CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
4.6 PRELIMINARY DATA ANALYSIS
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As shown in Table 4.4, the questionnaire was divided into six sections, namely Section A, Section B, Section C, Section D, Section E and Section F. It is important to note that the DOSPERT Scale is a verified scale (Weber, Blais & Betz, 2002). The following section discusses the methods used in the pretesting of the questionnaire after it was designed and formatted accordingly.
4.5.4 Pre-testing the questionnaire
According to Iacobucci and Churchill (2010:222), a pre-test of the questionnaire must be conducted for the researcher to know how the participants will handle the questionnaire. The purpose of the pre-test is to ensure that there are no grammatical errors, participants fully understand the instructions and gauge the average time spent per questionnaire. Sreejesh et al.
(2014) highlight that if the questionnaire contains a lot of grammatical errors or is too long, it may discourage the participants from giving honest answers, and it may always discourage the participants from completing the questionnaire at hand.
This study utilised an online questionnaire that was pre-tested by ten individuals. The sample consisted of policyholders who are currently residing in Gauteng and are above 18 years of age. In order to ensure that all the participants understood the questionnaire at the same level, three of the individuals were students, five were employed, and the other two were unemployed. Moreover, because Gauteng is the most diverse province in South Africa, the pre- test incorporated all the different ethnic groups to ensure all the ethnic groups understood the questionnaire. Ultimately, the average time to complete the questionnaire by all 10 participants was 15 minutes. Hinkin (1998) stated that the average time to complete a questionnaire must be 15 minutes to ensure the participants fully answer the questionnaire and give honest feedback.
4.5.5 Administration of the questionnaire
Feedback received from the pre-test included grammatical adjustments, technical errors and eliminating certain questions. Overall, adjustments were made, and the final questionnaire, including the cover letter, was distributed to participants (Annexure A). The final questionnaire was successfully distributed from June 2020 until June 2021 to reach a sample size of 350 on QuestionPro, which relates to previous studies.
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is to prepare the data for further analysis, identify key features and summarise it to form a meaningful analysis (Wallace et al., 2011). The analysis of preliminary data includes the process of gathering data and coding which are discussed in the following subsections.
4.6.1 Data gathering process
From a total of 546 distributed questionnaires, a final sample of 341 was included in the study.
The cover letter was included in the questionnaire, which gave a brief description of what the study was about and highlighted that participation was voluntary and participants were free to accept or decline to partake in the study. The questionnaire was administered online, and the final sample excluded individuals who did not meet the inclusion criteria required, incomplete questionnaires, and any errors that were present. A total of 341 questionnaires out of 546 were included in the final sample, with a response rate of 62.5 percent.
4.6.2 Coding
According to Linneberg and Korsgaard (2019), coding is a research process whereby the researcher transforms raw data and groups it to form meaningful categories. Wiid and Diggines (2013) further highlight that when coding, numbers are assigned to specific items to derive cohesive information into a computer and tabulate the results. The survey questionnaire in this study was divided into six sections. Section A consists of 16 questions aimed at obtaining demographic information of the participants. The questions included age, gender, income and race, amongst others. Section B contained nine items with the purpose to obtain information regarding the financial well-being of the participants. In Section C, nine items on a six-point Likert scale were used to determine the level of behavioural finance biases of the participants, where the participants were required to select the level to which they agree or disagree with the statements. Section D consists of ten items aimed at identifying the participants’ risk perception. In Section E, a 23 item DOSPERT scale was used to identify the participants’ risk perception scale relating to ethical, financial, health, social and recreational and the risk tolerance scale. Lastly, Section F consisted of 16 items to determine how the participants relate to external or international events.
Moreover, Iacobucci & Churchill (2010:350) highlighted that once the data has been collected, it is not useful until it is transformed into a format that will yield a meaningful analysis. This form of data analysis can be performed in three steps namely, editing, coding and tabulation (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). Cant et al. (2005) highlight that editing involves analysing the questionnaire to ensure there are no omissions, ambiguities and repetition of questions.
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Moreover, Zikmund and Babin (2013) highlight that coding must be performed on the data to ensure its usefulness before interpreting it. This can be done by assigning symbols to each question or a group of questions relating to the same topic (Iacobucci & Churchill, 2010).
Lastly, tabulation involves arranging the responses in a table form to acquire the frequencies per question (Hair et al., 2008).
Table 4. 5: Coding of data
Data type Code Question
Demographic information A1-A16 Section A: Questions A1-A16 Financial well-being B1-B9 Section B: Questions B1-B9 Behavioural finance biases C1-C9 Section C: Questions C1-C9 Risk identification D1-D10 Section D: Questions D1-D10 Risk perception scale E1-E22 Section E: Questions E1-E22
Ethical E1-E3 Section E: Items E1-E3
Financial E4-E7 Section E: Items E4-E7
Health/safety E8-E11 Section E: Items E8-E11
Social E12-E15 Section E: Items E12-E15
Recreational E16-E19 Section E: Items E16-E19
Insurance perception E20-E22 Section E: Items E20-E22
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Risk tolerance scale E23 Section E: Item E23
External events F1-F16 Section F: Items F1-F16
Political-legal F1-F3 Section F: Items F1-F3
Market fluctuations F4-F9 Section F: Items F4-F9
Crime F10-F13 Section F: Items F10-F13
Unemployment F14-F16 Section F: Items F14-F16
Source: Author compilation
The data was captured and coded electronically to minimise errors as shown in Table 4.5. The codebook is presented in Annexure B. In order to present the data obtained from the questionnaire, the next section discusses the statistical analysis techniques.