RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

· MEANING OF RESEARCH :

“A Careful investigation or inquiry Specially through search for new facts in any branch of Knowledge”.

_· RESEARCH DESIGN :

A research design is the arrangement of condition for collection and analysis of data in a manner that to combine relevance to the research purpose with economy in procedure. It constitutes the blue print for the collection, measurement and the analysis of the data. Decisions regarding what, when, where, how much, by what, concerning an inquiry or a research study constitutes a research design. A research design is the arrangement of condition for collection and analysis of data in a manner that aims to combine relevance to the research purpose with economy in procedure.

Research designs needed because it facilitates the smooth sailing of the various research operations thereby making research as efficient as possible yielding maximal information with minimal expenditure of effort, time, and money.

There are many kinds of research design namely exploratory, diagnostic, descriptive, hypothesis testing etc., but in this study descriptive research design is used.

DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH:

Descriptive research studies are those studies, which are concerned with describing the characteristics of a particular individual, or of a group it is also includes surveys and fact-findings enquire of different kinds. The major purpose of descriptive research is description of the state of affairs, as it exists at present. The main characteristics of ex-post facto method are that researcher has no control over the variables; he can only report what has happened or what is happening.

· DATA COLLECTION METHOD:

Data collected for the study is mainly from the following two important sources such as:-

1. Primary data sources

2. Secondary data sources

Primary data sources

The primary data are those which are collected a fresh for the first time and happens to be original in character. Generally primary data collected through surreys, with well defined structured questionnaire.

Secondary Data sources

Secondary data are those which have already collected by the organization and which already have been processed. Secondary data is collected by the organization and it is used for various departments for their need. The process of secondary data collection and analysis is called desk research.

TOOLS FOR DATA COLLECTION:

PRIMARY TOOLS:

· Questionnaire

· Observation

· Interview

Questionnaire:

The questionnaire must be definite, concrete and pre-determined questions. The questions are presented with exactly the same wording and in the same order to all respondents. The form of the question may be either closed (i.e., of the type ‘yes’ or ‘no’) or open (i.e., inviting free response)

Observation:

The Observation method is the most commonly used method specially in studies relating to behavioual sciences. Under the observation method,the information is sought by way of investigator’s own direct observation without asking from the respondent.

Interview:

The interview method of collecting data involves presentation of oral-verbal stimuli and reply in terms of oral-verbal responses. This method can be used through personal interviews and if possible through telephone interviews.

Ø SECONDARY TOOLS:

§ Books

§ Magazines

§ Newspapers

§ Websites

§ Journal

· SCALES USED IN QUESTIONNAIRE:

Ø DICHOTOMOUS SCALES

Ø RATING SCALES

Ø SUMMATED SCALES (OR) LIKERT SCALES

Ø MULTIPLE CHOICE

Ø OPEN ENDED

Ø CLOSED ENDED

Dichotomous scale:

When a question has two possible responses, we consider it dichotomous. Surveys often use dichotomous questions that ask for a Yes/No, True/False or Agree/Disagree response.

Rating scale:

The rating scale involves qualitative description of a limited number of aspects of a thing or of traits of a person. When we use rating scales(or categorical scales), we judge an object in absolute teams against some specified criteria i.e., we judge properties of objects without reference to other similar objects.

Summated Scales (or) likert-type Scales :

The summated scales are developed by utilizing the item analysis approaches wherein a particular item is evaluated on the basis of how well it discriminates between those persons whose total score is high and those score is low.

Multiple Choice :

Multiple choice is a form of assessment in which respondents are asked to select the best possible answer (or answers) out of the choices from a list. The multiple choice format is most frequently used in educational testing.

Open ended:

Bottom of Form

Unstructured question in which (unlike in a multiplechoice question) possible answers are not suggested, and the respondent answers it in his or her ownwords. Such questions usually begin with a how, what, when, where, and why .

Close ended:

A closed-ended question contrasts with an open-ended question, which cannot be answered with a simple "yes" or "no", or with a specific piece of information, and which give the person answering the question scope to give the information that seems to them to be appropriate. Open-ended questions are sometimes phrased as a statement which requires a response

· SAMPLING DESIGN:

The way of selecting the sample is known as the sample design. People with various categories have been clustered together. Among them stratified random sampling has been conducted

(a) POPULATION:

The population of the study consists of the employees working in Heavy Vehicles Factory Avadi, Chennai. There are 4815 employees working at this company.

(b) SAMPLING UNIT:

The employees working inside the HEAVY VEHICLES FACTORY are all said to be a sampling units. These people should be selected according to our requirement.

(C) SAMPLING METHOD:

Probability sampling:

Probability sampling is the scientific technique of drawing samples from the population according to some laws of chance in which each unit in the universe or population has some definite pre-assigned probability of being selected in the sample.

(d) SAMPLING TECHNICE:

It is a type of probability sampling where members of the population are chosen based on their relative ease of access.

· Simple random sampling:

It is the method of selection of a sample in such a way that each and every member of population or universe has an equal chance or probability of being included in the sample.

(e) SAMPLING SIZE:

The sample size refers to the no of units used to do the research. The sample size should be optimum it should neither be too small nor be too large. The sample size used in this research is 66.

PERIOD OF STUDY

The study was under taken for a 1 months during July 7, 2011 to August 6, 2011.

· MEASUREMENT OF VARIABLES:

Scales define the type categories we use in measurement and the selection of a scale has direct impact on our ability to describe relationships between variables

• the nominal scale

– simply represents qualitative difference in the variable measured

– can onlytell us thata difference exists without the possibility telling the direction or magnitude of the difference

– e.g. majors in college, race, gender, occupation

• the ordinal scale

– the categories that make up an ordinal scale form an ordered sequence

– can tell usthe direction of the difference but not the magnitude

– e.g. coffee cup sizes, socioeconomic class, T-shirt sizes, food preferences

• the interval scale

– categories on an interval scale are organized sequentially, and all categories are the same size

– we can determine the direction and the magnitude of a difference

– May have an arbitrary zero (convenient point of reference)

– e.g. temperature in Farenheit, time in seconds

• the ratio scale

– consists of equal, ordered categories anchored by a zero point that is not arbitrary but meaningful (representing absence of a variable

– allows us to determine the direction, the magnitude, and the ratio of the difference

– e.g. reaction time, number of errors on a test

· PROPOSED STATISTICAL TOOLS FOR ANALYSIS :

§ Chi-Square test

§ Analysis Of Variance

§ Run Test

§ H-Test (or) Kruskal-Wallis Test

Chi-square test

The chi-square test, is a useful measure of comparing experimentally obtained results with those expected theoretically and based on the hypothesis. It is used as a test statistic in testing a hypothesis that provides a set of theoretical frequencies with which observed frequencies are compared.

Analysis of variance(ANOVA)

The analysis of variance is a method which separates the variation ascribable to one set of causes from the variation ascribable to other set. In otherwords, analysis of variance is a method of splitting the total variation of a data into constituent parts which measures different sources of variations.

Run test

A run is a subsequence of one or more identical symbols representing a common property of the data. It is a nonparametric method to determine the randomness with which the samples items have been selected. The run test can also be used to detect departures in randomness of a sequence of quantitative measurements overtime, caused by trends or periodicities.

Kruskal – wallis test (or) H-test

This test is an alternative nonparametric test to the F-test for testing the equality of means in the one factor analysis of variance when the experimenter wishes to avoid the assumption that the samples were selected from the normal population.

H = 12/n(n+1) ∑ R²/n – 3(n+1)

Mann-Whitney (or) U-Test

It is a nonparametric method used to determine whether two independent samples have been drawn from populations with same distribution

U = n₁n₂ + n₁(n₁+1)/2 – R₁