As the research was not to determine the future for the Student Union organisations, simply the College Club, it is the validity of the research that is important.
There are many factors involved in the choice of which study method to use including the number of participants required and the level of personal involved required of the researcher. The relationship and the possible study methods between these two factors can be shown in the following diagram.
Fig 3.1 METHODS OF RESEARCH
Source: Worsley, 1977
There are three options that are most relevant to this type of study. Options such as observation involves too much researcher bias. Also with the case of the College Club, on average 169 people are attending the Wednesday parties (Fig. 1.1) but, there is no evidence to show that they are doing so because there are simply no other options on a Wednesday night. The main requirement of this study was to allow the students to have their say.
Interviews have the advantage over other types of research, because of the face-to-face contact. Therefore, if something needs to be confirmed or looked at in a little more detail, the researcher is able to assist. According to Easterby-Smith, Thorpe and Lowe (1991, p32) such unstructured interviews are appropriate in cases such as when
one aim of the interview is to develop an understanding of the respondent’s “world” so that the researcher may influence it.
The aim of this research was definitely to understand what attracted people to the College Club, and to try to improve the Club where it did not meet the requirements. The disadvantage of the interview technique is that it is sometimes difficult to obtain access to an appropriate sample (Hussey & Hussey, 1997).
The idea of interviews was dismissed due to the time limitations of this project and the fact that the highest possible number of respondents was required.
Another option is the use of some form of diary. Diaries can be used
as a daily record of events or thoughts and is typically used to capture and record what people do, think and feel.
(Hussey & Hussey,1997, p153).
This method is extremely useful if it is an in-depth study of a few people that is required, but this research was more concerned with the general pattern of the student body.
The term questionnaire is sometimes used by academics to describe specific techniques such as self-administered and postal questionnaire, whereas others include interview schedules (Oppenheim, 1992). For the purpose of this project, the term questionnaire will be used to describe a set of questions answered by the respondent without the researcher needing to be present. A questionnaire can either be self-administrated, group-administrated or distributed through the mail.
A self-administrated questionnaire is where the questionnaire is presented to the respondent, who can then seek explanations if there is any ambiguity, and then the respondent is left to complete the questionnaire, arranging for the collection later. This method can increase the response rate as some degree of rapport with the respondent has been incorporated, and the sample can be controlled. The main disadvantage is that it is very time consuming.
Group-administered questionnaires are less time consuming as the sample is gathered together to complete the survey. It can be ensured that all the respondents have the same amount of time to complete the questionnaire, and the response rate is guaranteed. The main disadvantage is that care needs to be taken to limit the imported bias, either through the presence of the researcher, or through copying or talking within the group. Group-administration although covering a larger population than self-administered questionnaires still has limitations due to time and the access to the sample.
Postal questionnaires allow a large population to be selected and respondents can answer in their own time. It also avoids interviewer bias, but on the other hand there is no opportunity for respondents to qualify any questions, though this should not arise if the pilot study has been completed well enough. The main disadvantage is that there is generally a low response.
Despite the known apathy of the students, and therefore an expected small response rate, a structured postal questionnaire was felt the most appropriate tool for examining the students' views. It was decided that only the undergraduates were to be involved in the study. Direct interviewing techniques, although ensuring a higher response rate, would have required a great deal of time and could have imported a considerable deal of bias.
3.3.3 QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN
The design of a questionnaire needs to take into account many factors; the intelligence level of the respondent can dictate the level of complexity of the question, the type of data required and analysing method available, influences whether the questions are closed or open-ended.
The validity of the data collected is dependent upon the number of respondents. The following factors are supposed to increase response rates (Oppenheim, 1992):
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advance warning - a letter or postcard informing the respondent of the study in advance, and inviting participation. This was not an option for this study due to financial and time limitations
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explanation of selection - by explaining the sample method, and how the respondent became chosen allegedly increases the respondents obligance to reply as they have been “selected”. As it was decided that the whole of the undergraduate student body was to be questioned, this was not too important too necessary to indicate how they had been selected.
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sponsorship - in order to give the questionnaire some validity. The first paragraph of the questionnaire clearly stated that the research was being done as part of a third year project and that the information would also be used by the College Club committee.
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publicity - advance publicity, can encourage response rates especially if there is an incentive to reply.
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incentives - The study group agreed that the questionnaire should be sent to each undergraduate and an incentive to reply offered. This was discussed at length, having academics on either side, and an incentive of a crate of alcohol, to be chosen at random from the respondents. The incentive had another advantage of being able to follow up any good idea if they had supplied their name.
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confidentiality - It was made clear that any “information given will be formed into statistical data” and that it was not compulsory to supply their name
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reminders - If there is a small, known sample it is comprehensible to send out a reminder to those who have not replied a week or two after the original questionnaire was distributed. However if there is a large sample, or there is anonymity, this is not possible.
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anonymity - because an incentive was being offered it meant that respondents were asked to supply their name. This was not a compulsory requirement so if the respondent preferred, anonymity was still possible.
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appearance - it has been found through experiments that it is best to aim at a relatively conservative but pleasant appearance. Taking into account the cost of reproduction of the questionnaire, a simple black and white format was chosen.
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length - unless a high degree of detail is required, it is best to keep the format as short as possible. If you then require more detail you could look into doing a follow-up study.
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the topic, and it’s degree of interest to the respondent - if there is a high interest in the subject on the respondents' behalf, it can prove not to be disadvantageous to produce a slightly longer questionnaire. Although the College Club is of interest to the majority of the students, the results required and the expected response rate meant that it was not worth using a long, detailed questionnaire.
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rapport- it is difficult to sustain rapport with a postal questionnaire as the researcher is not present, so you have to carefully construct the questionnaire ensuring that the questions flow logically and the respondent is made to feel comfortable answering the questions.
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return envelope - if the respondents have to go out of their way to reply, a low response rate should be excepted.
Taking into account the above factors, and the limitations of the project, an incentive to reply would be offered, but publicity would be limited due to the extra cost involved.
3.3.4 QUESTIONNAIRE LAYOUT
Once the factors influencing the success of the questionnaire have been considered, care in required in the designing of the questionnaire itself. It was decided to limit the topics to three main areas;
- Wednesday night parties,
- lunch-time opening and
- other possible openings.
A copy of the final questionnaire can be found in Annex C.
In order to insert rapport, the first question was simply asked whether the students had used the College Club since they had been at RMCS. It was expected that all the students had at one time used the College Club. The second question asked what they thought of the club.
The third question asked how regularly people attended the parties, then going on to what they liked and disliked about the club. The two questions would then be looked at for whether there were any common factors influencing the attendance rates. The scaling of the like/dislike scale was decided to be a seven point scales allowing for a greater freedom of expression than a three or five point scale.
The next section went on to discuss the Friday night parties. This was a new event but was thought to be widely known about by the students. The important information required was if the event was known about, and if the students were likely to attend. Also, it was important to find out whether the entertainment offered, would be a deciding factor in the attendance rates.
The lunch-time questions were only aimed at those people who did not eat in the mess, as those who did, already paid for their meals and were unlikely to forfeit this to eat in the College Club. The most important fact would be where did the students eat presently, so that the relative merits of the competition could be identified.
Most Student Union bars are open every night and used as the main meeting place on campus for the students. The College Club was open only regularly on a Wednesday. In order to try to emulate a student union bar, daily opening would be required. At present the majority of students stay in the Mess bars or go into the local village pubs. Could the College Club take over this role? If offered would the students use this facility?
Other student unions have a policy of a student only membership, with other people having to be signed in as guests. At present the College Club admits any member of college and their guests. At the time of writing, discussions were in progress on limiting the membership to undergraduate students only. Although the attendance is mainly undergraduates, a few other members of the college do use the facility. In order to come to a decision, the wishes of the students need to be gathered.
The final section of the questionnaire asked for some personal details including the course and the students sponsor whilst at RMCS. This was important to see whether there were any patterns. The last question asked for the name of the respondent, explaining that a name would be drawn at random with a crate of beer as the prize.
It was also necessary to decide what to do if people left questions blank. In the case of scaled questions it was decided that a mean score would be allocated.
3.3.5 THE PILOT STUDY
The importance of the pilot study is to identify whether the questionnaire is clear and the meaning of each question is clear. Whether the questions are in a logical order and whether the instructions are clear can affect the number of responses.
The pilot study identified things that were missing such as an opportunity to add anything that the respondent felt was important and had not been asked. The pilot also identified the author bias in term of what is personally important in the College Club. Other views helped to balance the opinions.
At this stage, discussions were held about how the results were to be correlated, such as the scaling of the answers. The pilot study also involved having the questionnaire approved academically.
3.3.6 THE FULL STUDY
The questionnaire was distributed by hand into the student’s pigeon-holes. A return date was given of a week, and return was to be through the internal mail system. This is a system fully utilised and understood by the majority of students. It is free and relatively effort free.
- OPTIONS FOR DISPLAYING THE RESULTS
There are many methods of displaying data including; networks, matrices, charts and graphs (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Which ever display method is chosen, it must;
…present information systematically, so that the user can draw valid conclusions.
(Hussey & Hussey, 1997, p257).
Network diagrams are familiar to most people in the form of organisational structure diagrams. A matrix is usually;
time ordered to display chronological sequence of events… Alternatively, the matrix may be… little more than a checklist.
(Miles & Huberman, 1994, p93).
Before it can be decided which display method to choose, the raw data needs to be in a format so that it can be summarised. There are many software programs that are specially designed for questionnaire analysis. The problem with these are that they require a certain amount of time to fully understand the limitations of the individual software and it’s quirks .
It was decided that, due to time limitations and the author’s present knowledge-base, MS Excel and MS Access would be used. As only general patterns were required it was decided that specialised software would not be required. MS Access would allow relationships to be looked into, for example it allowed it to be seen whether or not there were any major differences in the scores given between those people whom used the club regularly, and those who only used the cub infrequently.
The attitude survey asked for both quantitative and qualitative data. Some of the qualitative data required unstructured answers, but the majority of the questions were structured, scaled answers which could easily be transferred into the MS packages. The actual results can be found in Annex . However, the unstructured data could not be transferred into any software package sufficiently so the answers were noted, looking for common factors.
3.5 THE STAFF-BASED STUDY
Due to the difficulty of obtaining access to certain members of staff it was decided that the use of secondary data would be used to obtain the feelings of those people involved with the policy direction. The minutes of meetings are similar to diaries in the sense that they
record relevant information over a specified period of time
(Hussey & Hussey, 1997, p153).
The main information that can be acquired in such a way is the direction seen for the College Club and the areas of support. The main disadvantage is that those involved in the meetings are not a representative of all the staff on the college. Although this causes reliability problems, the importance of those people is that they are in a position to impose restrictions on the College Club.
The student co-ordinator was informally interviewed in order to identify whether she thought there were any major shortfalls in the services provided by the club. The student co-ordinator is involved with various groups of students and is therefore in a position to suggest activities that the College Club could become involved in. Other academic staff who were highly involved with student life were questioned, informally, to whether they could foresee any other uses for the club. The main staff involved were those in Academic Registry because they have day-to-day contact with the students. They are also often involved in arranging events such as Freshers’ Week, so their suggestions would be realistic.
3.6 RESOURCE ALLOCATION
The resource audit, as explained in chapter 2, covers the; financial, physical, human and intangible aspects of an organisation.
- FINANCIAL AUDIT
In terms of the financial health, conventional ratios and non-financial ratios can be used.
Conventional financial indicators compare profit and capital employed, assets and liabilities, and the levels of borrowing (Dyson, 1994). The problem is that these ratios are designed for analysing public and private sector businesses whom are required to produce standardised annual accounts. The accounts are produced following set guidelines so that all the information required can be extracted from the annual accounts. The College Club does not however produce detailed end-of-year accounts and, as such, the majority of the information required for the ratios can not be obtained.
The gearing ratios which look at the level of borrowings are not applicable to the College Club as at present there are no borrowings. The working cycle ratios look at the current and liquid assets, the current liabilities, the cost of sales, the stock, the debtors and the average weekly sales. These ratios indicate whether or not a company is able to pay their debts. They also indicate the efficiency of the employed capital, i.e. whether it could be used for another purpose with a larger return. Again, these ratios are not consequential to the College Club.
The profitability ratios can be used for the College Club. They give an indication to whether the profit from sales is giving a good return from the capital employed.
PROFITABILITY RATIOS
- (PROFIT / NET CAPITAL EMPLOYED) X 100%
- (PROFIT / SALES) X 100%
- SALES / NET CAPITAL EMPLOYED
Whilst this project was in progress the system for hosting a Wednesday night party was changed from the clubs receiving a grant of £250, and not paying for the entertainment, to the clubs receiving the door money and 10% of the income from the bar, but paying for the entertainment. Unfortunately the actual accounts could not be obtained for the new system, so the ratios using the actual 1998 accounts were altered to the hypothetical figures giving the clubs 10%. The two approaches to the running of the Wednesday night parties were then compared in terms of their profitability.
- PHYSICAL RESOURCES
Using the property records and the insurance records, the resources were identified and valued. It was important to the state of repair that they were in and whether they were utilised on a Wednesday night.
- HUMAN RESOURCES
In the Literature Review it was evident that the management of human resources concerns, amongst other factors the rewards and responsibility. The specified responsibilities are listed in the College Club Constitution, found in Annex A, but what was important for this study, was the specific requirements for a Wednesday night party.
It was therefore important to identify the key jobs required for each post involved in the organisation of a Wednesday night party.
- THE INTANGIBLES
The intangibles are not quantifiable. As explained in the Literature Review, the intangible resources are concerned with the reputation and the value that is added through the service provided by the organisation. The image of the College Club was to be identified through the student and staff-based study.
- CONCLUSION
This chapter identified that the main limitations of this project was that of time. Due to this the study into the perceptions about the College Club was limited to the undergraduate students, and a select number of staff. As a phenomenological approach was taken, the importance was to be based on the feeling and perceptions of those being questioned.
A structured questionnaire was chosen for the student study, with scaled answers, so that general patterns could be identified through the use of MS Access and MS Excel. In order to encourage a high response rate, the questionnaire was limited to four pages and a incentive of a prize draw was offered to those who completed and returned the questionnaire.
The staff-based study was conducted through informal interviews and the analysis of minutes of relevant meetings.
The third part of the study was a basic resource audit identifying those resources; financial, physical, human and intangible; that are used for a Wednesday night party.
REFERENCES
Jankowicz J. 2nd Edition. Business Research Projects. Chapman & Hall. London. 1995.
Dyson, J.R. 3rd Ed. Accounting for Non-Accounting Students. Pitman Publishing. London. 1994.
Easterby-Smith M, Thorpe R, Lowe A. Management Research: An Introduction. Sage Publishing. London. 1991.
Hussey J & Hussey R. Business Research: A Practical Guide For Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students. Macmillan Press Ltd. London. 1997.
Oppenheim N. Questionnaire Design, Interviewing and Attitude Measurement. Printer Publishers Ltd. London. 1992.
Worsley, P. Introducing Sociology. Penguin. Harmondsworth. 1977.
