behavior of young children in a
classroom setting. After operationalizing “cooperative behavior” as sharing toys,
the researcher develops a system for quantifying the behavior. In this case, it might
be as simple as sitting unobtrusively in a corner of the classroom, observing the
behavior of the children, and counting the number of times that they engage in
cooperative behavior.
c. The Questionnaire
It is a type of survey that is aimed to a large number of people about their
behaviors, attitudes and opinions. Once it is constructed, it should be ‘piloted’ or
‘pretested’ by a few respondents first, so that the researcher could determine any
problems such as: order of questions, clarity, additional questions needed.

Three of the most common measurement modalities include:

• Open-ended questions: they do not provide the participant with a choice of answers.
Instead, participants are free to answer the question in any manner they choose. An
example of an open-ended question is the following: “How would you describe your
childhood?”
 • Closed-ended questions: they provide the participant with several answers from which
to choose. A common example of a closed-ended question is a multiple-choice
question, such as the following:
- How would you describe your childhood?
(a) happy
(b) sad
(c) boring

• Likert scales: Likert scale asks participants to provide a response along a continuum of
possible responses. Here is an example of a Likert scale:
- My childhood was happy.
(1) strongly agree; (2) agree; (3) neutral; (4) disagree; (5) strongly disagree.”
(1) highly satisfactory; (2) satisfactory; (3) neutral; (4) unsatisfactory; (5) highly
unsatisfactory

• Rating scales: Rating scale questions are questions where the answers map onto a
numeric scale (such as rating customer support on a scale of 1-5, or likelihood to
recommend a product from 0 to 10).

Sections of the questionnaire:

1) Introduction: states the purpose of the survey and who is conducting it, with a note
on confidentiality.
2) Questions: could include the three types of questions but leave open-ended
questions to the end for the sake of higher response rates.
3) Demographic data (optional and includes only data relevant to your study) e.g.
name, age, gender, marital status, email address.
4) Thank the respondents for their participation in the survey

3. Procedure
The Procedure subsection is the third subsection, and it gives the reader a summary of each
step in the execution of the research. This summary must be concise, precise, and logical. It
includes a summary of the instructions to the subjects.

You describe the sampling procedure and how the questionnaires were distributed and
collected. Sufficient detail should be provided to enable another researcher to replicate your
study.