Research Methodology & IPR

Module 4
Data Collection: Data collection is the process of collecting and analyzing information on relevant
variables in a predetermined, methodical way so that one can respond to specific research questions,
test hypotheses, and assess results.

The researcher should keep in mind two types of data, primary and secondary. The primary data are
those which are collected afresh and for the first time, and thus happen to be original in character. The
secondary data, on the other hand, are those which have already been collected by someone else and
which have already been passed through the statistical process. The methods of collecting primary and
secondary data differ since primary data are to be originally collected, while in case of secondary data
the nature of data collection work is merely that of compilation.

Collection of Primary Data: there are several methods of collecting primary data, particularly in surveys
and descriptive researches. Important ones are: (i) observation method, (ii) interview method, (iii)
through questionnaires

These are the qualitative techniques of data collection.

A. Observation Methods:
 Under the observation method, the information is sought by way of investigator’s own direct
observation without asking from the respondent. For instance, in a study relating to consumer
behavior, the investigator instead of asking the brand of wrist watch used by the respondent,
may himself look at the watch. The information obtained under this method relates to what is
currently happening; it is not complicated by either the past behavior or future intentions or
attitudes.
 In case the observation is characterized by a careful definition of the units to be observed, the
style of recording the observed information, standardized conditions of observation and the
selection of pertinent data of observation, then the observation is called as structured
observation. But when observation is to take place without these characteristics to be thought
of in advance, the same is termed as unstructured observation. Structured observation is
considered appropriate in descriptive studies, whereas in an exploratory study the observational
procedure is most likely to be relatively unstructured.

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 If the observer observes by making himself, more or less, a member of the group he is observing
so that he can experience what the members of the group experience, the observation is called
as the participant observation. But when the observer observes as a detached emissary without
any attempt on his part to experience through participation what others feel, the observation of
this type is often termed as non-participant observation.
 If the observation takes place in the natural setting, it may be termed as uncontrolled
observation, but when observation takes place according to definite pre-arranged plans,
involving experimental procedure, the same is then termed controlled observation.

B. Interview Method: The interview method of collecting data involves presentation of oral-verbal
stimuli and reply in terms of oral-verbal response. Types- Personal interviews and telephone
interviews.

Personal Interviews:
 More information and that too in greater depth can be obtained.
 Interviewer by his own skill can overcome the resistance, if any, of the respondents; the
interview method can be made to yield an almost perfect sample of the general
population.
 There is greater flexibility under this method as the opportunity to restructure questions
is always there, especially in case of unstructured interviews.
 Personal information can as well be obtained easily under this method.
 Samples can be controlled more effectively as there arises no difficulty of the missing
returns; non-response generally remains very low.
 The interviewer can usually control which person(s) will answer the questions. This is
not possible in mailed questionnaire approach.
 The interviewer can collect supplementary information about the respondent’s personal
characteristics and environment which is often of great value in interpreting results.

Telephonic Interviews:
 It is more flexible in comparison to mailing method.
 It is faster than other methods i.e., a quick way of obtaining information.
 It is cheaper than personal interviewing method; here the cost per response is relatively low.

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 Interviewer can explain requirements more easily.

 At times, access can be gained to respondents who otherwise cannot be contacted for one
reason or the other.
 No field staff is required.
 Representative and wider distribution of sample is possible.

Questionnaire: This method of data collection is quite popular, particularly in case of big enquiries. It is
being adopted by private individuals, research workers, private and public organizations and even by
governments. In this method a questionnaire is sent (usually by post) to the persons concerned with a
request to answer the questions and return the questionnaire. A questionnaire consists of a number of
questions printed or typed in a definite order on a form or set of forms. The questionnaire is mailed to
respondents who are expected to read and understand the questions and write down the reply in the
space meant for the purpose in the questionnaire itself.
Before using this method, it is always advisable to conduct ‘pilot study’ (Pilot Survey) for testing the
questionnaires. In a big enquiry the significance of pilot survey is felt very much. Pilot survey is in fact
the replica and rehearsal of the main survey. Such a survey, being conducted by experts, brings to the
light the weaknesses (if any) of the questionnaires and also of the survey techniques.

Essentials of a good questionnaire:

 Short and simple
 Should have logical sequence
 Technical terms and vague expressions capable of different interpretations should be avoided.
 Questions can be dichotomous (yes or no answers), multiple choice (alternative answers listed)
or open-ended.

Steps to an effective survey questionnaire:

1. Decide the information required.

2. Define the target respondents.
3. Choose the method(s) of reaching your target respondents.
4. Decide on question content.
5. Develop the question wording.

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6. Put questions into a meaningful order and format.

7. Check the length of the questionnaire.
8. Pre-test the questionnaire.
9. Develop the final survey form.

Measurement and scaling techniques:

The data consists of quantitative variables like price, income, sales etc. and qualitative variables like
knowledge, performance, character etc . The qualitative information must be converted into numerical
form for further analysis. This is possible through measurement and scaling techniques. A common
feature of survey based research is to have respondent’s feelings, attitudes, opinions, etc. in some
measurable form

For example, a bank manager may be interested in knowing the opinion of the customers about the
services provided by the bank. Similarly, a fast food company having a network in a city may be
interested in assessing the quality and service provided by them. As a researcher you may be interested
in knowing the attitude of the people towards the government announcement of a metro rail in Delhi. In
this unit we will discuss the issues related to measurement, different levels of measurement scales,
various types of scaling techniques and also selection of an appropriate scaling technique.

Measurement: Measurement is the process of observing and recording the observations that are
collected as part of research. The recording of the observations may be in terms of numbers or other
symbols to characteristics of objects according to certain prescribed rules. The respondent’s,
characteristics are feelings, attitudes, opinions etc. For example, you may assign ‘1’ for Male and ‘2’ for
Female respondents. In response to a question on whether he/she is using the ATM provided by a
particular bank branch, the respondent may say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. You may wish to assign the number ‘1’ for
the response yes and ‘2’ for the response no. We assign numbers to these characteristics for two
reasons. First, the numbers facilitate further statistical analysis of data obtained. Second, numbers
facilitate the communication of measurement rules and results. The most important aspect of
measurement is the specification of rules for assigning numbers to characteristics. The rules for
assigning numbers should be standardized and applied uniformly. This must not change over time or
objects.

Scaling: : Scaling is the assignment of objects to numbers or semantics according to a rule. In scaling, the
objects are text statements, usually statements of attitude, opinion, or feeling. For example, consider a

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scale locating customers of a bank according to the characteristic “agreement to the satisfactory quality
of service provided by the branch”. Each customer interviewed may respond with a semantic like
‘strongly agree’, or ‘somewhat agree’, or ‘somewhat disagree’, or ‘strongly disagree’. We may even
assign each of the responses a number. For example, we may assign strongly agree as ‘1’, agree as ‘2’
disagree as ‘3’, and strongly disagree as ‘4’. Therefore, each of the respondents may assign 1, 2, 3 or 4.

Levels of Measurement Scales:

The level of measurement refers to the relationship among the values that are assigned to the
attributes, feelings or opinions for a variable. For example, the variable ‘whether the taste of fast food is
good’ has a number of attributes, namely, very good, good, neither good nor bad, bad and very bad. For
the purpose of analyzing the results of this variable, we may assign the values 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 to the five
attributes respectively. The level of measurement describes the relationship among these five values.
Here, we are simply using the numbers as shorter placeholders for the lengthier text terms. We don’t
mean that higher values mean ‘more’ of something or lower values mean ‘less’ of something. We don’t
assume that ‘good’ which has a value of 2 is twice of ‘very good’ which has a value of 1. We don’t even
assume that ‘very good’ which is assigned the value ‘1’ has more preference than ‘good’ which is
assigned the value ‘2’. We simply use the values as a shorter name for the attributes, opinions, or
feelings. The assigned values of attributes allow the researcher more scope for further processing of
data and statistical analysis.

Typically, there are four levels of measurement scales or methods of assigning numbers: (a) Nominal
scale, (b) Ordinal scale, (c) Interval scale, and (d) Ratio scale

Attitude measurement Techniques:

When a researcher is interested in measuring the attitudes, feelings or opinions of respondents he/she
should be clear about the following: a) What is to be measured? b) Who is to be measured? c) The
choices available in data collection techniques.

The first issue that the researcher must consider is ‘what is to be measured’? The definition of the
problem, based on our judgments or prior research indicates the concept to be investigated. For
example, we may be interested in measuring the performance of a fast food company. We may require
a precise definition of the concept on how it will be measured. Also, there may be more than one way

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that we can measure a particular concept. For example, in measuring the performance of a fast food
company we may use a number of measures to indicate the performance of the company. We may use
sales volume in terms of value of sales or number of customers or spread of network of the company as
measures of performance. Further, the measurement of concepts requires assigning numbers to the
attitudes, feelings or opinions. The key question here is that on what basis do we assign the numbers to
the concept. For example, the task is to measure the agreement of customers of a fast food company on
the opinion of whether the food served by the company is tasty, we create five categories: (1) strongly
agree, (2) agree, (3) undecided, (4) disagree, (5) strongly disagree. Then we may measure the response
of respondents. Suppose if a respondent states ‘disagree’ with the statement that ‘the food is tasty’, the
measurement is 4.

The second important issue in measurement is that, who is to be measured? That means who are the
people we are interested in. The characteristics of the people such as age, sex, education, income,
location, profession, etc. may have a bearing on the choice of measurement. The measurement
procedure must be designed keeping in mind the characteristics of the respondents under
consideration. The third issue in measurement is the choice of the data collection techniques. In Unit 3,
you have already learnt various methods of data collection. Normally, questionnaires are used for
measuring attitudes, opinions or feelings.

Measurement Scales: There are 4 fundamental measuring scales. Each scale is an incremental level of
measurement, meaning each scale fulfills the function of the previous scale.

 Nominal: Used to categorize data into mutually exclusive categories or groups. Nominal
Scale, also called the categorical variable scale, is defined as a scale that labels variables into
distinct classifications and doesn’t involve a quantitative value or order. This scale is the simplest
of the four variable measurement scales. Calculations done on these variables will be futile as
the options have no numerical value. There are cases where this scale is used for the purpose of
classification – the numbers associated with variables of this scale are only tags for
categorization or division. Calculations done on these numbers will be futile as they have no
quantitative significance. For instance, a customer survey asking “Which brand of smart phones
do you prefer?” Options : “Apple”- 1 , “Samsung”-2, “OnePlus”-3.

Nominal Scale Examples

 Gender

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 Political preference

What is your Gender? What is your Political preference? Where do you live?

1- Independent 1- Suburbs
1- Male
2- Democrat 2- City
2- Female
3- Republican 3- Town

 Ordinal: Used to measure variables in a natural order, such as rating or ranking. They provide
meaningful insights into attitudes, preferences, and behaviors by understanding the order of
responses. Ordinal Scale is defined as a variable measurement scale used to simply depict the
order of variables and not the difference between each of the variables. These scales are
generally used to depict non-mathematical ideas such as frequency, satisfaction, happiness, a
degree of pain, etc. It is quite straightforward to remember the implementation of this scale as
‘Ordinal’ sounds similar to ‘Order’, which is exactly the purpose of this scale. Ranking high school
students – 1st, 3rd, 10th ….. Nth. A student scoring 99/100 would be the 1st rank, another student
scoring 92/100 would be 3rd and so on.

 Interval: it contains all the information of Interval Scale, but it also allows to compare the
difference/distance between attributes. It doesn’t have zero. The difference is not justifiable.
 Used to measure variables with equal intervals between values. This type of measurement is
often for precise comparisons and calculations. It can hold numbers, less than zero but not zero.
Example is temperature.

Example: How satisfied are you with our services?

 Very Unsatisfied – 1
 Unsatisfied – 2
 Neutral – 3
 Satisfied – 4
 Very Satisfied – 5

The following questions fall under the Interval Scale category:

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 What is your family income?

 What is the temperature in your city? The value of 0 is arbitrary (for convenience) because
negative values of temperature do exist.

 Ratio: Highest level of measurement scales and it has absolute true zero. It justifies the
difference. Allows for comparisons and computations such as ratios, percentages, and averages.
Great for research in fields like science, engineering, and finance, where you need to use ratios,
percentages, and averages to understand the data.
Examples: weight, length, time, age etc.

Scaling: Questioning is a widely used stimulus for measuring concepts and constructs. For
example: participants’ attitudes towards the ‘taste” of a soft drink. The responses are “thirst
quenching”, “sour”, “strong”, “bubbly” etc
Here the answers are not been able to measure according to the values needed for the
research. There needs a scale to be used in the questionnaire in order to get accurate answers.

Scaling is the assignment of objects to numbers or semantics according to a rule. In scaling, the
objects are text statements, usually statements of attitude, opinion, or feeling. Scales in
business research are generally constructed to measure behavior, knowledge, and attitudes.

Scaling Techniques
1. Comparative Scales
a. Paired comparison
b. Rank order
c. Constant sum
d. Q sort
2. Non- comparative Scales
a. Continuous Rating Scales
b. Itemized Rating Scales
i. Likert Scale
ii. Semantic Differential Scale
iii. Stapel Scale

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1. Comparative Scale: In Comparative Scaling, the respondent is asked to compare one object with
another. For Example: The researcher can ask the respondents whether they prefer brand A or
brand B of a detergent.

a. Paired Comparison:
 This is a comparative scaling technique in which a respondent is presented with two
objects at a time and asked to select one object (rate between two objects at a time)
according to some criterion.
 The data obtained are ordinal in nature.
 For example: there are four types of cold drinks – coke, pepsi, sprite, and limca. The
respondents can prefer Pepsi to coke or coke to Sprite etc
 Paired comparison is useful when the number of brands are limited, since it requires
direct comparison and transparent choices.

b. Rank Order Scale:

 This is another type of comparative scaling technique in which respondents are
presented with several items simultaneously and asked to rank them in order of priority.
 This is an ordinal scale that describes the favored and non favored objects, but does that
reveal the distance between the objects.
c. Constant Sum Scale:
 In this scale, the respondents are asked to allocate a constant sum of units as points,
rupees, or chips among a set of stimulus objects with respect to some criterion.

Format: respondents assign points against the attributes depending on what he thinks is
important in the detergent.

Attribute Number of points

Price 50
Fragrance 05
Packaging 10
Cleaning ability 30

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Lather 05
Total points 100

d. Q-Sort Scale:
 This is a comparative scale that uses a rank order procedure to sort objects based on
similarity with respect to some criterion. The important characteristic of this
methodology is that it is more important to make comparisons among different
responses of a respondent that the responses between different respondents. The
utility of Qsort in marketing research is to derive clusters of individuals who display
similar preferences, thus representing unique market segments.

Example: How would you pick a restaurant for dinner with family? Rate according to your
preference.

a. Location
b. Prices
c. Food quality
d. Ambience
e. Service
f. Waiting time

2. Non- Comparative Scale: In non-comparative scaling, the respondents need to only evaluate a
single object. Their evaluation is independent of the other object which the researcher is
studying.

Rating Scale: it is used when the participants score an object or indicant without making a direct
comparison to another object or attitude. For example: they may ask you to evaluate the styling of a
new automobile on a 7-point rating scale. 5 point, 7 point are usually used.

a. Continuous Rating Scales: in continuous rating scale, the respondent’s rate the objects by
placing a mark at the appropriate position on a continuous line that runs from one extreme of
the criterion variable to another.

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b. Itemized Rating Scale: itemized rating scale can be in the form of graphic, verbal or numeric.

i. Likert Scale: summated rating scales consists of statements that express either a favorable or
an unfavorable attitude toward the object of interest. The participant is asked to agree or
disagree with each statement. Each response is given a numerical score to reflect its degree of
attitudinal favorableness, and the scores may be summed (added) to measure the participant’s
overall attitude.
Example: Zomato rate your order (packaging, price, quantity, quality)

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ii. Semantic Differential Scale: This is a seven point rating scale with end points associated with
bipolar labels (such as good and bad, complex and simple) that have semantic meaning. In the
Semantic Differential scale, only extremes have names. The extreme points represent the
bipolar adjectives with the central category representing the neutral position.

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iii. Staple Scale: It places a single adjective as a substitute for the semantic differential when it is difficult
to create pairs of bipolar adjectives.

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