Controlled Assessment B - Coursework Example

Data collection is one of the central challenges in any research project. It is the process through which the opinions of people are collected and categorised. There are many methods of collecting data such as interviews; questionnaires; documents and observations provide invaluable information that is used for policy decisions, marketing strategies, and academic studies etc (Dinlersoz & Emin, 2004). Interviewing is a data collection method in which the researcher asks for information verbally from the respondents.

It is the way to access people’s perceptions, definitions, meaning, situation and construction of reality, where it involves discussing or questioning issues with people to collect data unlikely to be accessible using techniques such as questionnaires or observation. Interviews are suitable when in-depth information is desired and this type of information is required in order to fulfil the purpose of this research (Palma et al,1994). Therefore the interviewing research method will be better.

What Amy has already done is good but nevertheless it’s better for her to adopt a wider approach to gathering data. This is the most important part in the planning of a sample survey, because a poorly designed questionnaire may ruin an otherwise well conducted survey. At this stage it is always advantageous to think in advance what variables and tabulations would be required for later analysis (International Council of Shopping Centers, 2004). It is advisable that a dummy tabulation plan should have been prepared in advance, if possible.

This would ensure the inclusion of the information, which would be needed for the questionnaire. While preparing the questionnaire the following points were kept in mind in order to overcome the related problems. In this case study the method of e-mail inquiry was used. This method was applicable because most of the