Reference no: EM134044432 , Length: Word Count:1400

Population Health A Research Perspective

Assignment - Quantitative research proposal

Assignment Task

Development and justification of a quantitative questionnaire to address a quantitative research aim or question.

Purpose

Assessment Task 3 (AT3) involves developing a quantitative research design and data collection tool to answer a research aim or question. In this way, it builds on your work in Assessment Task 1 (AT1). Questionnaires are a common form of information collection used not only in research, but also in community-based or organisational practice. In your future practice (in research or field practice), you may be required to develop and implement a questionnaire for any range of reasons. For example, for pure research, or to gather information about community needs or attitudes, or service utilisation or needs, or evaluation of a program or initiative that your organisation has delivered, among many other possibilities. Thus, this task is authentic and develops your applied practical skills for practice. The output can be used to build your professional portfolio.

Topic background

The research proposal builds on the foundations of research covered in topics 1-3, including goals of research, principles of the quantitative paradigm, and formulating qualitative research aims and questions. Additional topics specifically relevant to this assessment task are topics 8-10 on quantitative research principles and practice. Students may also refer to Quantitative Research Techniques when considering quantitative research approaches.

Process for the task

Develop a quantitative research aim or question

Based on your AT1 topic for the literature review, you need to develop a research aim or question that can be answered using quantitative research. Please refer back to Topic 3: The Research Process for assistance in developing your research aim or question if you plan to change it based on your AT1 feedback.

Design a brief questionnaire

You need to design a questionnaire that will help answer your quantitative research aim or question, following the principles for developing instruments. It is essential to refer to Topic 8: Quantitative Study Designs, Data Collection, and Questionnaire Development for assistance with developing your questionnaire. The video recording and readings will be particularly useful.

Your questionnaire should be approximately 500 - 600 words in length. You can ask as many questions as you deem appropriate or feasible. Given the word length for the task, this would most likely mean including approximately 8-10 questions, as well as a minimum of 3 demographic questions. The number of questions will vary depending on the individual context (e.g., the length of instructions, questions, and types of response variables used). Ensure you include:

Instructions at the beginning of the questionnaire, throughout as necessary, and at the end.
A minimum of three demographic items (questions) on top of your 8-10 survey questions.
Topic-related items - You can use a small number of verbatim items that have been used in previous research studies (with appropriate references), but the majority of your questions should be ones that you have developed yourself or modified from existing tools.
Appropriate variables (response options) - You can use a mix of types (e.g. different formats and scales) as appropriate. Please refer to the principles for instrument development in topic 8 of the unit.

You must design your questionnaire using Microsoft Word. Using online programs, such as Survey Monkey, is not permitted for this task.

Plan the pre-test of your questionnaire

For this part of the task, you do not need to conduct the questionnaire to collect or analyse the data pertaining to the research aim or question, but you are required to plan how you would pre-test the questionnaire, taking into consideration the sampling and recruitment for the pre-test (revise topics 8 and 9 on quantitative research principles and practice).

You will first need to develop a set of pre-test questions that you plan to ask people after they have completed your questionnaire. These questions may focus on layout, wording of questions, content, length of questionnaire, etc. Refer to Topic 8: Quantitative Study Designs, Data Collection, and Questionnaire Development for details on pre-testing.

You need to provide an overview of how you would pre-test your questionnaire to ensure the questions are well structured, ?ow, and address the research question or aim you have posed at the start of this assessment. In order to do this, you need to clearly state the target population you would use to pre-test the questionnaire, as drawn from your research question or aim. From this, academic literature will be used to discuss and justify the type of sampling approach that would be used, linking it back to how this approach is appropriate for your target group. Sampling Theory may be relevant when discussing the sampling approach.

You then need to discuss and justify where and how you would recruit participants for the pre-testing of your questionnaire. Finally, you need to provide an overview of how you would carry out the pre-testing process and record the information to improve the questionnaire.

This should be written in a way that allows it to be replicated. No questionnaire is perfect, and obtaining critical feedback is a constructive process that is an important component of obtaining high-quality data when administering the questionnaire in practice.

Referencing: APA7