Chapter 7: Summary, conclusion, and recommendations
4.4 Research approach
4.5.2 Survey
According to Pinsonneault and Kraemer (1993:77), a survey is a “means for gathering information about the characteristics, actions, or opinions of a large group of people”. McMillan and Schumacher (2001:602) define survey research as “the assessment of the current status, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes by questionnaires or interviews from a known population”. The current study adopted survey research design and the definition of survey design by McMillan and Schumacher
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suits this study, since the study investigates the Internet-based information behaviour of high school learners and the tools used were questionnaires and interviews. Isaac and Michael (1997:136) asserted that survey research design is used
to answer questions that have been raised, to solve problems that have been posed or observed, to assess needs and set goals, to determine whether or not specific objectives have been met, to establish baselines against which future comparisons can be made, to analyse trends across time, and generally, to describe what exists, in what amount, and in what context.
De Leeuw, Hox and Dillman (2008:1) argued that “the idea of conducting a survey is deceptively simple” since it involves identifying a specific group of “people and collecting information from some of them in order to gain insight into what the entire group does or thinks”. The identified group of the current study were high school learners and some of them were selected to gain insight into the entire group’s Internet-based information behaviour. Survey research design is a frequently used mode of observation in the social sciences and in a typical survey research, “the researcher selects a sample of respondents and administers a standarsised questionnaire to each person in the sample” (Babbie, 2014:261).
The application of a survey design is helpful in “obtaining information from large samples of the population” (Glasow, 2005:1). A survey research design “can be seen as a research strategy in which information is systematically collected from a relatively large sample taken from a population” (De Leeuw, Hox and Dillman, 2008:2). To corroborate, Babbie (2014:261) opined that “survey research is probably the best method available to the social researcher who is interested in collecting original data for describing a population too large to observe directly”. This attests to the fact that, “for generalization about the attitudes of a population, collection of quantitative opinions using quantitative surveys is appropriate” (Guthrie, 2010:46).
Survey research design “is a relatively fast and cost effective method of collecting data to answer both qualitative and quantitative research questions” and this provides the researcher multiple options for data collection (Siedlecki, Butler and Burchill, 2015:1-2). Survey research design is therefore a research mechanism that applies both quantitative and qualitative research
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methodologies (Best and Kahn, 2006:271). The current study used both qualitative and quantitative approaches for data collection through the use of survey research design.
In order to avoid major pitfalls associated with research studies that use survey research design, Siedlecki, Butler and Burchill (2015:8) cautioned researchers who employ survey research design to:
• begin with a well-developed research question,
• define all terms (variables),
• select valid and reliable measures appropriate to each variable,
• determine the sampling technique and sample size needed, and
• take measures to ensure an adequate response rate.
The application of survey research design requires the use of independent and dependent variables in defining the scope of study; however, the researcher has no explicit control over any of these variables (Glasow, 2005:1). It is worth noting that “surveys are the most widely used data- gathering techniques in the social sciences and other fields” (Neuman, 2009:144). In the past,
“most surveys were paper-and-pencil questionnaires distributed on-site, sent by mail, or administered during a telephone interview” (Siedlecki, Butler and Burchill, 2015:7). Surveys are therefore relatively flexible since “they allow you to ask many questions on a given topic, giving you considerable flexibility in your analyses” (Babbie, 2014:294).
Studies that apply survey research designs are mostly “descriptive, correlation, or comparison studies” and when designing a survey for a study, “the most important criterion is to determine what data need to be collected” (Siedlecki, Butler and Burchill, 2015:1). Edmonds and Kennedy (2013:107) noted that survey research commonly reflects the descriptive approach. To corroborate, Babbie (2014:299), asserted that “survey research is especially appropriate for making descriptive studies of large populations” and the current study is a descriptive study since it investigates the Internet-based information behaviour of high school learners which looks into their online information needs, Internet access and retrieval skills, challenges, etc. According to Walliman (2011:10), a descriptive study involves the use of questionnaires and interviews, and both techniques were used in the current study.
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In a survey design, a sampling plan must be firstly developed. A sampling plan could be defined as the methodology “used to select the sample from the population” (Levy and Lemeshow, 1999:6). However, De Leeuw, Hox and Dillman (2008:4) maintained that “the first step in the survey process is to determine the research objectives” and translate them into a set of key research questions. Babbie (2011:277) opined that survey research design generally involves three main steps: questionnaire construction, sample selection, and data collection. The current study followed all three steps and also used both interviewing and self-administered questionnaires as data collection tools. The current study employed survey research design to elicit information about high school learners Internet-based information behaviour that are otherwise difficult to measure using observational techniques (McIntyre, 1999:75).
De Leeuw, Hox and Dillman (2008:5) asserted that, “when thinking about the process that leads from theoretical constructs” to research questions in a survey design, it is useful to distinguish between conceptualisation and operationalisation”. They further explained that researchers must decide which concepts they wish to measure before questions can be formulated and “the subsequent process of operationalisation involves choosing empirical indicators for each concept or each subdomain”. This implies that, researchers who conduct a survey are advised to “provide additional input regarding resource requirements and offer alternative sampling procedures that they deem feasible and appropriate to the task” (Glasow, 2005:3). Surveys are therefore
“particularly useful in describing the characteristics of a large population” and they are mostly applied in studies that have individual people as the units of analysis; however, researchers are cautioned that “survey research is generally weak on validity” but strong on reliability (Babbie, 2014:295).