Business Research Methods
In this scenario, I would use a personal interview. Personal interviews will be less costly in this instance since it involves interviewing residents at a single locality. No travelling costs will therefore be involved. The subject of choosing a residence environment and buying a home is a personal issue and therefore requires a personal approach. This survey would also require more than just basic information. More communication time with the respondents will be required hence telephone interviews will be ineffective. Since the information being sort will require open ended questions, personnel interviews will make it possible to adopt the questions as needed and seek clarification from the respondents. The quality of the information collected will consequently be improved. It would also be possible to pick out non verbal communication from the respondents that would be impossible to pick out through telephone interviews or self administered surveys. The only disadvantage of this method is that participant may be unwilling to talk to strangers .
The best survey method to use for this scenario would be a self administered survey. Students can convey their preferred candidates through web-based survey. A self administered survey will be appropriate since it requires respondents to simply choose their preferred candidate. It will therefore not require any follow up questions for clarifications. Considering that different students have different time schedules, this method would be easier than a personal interview or telephone survey since student can participate at their own convenient time. It would be almost impossible to find the phone numbers of all the students in the college since students hardly give their correct cell phone numbers.
Many students also do not pick calls from anonymous numbers . This type of survey also provides privacy and ensures anonymity of the participants hence increasing the likelihood of more sincere responses. Self administered surveys would be relatively inexpensive and less time consuming considering the number of students in the campus.
In this scenario, I would prefer a telephone survey to collect information from the grocery stores. Grocery stores are registered businesses; it would therefore be possible to obtain correct telephone numbers from the business registry. Telephone calls can then be made to collect the relevant information needed. Call-back messages can be used to reach respondents who are not available. Since the grocery stores are scattered across the whole of the eastern side of USA, personal interviews will be more costly and time consuming due to travelling costs.
When using self administered questionnaires, respondents may skip some questions. However, in a telephone survey, the researcher can ensure that all questions are responded to . Grocery stores are very busy entities therefore respondents may not complete self administered questionnaires. Telephone interviews will hence ensure a higher response rate. Additionally, telephone interviews would be appropriate because the information being sought does not include any private information.
The best communication method for this scenario would be telephone interviews. Financial officers of the Fortune 500 corporations have a very busy schedule. It would therefore be difficult to book appointments with all of them. However, they may be more willing to provide information via a telephone conversation since it will not interfere with their schedules. Furthermore, the numbers involved are very large; conducting personal interviews would be costly since these corporations are located in different geographical locations. Follow-up questions can be asked to obtain an in-depth analysis of their prediction about the economy. Telephone interviews make it possible to ask follow up questions to clarify information considering that the information being sort will require open ended questions. In telephones surveys, data is collected in real-time which would be important in this scenario since economic outlook keeps on changing from time to time depending on the prevailing circumstances at the time .
In this scenario, a self administered questionnaire would be appropriate because of the large numbers of students involved. It would take a lot of time to personally interview all the 1500 students who are undertaking the work-study program. Telephone interviews would also be time consuming and it would be costly to call all the respondents. Considering that different students have different time schedules, this method would be easier than a personal interview or telephone survey since students can participate at their own convenient time. It would be almost impossible to find phone numbers of all the college’s students since student hardly give their correct cell numbers. Many students also do not pick calls from telephone numbers they do not recognize. Filling the designed questionnaire should be made a compulsory requirement of the work study program to enhance the quality of the responses and the rate of responses. Most of the students are interested in the work study program therefore they are more likely to participate.
Bibliography
Bickman, L., & Rog, D. J. (2005). Handbook of applied social research methods (revised ed.). New York: SAGE.
Wright, J., & Marsden, P. (2010). Handbook of Survey Research (illustrated ed.). New York: Emerald Group Publishing.
