Name of the subject : Research Methods (with SPSS program).
Language: English (UK)!!!!!
Number of SOURCES: 2-3
Task is to perform a quantitative data collection and analysis exercise on a topic of your choice to test one or more clearly stated hypotheses. You will need to plan ahead and design your study carefully so that you can be sure that you have collected data that are relevant to your research questions. The data should be analysed using SPSS( 19 or 22 version).
Example Structure:
1. Introduction, research question and hypotheses
2. Methods of data collection (whether primary or secondary: should include issues such as sampling, measurement, data entry and checking)
3. Methods of data analysis (including the selection of test statistic)
4. Preliminary findings: Descriptive analysis
5. Key findings: Hypothesis testing and interpretation
6. Conclusion (should reflect on limitations of the study)
7. Appendices – not included in word count
a. Questionnaire used (if applicable)
b. SPSS Codebook (variable names, value labels if applicable, measurement types)
c. SPSS Output tables (Note that in the main body of your report you should extract the numbers from these tables that you have used in forming your conclusions.)
___________________________________________________________________
-I have written questions and interviewed people
Questionnaire about how often people eat out at the restaurant or order take away food, and what are the preferences:
Q1.Age: __________
Q2.Gender:
a)Male b)Female
Q3.How often do you go out for a meal?
a)Once a week
b) Twice a week
c) Once a month
d) Twice a month
e) Other ______
Q4.Preference:
a)Take-away
b)Eat in the restaurant
c)Other_______
Q5.What types of take –away/ eat -in food do you usually order?
a)English
b)Italian
c) Chinese
d)Japanese
e)Indian
f) French
e)Other_______
Q6.Distance: How long does it take time to get to the restaurant?
a)5-15 minutes
b)20-35 minutes
c)35-50 minutes
d)more than 55 minutes
Thank you for your cooperation. _____________________________________________________________________
In the table below you can see the answers of people whom I interviewed:
Respondent Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6
1 20 F Once a week Eat in Italian 35-50
2 28 F Twice a week Eat in Italian 5-15
3 19 M Once a month Take away Chinese more than 55
4 31 F Twice a week Eat in Indian 20-35
5 27 M Twice a month Eat in Italian 35-50
6 43 M Twice a week Eat in Italian more than 55
7 21 F Once a month Eat in French 20-35
8 19 F Twice a week Take away Indian more than 55
9 25 M Twice a month Eat in Italian 5-15
10 17 F Once a month Eat in Chinese more than 55
11 24 M Twice a month Take away Chinese more than 55
12 22 M Once a week Take away Chinese 35-50
13 37 F Twice a week Take away Chinese 35-50
14 29 F Twice a week Eat in English 20-35
15 25 F Once a week Eat in Indian 20-35
16 24 M Twice a month Take away Chinese more than 55
17 33 F Once a month Eat in Italian 20-35
18 25 F Once a week Eat in Italian more than 55
19 21 M Twice a month Eat in Chinese 20-35
20 29 F Once a week Eat in Italian 5-15
When you will write information in the SPSS , in the Variable view all of the anwers from Q2 to Q6 should be written in Values as: 1 =Female ;2=Male ……etc.
I also want to show an example of how should be written essay. I attached here the example of an essay that was written on another topic.
You can look and use it as an example of an essay that has to be and follow the structure: What formulas, charts and graphs should be included here, and so on;and in the appendix need to provide screenshots from spss like:Data view; variable view etc.
All graphs, tables,pie charts etc. should be made through SPSS( 19 or 22 version).
!!!!!!!!!!!!EXAMPLE!!!!!!!!!
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction 2
1.1 An overview to London underground 2
1.2 Research Question 2
1.3 Formulation of Hypothesis 2
2.0 Data Collection 3
2.1 Research approach 3
2.2 Research design 3
2.3 Research strategy 3
2.4 Research instruments 3
2.5 Sampling plan 3
2.6 Sources of data required 4
2.7 Data entry and validation 4
3.0 Data Analysis Methodologies 5
4.0 Preliminary Findings: Descriptive Findings 6
5.0 Hypothesis Testing and Interpretation 10
6.0 Conclusion 12
7.0 Appendices 13
Appendix I: Questionnaire 13
Appendix II: SPSS Code Book 14
Appendix III: SPSS Output Tables 15
1.0 Introduction
1.1 An overview to London underground
The London Underground is a fully-owned subsidiary of Transport for London, a public transportation system, which functions in London, United Kingdom. Also known as the Tube, the network incorporated London’s first underground railway. The London Underground serves over 270 stations, with a total length of 402 km of railway (Transport for London – Tube, 2014).
1.2 Research Question
Even though the London Underground has been extremely popular and highly utilized by the general population, in recent times the satisfaction ratings have dropped drastically and the usage of the underground service has reduced. A plethora of ideas and reasons have been put forward by the general public for the situation, and through a statistical analysis, the validity of these perceptions is expected to be evaluated.
1.3 Formulation of Hypothesis
The hypothesis relating to the research question is formulated based on the negative perceptions of the general public.
1. The general public believe that the underground is more suitable for youngsters, and the senior citizens have no adequate facilities to travel in the tube. Thus majority of the passengers are youngsters.
Hypothesis: The average age (µ) of a passenger is less than or equal to 25 years.
H0: µ = 25
H1: µ > 25
2. One of the most utilized routes is from Zone 5 to Central London. The estimated time for this journey is 2 hours. However the public have experienced that it takes way more than 2 hours to complete this journey.
Hypothesis: The average time taken to travel from Zone 5 to London (µ) is less than or equal to 2 hours.
H0: µ = 2
H1: µ > 2
3. Majority of the women believe that the London Underground have not taken measures to prevent abuse that women have to face when they utilize the tube. Therefore it is believed that when compared to men women do not prefer to travel in the London Underground.
H0: There is no difference between the preference of men and women in utilizing the London Underground.
H1: There is a difference between the preference of men and women in utilizing the London Underground.
2.0 Data Collection
2.1 Research approach
Three hypotheses were formulated to address the research question of interest. Thus, a deductive approach to research was used focusing on the data, observation, and secondary statistics which are specifically applicable to and provides evidence to test the hypotheses formulated.
2.2 Research design
The conclusive research design is used to employee facts to facilitate managerial decision making of London underground, evaluating the three hypotheses formulated.
2.3 Research strategy
Out of the range of research strategies available, a survey based methodology was chosen for the study; which has the potential to answer questions related to the scenario, via authentic primary data collection from a representative sample of the population of interest.
2.4 Research instruments
Research instruments are the tools employed in data collection. Key research instrument used in this study is questionnaires, which were self-completed by a sample of London underground travellers.
2.5 Sampling plan
The population of the study is all the passengers travelled/ travelling London underground. Collecting data from such a large population base is practically impossible. Thus, a pilot survey was initially carried out by choosing a representative sample of 24, including 12 men and 12 women; using simple random sampling technique to participate in the survey.
2.6 Sources of data required
Both primary and secondary data were collected and used in the study. Primary data were ideally collected from the 24 London underground passengers chosen via distributing a questionnaire. Secondary data were retrieved from internal statistics of London underground along with freely available data related to the entity and its services online; to provide the basis and the direction to the study. Data collected are qualitative in nature.
2.7 Data entry and validation
Data collected were entered into SPSS and coded to give a nominal characteristic to qualitative data, to facilitate analysis. Data were sorted and validates using the SPSS software.
3.0 Data Analysis Methodologies
Data analysis is carried out based on two broad segments; descriptive data analysis using graphical representation and hypothesis testing. SPSS software was used to generate all the graphs and charts and to carry out the hypothesis testing.
Graphical representation of data or pictorial data analysis adds a numerical value to ordinal data collected by the author, by visualizing them in charts or graphs. Pie charts, bar charts, histograms. And box plots which show the five numbers of summaries of the data are the key data analysis tools used to obtain a basic descriptive idea on the demographics of the passengers, and their level of satisfaction on London underground.
Hypothesis testing is a statistical inference technique which tests the statistical significance of the hypotheses formulated, at a stated level of confidence; via confirmatory data analysis. In all three cases in the study, the population variance is unknown. Hence, each hypothesis resembles student’s t distribution subsequently. Since the sample size is less than 30 (=24), it cannot be approximated to a normal distribution. One sample t test is used for first two hypotheses. All the hypotheses were tested at 5% level of significance. The test statistics involved are as follows.
For one sample t test:
: Sample mean
s: Sample standard deviation
n: Sample size
4.0 Preliminary Findings: Descriptive Findings
A basic descriptive analysis is conducted to obtain an overall understanding of the data, utilizing pie charts, simple and component bar charts and multiple box plots. (The graphs were generated using the tabulated data presented in Appendix III).
Gender
The sample design focused on obtaining a sample of respondents, with an equal distribution of males and females. Therefore as shown in figure 1, the data set comprises of equal percentages of male and female respondents.
Figure 1: Distribution of Gender
Age
Figure 2: Distribution of Age
The histogram indicates that the age is highly positively skewed. Most of the users are in the ages of 20 – 25, while the percentage of users in the 30 – 50 age range is extremely low.
Frequency
Figure 3: Distribution of Frequency of Usage
As shown in figure 3, not much of difference can be observed in the frequency of usage. The highest percentage of respondents utilizes the London Underground on a monthly basis.
Reduction
Figure 4: Reduction in Usage
Majority of the respondents have reported that there has been a reduction in the utilization of the London Underground.
Preference
Figure 5: Distribution of Preference Ratings
There is no particular pattern in the preference ratings. However peaks can be observed towards the two tail ends.
Time
Figure 6: Distribution of Time
The histogram indicates a positive skew. Most of the respondents believe that it takes less than 2 hours to travel from Zone 5 to Central London.
.
Impact of Gender on Reduction
Figure 7: Impact of Gender on Reduction
Majority of the female travellers have shown a drastic reduction in their usage of the London Underground. However not many of the male travellers have reduced their usage.
Impact of Gender on Preference Ratings
Figure 8: Impact of Gender on Preference Ratings
There is a clear considerable difference between the preference ratings of male and female respondents. While the ratings of the male travellers are in an extremely higher region, ratings of female travellers in a lower region.
5.0 Hypothesis Testing and Interpretation
This section conducts hypothesis testing, in order to evaluate the validity of the concerns put forwards by the general public utilizing the London Underground. (Please refer Appendix III for tabulated test results).
Statement 1
The general public are concerned that the London Underground does not provide adequate facilities for the senior citizens, thus they face a lot of difficulties when they are travelling. Therefore the first statement relates to evaluating the average age of a passenger travelling on the London Underground. The null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis are defined as follows:
H0: The average age (µ) of a passenger is less than or equal to 25 years. µ = 25
H1: The average age (µ) of a passenger is greater than 25 years. µ > 25
Test Results
Value of test statistics: t = 1.094
Table book value: t0.05, 23 = 1.714
Therefore at 5% significance level, the value of the test statistic is not greater than the table book value.
Conclusion
Therefore at 5% significance level we do not reject the null hypothesis. Thus we have enough evidence to conclude that the average age of a passenger is less than or equal to 25 years. The statement made by the general public is proved to be valid.
Statement 2
The general public are concerned that the London Underground is inefficient. The mostly used Zone 5 to Central London route takes more than the stipulated time of 2 hours. The null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis are defined as follows:
H0: The average time taken to travel from Zone 5 to London (µ) is less than or equal to 2 hours. µ = 2
H1: The average time taken to travel from Zone 5 to London (µ) is greater than 2 hours. µ > 2
Test Results
Value of test statistics: t = -1.553
Table book value: t0.05, 23 = 1.714
Therefore at 5% significance level, the value of the test statistic is not greater than the table book value.
Conclusion
Therefore at 5% significance level we do not reject the null hypothesis. Thus we have enough evidence to conclude that the average time taken to travel from Zone 5 to London does not exceed 2 hours. The statement made by the general public is proved to be invalid.
6.0 Conclusion
The research strives to identify the reasons behind the drastic drop in satisfaction ratings and the reduced usage of the London underground services. Three hypotheses which reveal key public perceptions, providing reasons for occurrence of the above issue, were tested to identify the credibility of the claims. The claims were; the underground is more facilities to youngsters, but not to the senior citizens due to lack of required facilities, time taken to complete the most utilized London to Zone 5 root is more than 2 hours, and the perception of the women who believe that the London Underground have not taken measures to prevent abuse that women have to face when they utilize the tube. As per the hypothesis testing it is concluded that, the average age of a passenger is less than or equal to 25 years, the average time taken to travel from Zone 5 to London is less than 2 hours , and there exists a difference between the preference of men and women in utilizing the London Underground.
The study has focussed on only three claims related to London Underground, whereas in real terms there could be a range of alternative reasons as to why London Underground cannot attain the customer satisfactory levels projected. The sample used is too small to provide a realistic picture on thousands of citizens travelled and travelling London Underground, which eventually questions the validity and the accuracy of the conclusions derived.
7.0 Appendices
Appendix I: Questionnaire
Appendix II: SPSS Code Book
The data set comprises a sample of 24 respondents, and six variables. A detailed description of the variables and its value labels are provided in table 1 below.
Table 1: Variables and Levels
Variable Name Label Values
Gender Gender of the respondent 0 – Male
1 – Female
Age Age of the respondent
Frequency Usage frequency of the London Underground 1 – Daily
2 – Weekly
3 – Monthly
4 – Rarely
Reduction Has there been a reduction in the usage? 0 – No
1 – Yes
Preference Preference rating of the usage of the underground
Time Time taken to travel from Zone 5 to London (hours)
The variable view of the data entered into IBM SPSS 20 is shown in figure 1 below.
Figure 1: Variable View
Data was analysed using IBM SPSS 20, and a sample of the data entered into IBM SPSS 20 is shown in the figure below.
Figure 2: Data View
Appendix III: SPSS Output Tables
In order to generate graphs and conduct hypothesis testing, the following tabulated data was utilized.
Gender
Age
Frequency
Reduction
Preference
Time
Impact of Gender on Frequency of Usage
Hypothesis Test I
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