QRM Assignment - Quantitative Research Methods (QRM)
Students are required to demonstrate their knowledge of quantitative methods by completing and reporting the analyses for a designated research project. Students will submit independently written reports in the style of a short journal article. Students will not be required to design the study, but everyone will be expected to complete six surveys to help generate the data to be analysed.
In what follows, section A) provides details of the specific research project. The text in section B) then provides guidance as to how the reports should be written. Section B1) provides an overview of what is expected of students, while section B2) provides a more specific indication of how marks will be allocated.
The numbers in parentheses (in section B2) provide an estimate of the balance of marks that will be appropriate for each section, although this is notional as students may discuss some issues that would gain marks in a number of sections (e.g. the assumptions of statistical tests - or their power - might be discussed in the results or discussion sections), so this is a little fluid.
Moreover, a student may write high-quality methods and results sections and then misinterpret everything in the discussion section, thereby suggesting a lack of understanding that was well concealed in the earlier sections.
A) Research Project
Mobile phones are, by their very nature, attractive targets for theft: they are small, portable and have a high value. Perhaps as a result of this, mobile phone theft is a major crime problem in the UK today, with the 2014/15 Crime Survey suggesting that there were 538,000 victims in England and Wales.
Alongside measures to reduce opportunities for theft, recent efforts in this area have concentrated on developing security features of phones themselves. Manufacturers in particular have introduced measures which make phones either harder to use, or easier to locate, if they have been stolen.
Many of these features must be enabled, or set up, by the owner in order to be effective. As with other crime problems, their willingness or ability to do this may vary substantially, meaning that some phone owners are less protected than others.
In this assignment, you will conduct a small study to examine the extent to which members of the public employ a number of available precautions. This will involve the administration of a questionnaire which asks questions about levels and types of phone usage, and asks owners to specify the security measures they have in place.
A further element of the study will examine the effect of question wording on survey responses. In particular, you will test whether the framing of a question concerned with estimated mobile phone usage, and the periods over which respondents are asked to recall, influences recollection of past behaviour.
To collect the data for the study, each of you should survey a total of six people who are not studying in the department or on a related course. All participants should be surveyed on or near the UCL campus. Please survey people on the street, but do so during the day and with a partner for reasons of safety. Appendix 1 contains an ethics form that respondents should read prior to participating.
Each of the people surveyed should be asked to complete one of three questionnaires (contained in Appendices 2a, 2b and 2c). Each participant should only be asked questions from one of the three questionnaires, and should be randomly assigned to one of the three groups. Ultimately each question should be given to two people (so as soon as one of the questionnaires has been completed by two respondents, it should not be given again). Do not survey more than one participant at the same time, as this may confound the experiment.
B) Report Structure
1. OVERVIEW
Authorship - Although students may discuss and analyse the data together, they should write their reports and produce any tables/figures independently. Marks will be deducted if it is obvious that students have simply cut and pasted tables/figures produced by another student.
Word length - 2000 words excluding the reference section, abstract, and any appendices. Submissions over 2000 words are not acceptable as part of the task is to communicate using the available word limit.
2. MORE SPECIFIC GUIDANCE
TITLE - should be concise
ABSTRACT
- Should be about 100-200 words (max)
- Describes purpose, techniques, results and implications
- Do not provide a detailed description of the methods
- Should be accurate, concise, self explanatory and specific
- Avoid jargon
INTRODUCTION
- Clearly defines the problem or issue.
- Starts general and becomes specific.
- Places the study in the context of previous research (literature review).
- Useful to present relations, contradictions, gaps and inconsistencies in the literature.
- Use subheadings selectively if they help organise the material better.
- Final paragraph clearly and explicitly states why the study was performed (e.g. the purpose of this study was...). These should be motivated by the text that they follow.
METHODS
Must contain enough detail so that the study could be replicated by someone else.
Often the following subheadings are used:
- Participants
- Design
- Materials (e.g. a summary of a questionnaire)
- Procedure
RESULTS
Be explicit about (for example) the sampling design used and indicate why you randomly allocated participants to conditions. Present things in a simple way
Start with descriptive statistics (descriptive statistics and/or suitable figures or tables) so that the reader can start to understand the data collected
Tell a story using appropriate inferential statistical tests. Indicate whether the assumptions of the tests you used were met.
Do not include raw data
Tables/Figures
- Make figures as clear as possible, ensuring that all aspects are explained either in the legend or the figure itself.
- Make figures as uncluttered and as easy to read as possible.
- Use the style of table specified in the Instructions to authors or used in papers in the journal.
- Be consistent!
- Output straight from SPSS is bad practice and will be penalised
DISCUSSION
- Summarise aims and central findings
- Evaluate and interpret results.
- How do your findings relate to the literature reviewed in the introduction and your hypotheses?
- Restrict discussion to the results (i.e. do not go beyond the data).
- Discuss any limitations of the current work or any future research that is needed.
REFERENCES
- Make sure that you use the style of referencing that the journal requires (see notes for authors).
- Software such as EndNote, Reference Manager, ProCite, or Zotero makes this easier.
- Ensure all items cited in the paper are listed and no listed references are uncited in the text.
Attachment:- Assignment Files.rar