What, If Any, Problems Did You Find With The Questionnaire As A Whole? Case Study Examples

Describe the sampling strategy. How appropriate were the various sampling Design decisions?

Determining effective sampling strategy is a significant goal to enable the researcher obtain necessary and adequate data in the research process. In the case of the NCRCC research, the sampling strategy used was the stratified sampling. The stratified sampling enables the researcher to compare certain characteristics of different groups (strata) from a large population (Diwekar & Kalagnanam, 1997). As such, the researcher was able to compare different preferences of six focus group at NCRCC. The researcher stratified the sample into groups such as NCRCC members, non-members, and the employees in order to determine the population attitudes towards the value at NCRCC. These groups have different perception about the services offered at NCRCC considering that members, non-members, and employees were would perceive NCRCC from different perspectives. Therefore, the researcher used the stratified sampling to obtain characteristics of the sample that differ from the entire population.
As illustrated above, the sampling design was appropriate for collecting data in the NCRCC research because the population contained distinct groups that had different characteristics. For this reason, the researcher used stratified design to ensure that these different groups were appropriately represented in a relative frequency (Diwekar & Kalagnanam, 1997). For instance, age was considered as an important factor while determining taste and preferences of the country clubs. As a result, the researcher stratified the sample into different groups such as under 46, 46-55, 56-65, and 66 years or older. The researcher avoided to generalizing the population because it was known that different age groups respond differently because they have different satisfaction levels.
Similarly, by stratifying the sample in terms of membership and employment was appropriate because such groups view the services offered at the country club from different perspectives. For instance, members have more information regarding the services offered at NCRCC than the non-members. Therefore, when responding to the study, they are most likely to give reliable and substantial information in determining what to do to increase membership at NCRCC. The researcher identified that the population associated with country club services was divided into members, non-members, and the employees. Therefore, the researcher avoided common error by taking samples from this stratified population independently of each other. As a result, this enabled the researcher to use interpenetrated design because the sample must be selected from the identified groups in the population, but not the people preferred by the researcher. In this case, the whole sampling strategy can be viewed as appropriate because it reduces the selection bias, i.e., selecting the sampled individual preferred by the researcher.

Although the questionnaire’s question phrasing have been consistently avoided vagueness question, 16 appears to be vague. This is because the researcher has used one of the vague quantifiers that results to vague questions. The question uses the quantifier “regularly” to reflect how often the respondents visit the other clubs and restaurants. Therefore, it is not clear how often the respondent visits the other restaurants or clubs. Maybe, the respondents could have been visiting other clubs in once per month, and this could result in the significant variation of prices. Another minor problem with the questioner is that it contains the leading questions (Rattray & Jones, 2007). For instance, “The Club should eliminate all outings, both on Mondays and other days of the week, and I would be willing to pay an additional $500 in annual dues for improved course access and to make up for this lost revenue.” Such question suggests that if the club removes the outings in all days of the week, the members are expected to pay additional of $500 in annual dues to cover the lost revenue and improve course access. In other words, the question suggests that the removal of outings is accompanied by extra expenses. In this case, the question influences the respondent answer the question by considering his financial ability.
In addition, such questions are also ineffective because the question contains a double-barreled question. This implies that the question contains two different questions, but the respondent is only allowed to provide one question (Rattray & Jones, 2007). As a result, the response might be hard to interpret. For example, the question contains two distinct questions; (1) should the club remove the outing in all days of the week? (2) Are you willing to pay $500 for lost revenue and improve course expenses? In this case, the respondent might be satisfied with the removal of the outings in all days of the week but is not willing to pay the additional annual fee of $500. As a result, the researcher might not be able to interpret whether the respondent is satisfied with the removal of outings and the fee or he is constrained by one element. To make this question effective, the researcher should have broken the question into two parts so that he/she can derive a precise data from the survey. However, although the questionnaire contains minimum errors, the researcher has written questions with concise language, correct grammar, complete sentences and simple words.

References

Diwekar, U. M., & Kalagnanam, J. R. (1997). Efficient sampling technique for optimization under uncertainty. AIChE Journal, 43(2), 440-447.
Rattray, J., & Jones, M. C. (2007). Essential elements of questionnaire design and development. Journal of clinical nursing, 16(2), 234-243.