METHODS AND TECHNIQUES

DATA COLLECTION METHODS AND TECHNIQUES

I am an student in his last year from the major Licenciatura en Ciencias de la Educacion con Especialidad en el Idioma Ingles. My name is Donald Hernandez, I am from El Salvador. This research project is for Investigacion Educativa I, semester I, 2018.

Introduction 

I’ve been fortunate on many occasions to have my research published by the media in the press. 

Methods and Instruments

This webpage has a purpose to show and describe different methods and instruments that are used to gather and collect information from differents research projects by the use of techniques such as: interviews, surveys and focus group sessions. The importance of the use of those methods on research projects are the validity and accuracy of the information. Also you will see different examples about the types of the techniques and how these intruments are designed and used.

INTERVIEWS

This method is one of the most useful and effective to gather information from research projects, because it can help to overcome the shortfalls from observations and questionnaries. It is easier going deeper in the understanding of the thoughs from the answers by the respondents.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

Advantages

-Researchers are helped by interviews to get uncover or missed information.

-Interviews can clarify questions and provide additional comfort while respondents are answering, so they can ensure the clear interpretation of the questions.

-A well-trained interviewer can significantly improve the responses by the interviewer.

Disadvantages

-To conduct interviews is a massive procces and reaching all the participants can generates a time-consuming exercise.

-The effectiveness of the interviews will depend on the soft skills and relevant subject matter.

STRUCTURED INTERVIEW

The structured interview is by its very nature a very rigid instrument, in the view of Gill et al., (2008) the structured interview is defined as a "verbally administered questionnarie."

This type of interview does not follow prompts and the scope is very little by the questions to collect depth and detail responses. Structured interview let us administer the answers quickly, but it is little use if "depth" is needed.

Example:

UNSTRUCTURED INTERVIEW

Legard et al., (2003) describe the unstructured interview as a “conversation with a purpose” (p. 138) as it is intended to allow researchers to collect in-depth information. 

This type of research has the characteristic of going depth on the information by the respondents providing more than general information and responding with specific details.

Example:

SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW

The final interview approach is the semi-structured interview, Gill et al., (2008) define this approach as an interview that has several key questions which help to define the areas to be explored, but also allow the researcher the flexibility to pursue an idea in a response in more detail, this is a medium between structured and unstructured interviews.

This interview has a combination of the previous interviews using questions to gather general and specific information by the use of open-questions and the use of a set of pre-fabricated questions. With this type of interview researchers want to find out a mix of data collection going from the most general to the most specific.

Example:

SURVEYS

This method is fundamentally to gather and collect information about a topic of rearch. According to qualtrics (2018) surveys help researchers to find out data through a sample of people to generaliza a unique response from a group.

There are different types of surveys such as: 

1- Face-to-face surveys.

2- Telephone surveys.

3- Self-administered paper and pencil surveys.

4- Self-administered computer surveys (typically online).

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

Advantages
-It is easy to administer the data collection.
-It is not time-consuming compared with the rest of the methods.
-It can be administe via online, e-mail, social media, etc.
-It is effective to complete big quantity of samples.

Disadvantages
-Sometimes accurate and honest answers are not provided by the respondents.
-Lack of subject matter makes respondents feel confuse.
-The probability of data error exists.
-Options can be interpretet differently by the respondents.

CHECKLIST 

This are items that comprise several questions on a topic and require the same response format. Check list are simple criterias which mark preset or absent and also provide space for comments. The use of indicators to have a pattern of result of a common sample from a population.

Example:

FOCUS GROUP SESSION

Focus group sessions is a method that takes the interviews to the next level because the benefits of an interview's answers are carefully taken from an specific group for a discussion on the topic of the survey. This method can provide researchers relevant information in their investigations through the session of respondents groups in an interactive way, face-to-face with the participants. Focus group sessions are suitables of collecting information about different problems on education, specially, the university.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

Advantages

-To cover envisaged information by the presence of relevant people together.

-To corroborate information instantly by the diverse of the opinions.

-It gives the researchers the option of finding out similitudes and differences.

Disadvantages

-To meet people together at the same time can be a hard task.

-Loud members can subdue less local members from the focus group.

-Opinions can be influence by the high presence from some members of the group.

Example:

CONCLUSION

To keep in mind these methods and instruments will be a difficult option to choose between them, but now you are more concerned about how they works. Nowadays, the recent evolution of technology had created many powerful tools which gives the opportunity to the researchers to use new techniques and to collect the information and interface dramatically with their subjects.

REFERENCES

Susan E. de Franzo (2012) snapsurveys (Advantages and Disadvantages of Surveys)

https://www.snapsurveys.com/blog/advantages-disadvantages-surveys/

Gill et al., (2008) the triangle researcholic.wordpress.com (Methods of data collection in qualitative research)
https://www.google.com.sv/amp/s/researcholic.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/types_of_interviews/amp/