Name: John Ray Matthew C.

Silang Date: 11/29/20

Grade 12 – St Jerome

Mini Task No. 1 Research Methodology

Instruction: After presenting the introduction for your proposed study, you will now
accomplish your research methodology. Your output will be evaluated based on
the following criteria: Content – 20pts, Organization – 10pts, Creativity –
10pts and Presentation – 10pts.

Use the format below as your Guide

A. Research Design
 Describe the research design you will be using in your study and how you will use it.

The research design I will be using in my study is Non-Experimental Research- Survey.

The purpose of conducting a survey was to gain an exploratory understanding of individuals’
information behaviour while under stress and the various attitudes, characteristics and
preferences they displayed towards information in the specified emotional state. The aim
was to gather enough initial data, and identify the beginnings of interesting information
behaviours to follow up with at the interview stage. Due to the nature of the study, it was
vital to the researcher to ensure that while the demographic data normally captured within
surveys (for example, age, sex, occupation) was accompanied by questions specifically
designed to understand the various stressors at play in participants’ everyday lives, their
perceived stress levels and the self-reported occurrences of stress on a weekly basis. The
survey was also utilised as the recruitment tool for the interview stage of the research, and
therefore was designed to try to capture the interest of a small number of people who would
be happy to talk further about the experiences described and expressed previously.

B. Population and Sampling

 Describe the population, number of respondents, sample size and sampling
procedure to be used for your study.

Interviewees were recruited from the group of survey respondents; at the end of the
survey, respondents were asked to provide contact details if they would be happy to be
contacted at a later date to further discuss their initial responses. Snowballing process was
effective and, to the researcher’s knowledge, generated at least ten respondents, one of
whom was then later interviewed. For practical and research purposes, it was decided that
survey respondents, and later interviewees, should be aged 18 or over. Avoiding time
delays generated from obtaining parental consent was a key concern. However the main
factor for this decision was ethics: while children do experience stress, the subsequent
emotional discomfort and may use information to manage these, the complex ethical issues
of working with children and asking them to articulate their emotions would be exceptionally
difficult to navigate. The researcher felt that including children within the sample was
unjustifiably difficult ethically when other sample groups were available, and would also be a
stretch of the limited interview and survey formulation skills of the interviewer.
C. Data-Collection Technique
 Describe the data collection technique you will use in your study.
 How will you collect your data?

Any study involving human beings as participants requires the safeguarding of those
participants’ rights, safety and wellbeing through a set of implemented ethical standards.
Informed consent of volunteer participants was sought at both stages of the research,
regardless of whether consent had previously been given at the survey stage when
recruiting interviewees. Data collection adhered to the Data Protection Act, and the
confidentiality and anonymity of participants was respected throughout the project.

D. Research Instrumentation
 Describe the instrumentation you will use in the study.

Due to the nature of the research project, and the gaps identified within the literature
review, it was suitable to use an exploratory technique to obtain a rough sense of what is
happening in a research topic for which there is currently not a large amount of knowledge
(Nardi, 2013). However, the scope of the research project, with its focus on “how” and “why”
the affective element influences information behaviour and the changes wrought by
information on an individual’s emotions led to a dual approach combining quantitative and
qualitative methods being used in the research. In this instance, a survey first undertaken to
collect a 16 sample of respondents and to establish the outline of the research was followed
up by an in‐depth qualitative interview to look closer at key issues identified from the survey
variables and gather richer data (Silverman, 2006). The combination of the two approaches
should allow for a balanced view of the topic and allow the elucidation of the respondents’
attitudes and behaviours.

E. Data Gathering Procedure

 Discuss the step by step process of gathering data.
 List down all the materials (if needed) as well as the exact quantities and
measurement
 Summarize the procedure using a flow chart

Due to the semi‐structured interview format, in which the direction of conversation could
be determined by either the researcher providing new questions, the interviewees’
responses or researcher questions derived from the interviewee’s explanations, the
researcher needed to devote full attention to the conversation. While field notes would be
taken, it was felt that copious note taking would be impossible to maintain and counter‐
productive to the exercise where establishing flow and rapport was essential. Instead, the
decision was taken to record all interviews for subsequent transcription and analysis. The
researcher proposed to use a Smartphone voice recording application for face‐to‐face
interviews, and Amolto Call Recorder download for the Skype interviews. The call recorder
download was selected due to it receiving recommendation from Skype Inc. as a quality
recording service, plus there was the opportunity to video‐record the calls as a 25 additional
aid for the researcher in interpreting interviewees’ emotions during transcription and
analysis. However, as video recording was not an option for face-to-face interviews as it was
deemed intrusive within a physical setting and liable to be off‐putting for the interviewee, in
order to maintain parity and consistency of data in analysis video‐recording was not
undertaken for Skype calls. Instead, interviewees’ physical responses and emotions were
noted in field notes during the interview. Prior to the pilot interview, the researcher tested
both the voice recording application and the Amolto Call Recorder. Both recording devices
 functioned successfully over several tests and produced suitable quality recordings for
transcription.

F. Data Analysis
 Describe how you will analyse your data.
 What statistical analysis tools are you going to use?

Interviews were transcribed as quickly as possible after the interview had taken place,
however as interviews had been scheduled at times convenient to the interviewees the
distribution of interviews over the interview period was severely imbalanced with multiple
interviews taking place on the same date. It was impossible on multiple occasions to
complete the transcription on the same day as the interview, although all transcriptions were
completed within a day of the final interview. Transcriptions of the audio recordings from
interviews were originally made using Transcribe Lite software, a free online download with
the ability to incorporate the audio recording into the same work screen for ease of use, then
transferred to Excel. Text from interview field notes and survey free-text questions was then
transcribed to Microsoft Word before also being transferred to Excel for coding. The data
collated from the survey was converted into a document by Qualtrics Online Survey
Software for use in the statistical analysis package SPSS and for use alongside the
transcriptions in Excel coding for the free‐text questions.

G. Methodological Limitation
 Describe the weak points of your methodology.
 What is the scope and limitation of your procedure?

As the survey collected both free‐text responses, to be included within the qualitative
coding analysis, and responses such as rankings and scales, the data was collated and
then split appropriately. The data obtained from the survey related to ratings scales, age,
percentiles and frequency of use was gathered for use with the statistical analysis package
SPSS. Due to the researcher’s background in languages, lack of prior experience with any
form of statistical analysis and the potential complexities involved in using the package
effectively, only basic statistical analyses were conducted in an attempt to obtain simple,
effective statistics for reporting and hopefully highlighting the significance of elements of the
study.