RESEARCH PAPER

Business research methods -Mid Term

RONGALI SUNAYANA
19020195
IBM’19
Topic: Blogging as a new profession.

Research problem:
Is Blogging as a new profession for people all over the world of different age groups? The
Effectiveness of Using Online Blogging for Students’ Individual and Group Writing.

Abstract: Blogging can be the strength that could potentially help students to improve their
writing skills by providing them with a real audience and a sense of purpose. In the procedure
of writing blogs and responding to other blogs, students are given access to an audience from
all around the world and to give and receive feedback, can participate in multi-directional
discussion to better comprehend peers' perspectives, and can contemplate their own writing
abilities (Ellison and Wu, 2008;Powell et al., 2012). The current research study investigates
the effectiveness of online blogging for students’ individual and group writing skills. The
participants were divided into individual learners and group learners. They produced pre-
writing and post-writing samples through blogging practices.
Blogging as a full-time job? If you rolled your eyes on this concept, we completely
understand. It's hard to picture the possibility of turning a simple hobby into an income-
generating endeavour that pays the bills.
After all, the blogs most of us are familiar with are those that dabble only in the recreational.

Research questions:
1. Can blogging be chosen as a professional career? If yes, then how does a person make
money through it and can it be viable as a long term choice?
2. How is the educational field/ industry making use of blogging? Is it making a positive
or a negative impact on the students? And its impact on students professional writing?

Data used:
I have used both the primary and secondary data in my research. This helps us gather all
kinds of data. As blogging has evolved through time and it differs based on the country and
people.
Primary data: this is the data I have generated and collected by myself. Which includes
surveys, interviews, experiments. This data helps me in understanding and solving my
research problems.
Secondary data: this is the data I have collected from the existing data which has been
generated by other researchers , students, professionals and can also be record keeping.

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Scales used:
The results of our research will depend on the way we form our survey/ questionnaire. Such
as the order of the questions, and, of course, the survey scale: the default values and ranges
you use.
For this research we will be using 3 different scales-
1. Dichotomous- in this type of scale we will have 2 answers. There will be no neutral
answer. This will give us error free answers. For example: “Yes” or “No”; “True” or
“False”; “Fair” or “Unfair”; “Agree” or “Disagree.”
Example: Are You a Blogger?
Yes or No

2. Rating scales - This scale make it the easiest way for our participants to answer. As
for the rating scale, this is where the options are in numerical, such as: 1–10; 1–7; 1–
5.
For example: How many hours do you spend on writing your blogs?
 Less than an hour
 2- 3 hrs
 Up to 6hrs
 Up to 8hrs

3. Likert scale- This is a five point scale. This helps our participants express their
opinion on how much they agree or dis-agree with the sentence. For our survey we
used different variations of Likert scale. Such as frequency, quality, importance, and
likelihood etc.
Example: How often should the students read blogs?
 Always
 Often
 Sometimes
 Rarely
 Never

4. Semantic differential scales- this is a differential scale. This is where the options are
given based on the question and research done on it. The options are different for each
question and they are derived through research on the topic.
For example: When Do you write Your Posts?
 The day before
 Pre schedule everything

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  It depends on what’s going on
 Right before I push publish
 Not a blogger
 Other

Questionnaire:
For my research I will use 2 questionnaires, in which the 1st questionnaire will remain same
for both 1st and 2nd research questions. But the second questionnaire will differ for both, as the
respondents may be different as well as the information.
Questionnaire 1- Démographique questionnaire. This will help us narrow down the search
and pick accurate people for our research.
1. Gender: this is a very sensitive and complicated topic. The way to approach it will be
played safe by me for this paper. There will be 3 options: male ; female ; other or
prefer not to answer. This will ensure that are participants are not forced to revile
information they don’t want to.
2. Age: this will help us identify the age group of the people interested in blogging. This
will later be divided in parts, such as 12-18; 19-25; 25-35 and so on for research
purposes. As there is no restraint for blogging people of all age groups are involved.
3. Focused subject: this question basically means, which topic are you interested in
blogging. It can be entertainment, education, travel, food, science etc. as there are a
lot of topics . the check box wont work, so it will be like fill you answer in the blank.
This question is very important, as it helps us identify the topics most people are
interested in based on their age . It also helps was differentiate our surveys for
research question 1 and 2. Everything education based goes to question 2 , whereas
question 1 will use everyone’s data.
4. Location: this is another standard question. It will help us find international audience,
especially students. And we might learn the difference in bloggers from all over the
map.
5. Education: this question gives us an insight on what type of work our participant is
doing, and also asses their intellectual knowledge. As for our research this question is
very important. As it helps us understand why people pick blogging as a career. The
question can be framed as "What is the highest degree or level of education you have
completed?".

Questionnaire 2- we will divide this into 3 parts. For the 1st part will ask questions and will
give our participants options to choose their answer. For the second part we will be using the
Likert scale to answer. And as For the third part, we will ask questions where they will be
answers in brief/short way. Either way, the questions will be framed so that it doesn’t take
much time to answer them.
PART 1:

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1. How old were you when you started blogging?
 Pre-teen
 Teen
 19-25
 25-40
 40-50
 50+
2. How many hours do you spend on writing your blogs?
 Less than an hour
 2- 3 hrs
 Up to 6hrs
 Up to 8hrs

3. How much time do you spend on research for your blogs?

 Less than an hour
 2- 3 hrs
 Up to 6hrs
 Up to 8hrs

4. Are You a Blogger?

Yes or No
5. What Reader Do You Use to Read Blogs?
 Blog Lovin
 Blogger dashboard
 Twitter
 Facebook
 Feedly
 Email
 Instagram
 other
6. Which do you use MOST often to read blogs?
 Blog Lovin
 Blogger dashboard
 Twitter
 Facebook
 Feedly
 Email
 Instagram

7. What's Your Favourite Form of social media?

 Facebook
 Instagram

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  Twitter
 Pinterest
 Snapchat
 WhatsApp
 Vine
 Other

8. What Time Do You Read Blogs?

 Morning
 Afternoon
 Evening
 Sporadically

9. When do you write Your Posts?

 The day before
 Pre schedule everything
 It depends on what’s going on
 Right before I push publish
 Not a blogger
 Other

10. How Do you Organize Blog Posts?

 I use a planner
 I don’t
 I preschedule my posts
 other

11. How long does it take you (typically) to write a blog post?
 Less than an hour
 2- 3 hrs
 Up to 6hrs
 Up to 8hrs

12. Have you sponsored a blog before?

Yes or no

13. What do you look for in a sponsor?

 Followers
 Page views
 Relevancy to my blog
 Cheap prices
 Other

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PART 2-
1. Do you think blogs are useful for students?
 Definitely
 Probably
 Possibly
 Probably Not
 Definitely Not

2. How often should the students read blogs?

 Always
 Often
 Sometimes
 Rarely
 Never

3. How helpful is writing blogs for the students?

 Very Important
 Important
 Moderately Important
 Slightly Important
 Unimportant

4. How much do they effect the writing style of the students?

 Very Important
 Important
 Moderately Important
 Slightly Important
 Unimportant
5. How important is writing in a student’s life?
 Very Important
 Important
 Moderately Important
 Slightly Important
 Unimportant
PART 3-
1. How long did it take your blog to start earing?
2. What's one thing that makes you mad about bloggers/blogging?
3. What is the best part of being a blogger?

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Conclusion:
After this research we can derive the answer to weather blogging is really a career option and
how long will it remain at its position. We will also figure out the pro and cons of blogging as
per the academic perspective as well as the writing perspective.

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