Data Collection Method
Primary data for the proposed study will be collected using respondent-filled questionnaires, which will be handed out to the sampled participants in the church and then collected after one week. The questionnaires, which will be prepared in English and self-administered, will mostly contain closed-ended questions/items where participants will be encouraged to reply by selecting one or multiple choices supplied by the researcher. However, the tool will also contain open-ended questions that will be used to seek new knowledge on the issue under investigation by encouraging the participants to reply at length and choose their own focus to some extent (Nardi, 2002). Questionnaires are advantageous as they not only facilitate the gathering of responses in a more standardized manner, thus achieving high objectivity, but can also be used to collect large amounts of data in a short duration of time and a comparatively cost-effective manner (Nardi, 2002).
Instruments Used for Data Collection
The questionnaire, which will have a total of 25 questions and 3 sections, will include checklists to collect numerical and closed-ended data, attitude scales to collect interval data, and rating scales to collect ordinal and categorical data (Knapp, 1998). In section A, 2 numerical items and 3 closed-ended (yes/no) will be used to collect participants’ personal and demographic information. In section B, 5 Likert-scale items will be posted to measure the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the participants. Additionally, 5 open-ended questions will be posed to break the ice and seek other relevant data that may be outside the scope of the researcher. Lastly, 5 multiple-choice items will be used to collect finite data for analysis (Nardi, 2002). Section C will contain 3 closed-ended questions and 2 open-ended questions intended to elicit some concluding remarks on the phenomena of interest.
Type of Data to be collected
Ordinal and categorical data will be collected using Lickert scale items. While the items on the ordinal scale will be set into some kind of order to represent their position on the scale and demonstrate their relative importance to the constructs under investigation, categories of “strongly agree, agree, disagree and strongly disagree” will be used in the Lickert scales (Nardi, 2002). Rank-ordered data and finite data will be collected using open-ended and multiple-choice questionnaire items, respectively. Lastly, nominal data will be collected through the employment of dichotomous scales by assigning values to categories (e.g., 1=Yes; 2=No in closed-ended items) and by ensuring that these categories cannot be ranked. It is important to note that the numbers assigned in the dichotomous scales have no intrinsic meaning (Morrell, 2007).
Research Procedure
Written permission to conduct the research will be sought from the relevant authorities in the church and school. In seeking permission, the researcher will ensure all ethical regulations and standards pertaining to experimenting with human subjects have been satisfactorily met. Upon receipt of the permission, the researcher will test the questionnaire tool for validity and reliability. The researcher will then contact the sampled participants not only to disclose the purpose of the study but also to inform them of their rights, including the right to informed consent and the right to disengage from the research process at any time (Nardi, 2002). The researcher will also demonstrate how the questionnaires are supposed to be filled.
The questionnaires will then be dispatched to the participants for completion and onward submission to the researcher. Upon receipt of the questionnaires, the researcher will clean the tools and ensure they are duly completed (Nardi, 2002). The final steps in the research procedure will involve coding the tools, entering data into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) program, analyzing, and interpreting the results.
References
Knapp, T.R. (1998). Quantitative nursing research (1st ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.
Morrell, K. (2007) Quantitative data basic introduction. Web.
Nardi, P.M. (2002). Doing survey research: A guide to quantitative research methods (1st ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
