AIOU Course Code 8604-2 Solved Assignment Autumn 2021

Course: Research Methods in Education (8604)

Level: B.Ed (1.5 Year)

Semester 2021 Autumn

Assignment no 2..

Question no 1.

Discuss different types of research tools. How questionnaires are useful  and what are the problems face using a questionnaire

A questionnaire is a research instrument that consists of a set of questions or other types of prompts that aims to collect information from a respondent. A research questionnaire is typically a mix of close-ended questions and open-ended questions.

Open-ended, long-form questions offer the respondent the ability to elaborate on their thoughts. Research questionnaires were developed in 1838 by the Statistical Society of London.

The data collected from a data collection questionnaire can be both qualitative as well as quantitative in nature. A questionnaire may or may not be delivered in the form of a survey, but a survey always consists of a questionnaire.

A questionnaire is a research tool featuring a series of questions used to collect useful information from respondents. These instruments include either written or oral questions and comprise an interview-style format. Questionnaires may be qualitative or quantitative and can be conducted online, by phone, on paper or face-to-face, and questions don’t necessarily have to be administered with a researcher present.

Questionnaires feature either open or closed questions and sometimes employ a mixture of both. Open-ended questions enable respondents to answer in their own words in as much or as little detail as they desire. Closed questions provide respondents with a series of predetermined responses they can choose from.

Is a Questionnaire Just Another Word for “Survey”

While the two terms seem synonymous, there are not quite the same. A questionnaire is a set of questions created for the purpose of gathering information; that information may not be used for a survey. However, all surveys do require questionnaires. If you are using a questionnaire for survey sampling, it’s important to ensure that it is designed to gather the most accurate answers from respondents.

Why Are Questionnaires Effective in Research

Questionnaires are popular research methods because they offer a fast, efficient and inexpensive means of gathering large amounts of information from sizeable sample volumes. These tools are particularly effective for measuring subject behavior, preferences, intentions, attitudes and opinions. Their use of open and closed research questions enables researchers to obtain both qualitative and quantitative data, resulting in more comprehensive results.

Pros and Cons of Using Questionnaires in Research

Though the importance of questionnaires in research is clear, there are both pros and cons to using these instruments to gather information. Learn more about questionnaire advantages and disadvantages to determine if they’re suitable for your study.

Advantages of Questionnaires

Some of the many benefits of using questionnaires as a research tool include:

Practicality: Questionnaires enable researchers to strategically manage their target audience, questions and format while gathering large data quantities on any subject.

Cost-efficiency:You don’t need to hire surveyors to deliver your survey questions — instead, you can place them on your website or email them to respondents at little to no cost.

Speed: You can gather survey results quickly and effortlessly using mobile tools, obtaining responses and insights in 24 hours or less.

Comparability: Researchers can use the same questionnaire yearly and compare and contrast research results to gain valuable insights and minimize translation errors.

Scalability: Questionnaires are highly scalable, allowing researchers to distribute them to demographics anywhere across the globe.

Standardization: You can standardize your questionnaire with as many questions as you want about any topic.

Respondent comfort:When taking a questionnaire, respondents are completely anonymous and not subject to stressful time constraints, helping them feel relaxed and encouraging them to provide truthful responses.

Easy analysis: Questionnaires often have built-in tools that automate analyses, making it fast and easy to interpret your results.

good questionnaire

Your survey design depends on the type of information you need to collect from respondents. Qualitative questionnaires are used when there is a need to collect exploratory information to help prove or disprove a hypothesis. Quantitative questionnaires are used to validate or test a previously generated hypothesis. However, most questionnaires follow some essential characteristics:

Uniformity: Questionnaires are very useful to collect demographic information, personal opinions, facts, or attitudes from respondents. One of the most significant attributes of a research form is uniform design and standardization. Every respondent sees the same questions. This helps in data collection and statistical analysis of this data. For example, the retail store evaluation questionnaire template contains questions for evaluating retail store experiences. Questions relate to purchase value, range of options for product selections, and quality of merchandise. These questions are uniform for all customers.

Exploratory: It should be exploratory to collect qualitative data. There is no restriction on questions that can be in your questionnaire. For example, you use a data collection questionnaire and send it to the female of the household to understand her spending and saving habits relative to the household income. Open-ended questions give you more insight and allow the respondents to explain their practices. A very structured question list could limit the data collection.

Question Sequence: It typically follows a structured flow of questions to increase the number of responses. This sequence of questions is screening questions, warm-up questions, transition questions, skip questions, challenging questions, and classification questions. For example, our motivation and buying experience questionnaire template covers initial demographic questions and then asks for time spent in sections of the store and the rationale behind purchases

Question no 2.

When you can use interview as a research tool and what are the merits and demerits of interview as research tool?

An interview is a conversation for gathering information. A  research interview involves an interviewer, who coordinates  the process of the conversation and asks questions, and an  interviewee, who responds to those questions. Interviews  can be conducted face-to-face or over the telephone. The  internet is also emerging as a tool for interviewing.

When is an Interview an Appropriate

Research Method

Interviews are an appropriate method when there is a  need to collect in-depth information on people’s opinions,  thoughts, experiences, and feelings. Interviews are useful  when the topic of inquiry relates to issues that require  complex questioning and considerable probing. Face-to- face interviews are suitable when your target population  can communicate through face-to-face conversations  better than they can communicate through writing or phone  conversations (e.g., children, elderly or disabled individuals).

Types of Interviews

Interviews can be designed differently depending on the  needs being addressed and the information. They can be  grouped into three types:

Structured interviews:

In a structured interview,  the interviewer asks a set of standard, predetermined  questions about particular topics, in a specific order.  The respondents need to select their answers from a list  of options. The interviewer may provide clarification on  some questions. Structured Interviews are typically used  in surveys (see our “Survey Research Methods” Tip Sheet  for more information).

Semi-structured interviews: In a semi-structured  interview, the interviewer uses a set of predetermined  questions and the respondents answer in their own words.  Some interviewers use a topic guide that serves as a  checklist to ensure that all respondents provide information  on the same topics. The interviewer can probe areas based on the respondent’s answers or ask supplementary  questions for clarification. Semi-structured interviews are  useful when there is a need to collect in-depth information  in a systematic manner from a number of respondents or  interviewees (e.g., teachers, community leaders).

Unstructured interviews: In an unstructured interview,  the interviewer has no specific guidelines, restrictions,  predetermined questions, or list of options. The  interviewer asks a few broad questions to engage the  respondent in an open, informal, and spontaneous  discussion. The interviewer also probes with further  questions and/or explores inconsistencies to gather more in-depth information on the topic. Unstructured  interviews are particularly useful for getting the stories  behind respondents’ experiences or when there is little  information about a topic.

Steps in Conducting an Interview: Before the Interview:

1. Define your objectives → identify what you want to achieve and the information you need to gather. Make sure an interview is the appropriate way to meet your objectives.
2. Choose the type of interview → Review your required information, budget, time, and potential respondents and decide whether you need to conduct structured,  semi-structured, or unstructured interviews.
3. Choose the appropriate respondents → Depending on the type of interview, decide on the characteristics of interviewees and the number of interviews required.
4. Decide how you will conduct the interviews → Consider telephone or face-to face interviews. For large surveys, consider computer-aided interviewing and recording.
5. Decide how to recruit your respondents → Obtain contact information for a number of respondents larger than the number of interviews you need, since some may not  respond. Contact them by phone, e-mail, or regular mail  and introduce yourself, your organization, and your project.

Explain the purpose of the interview, the importance of  their participation, and set up an appointment.6. Decide how you will record the interviews → Depend- ing on the type of interview, you may fill in a prepared  form, use written notes, voice recorders, or computer- aided devices.

7. Make a list of questions and test them with a sample of respondents → the questions must be aligned with the type of interview. If you are running structured inter- views, see our Tip Sheets on “Questionnaire Design”  and Survey Research Methods” for more information.
8. Decide who will conduct the interviews → develop an information kit that includes an introduction to the research topic and instructions. For unstructured  interviews, you may need to hire skilled interviewers

Question no 3..

Develop a research proposal on Analysis of Management Practices in Secondary School in Lahore” mention all necessary steps properly?

Education is necessary for the personality grooming of individual. There are different types of institutions  available like private and public institutions, technical institutions, and madrasas (religious institutions). These  institutes are having the triangle of three main pillars; consisted of Teachers, Students, and Curriculum. There  are two main types of schools in Pakistan and all over the world. One is public and other is private school  system. Now a days private schools are becoming more favorite and attractive for majority of the students due to  their better education systems, test criteria and knowledge creation vis-a-vis public schools, which  comparatively very cheap but inefficient are losing their attraction. Parents prefer to send their children in  private schools and avoid public schools. The main objective of this study is to investigate why people prefer  high charging private schools over free public schools (That charge nothing)? We use primary data collected  through constructed questionnaire and survey method was applied for collection of data from the target respondents of private and public schools located in District Vehari, Pakistan. The results show that five main  factors emerge as important determinants of private school choice. These include the socioeconomic status of the  household, the degree of a school’s accessibility, the cost of schooling, parents’ perceptions of school quality,  and their perceptions of the available employment opportunities in the region.

Keywords: School choice, private, public, perceptions, school quality, employment, wealth, access, cost of  schooling

Awan (2014) says that education plays a pivotal role in the rise and fall of nations especially in 21st century. It is  mainly due to the emergence of global competition in education and technology. This competitive environment  is the core need for progress of any country. Awan (2011) argues that all countries including Pakistan have  different school systems but when we divide them we find two major categories of school systems: private and  public schools. In Pakistan private schools are getting mass acceptance today to ensure sustained progress of the  country. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to analyze the quality of education introduced in private  schools. The quality of education is assessed by education levels of teachers, method of teaching, curriculum,  and study environment.

During 1990s and 2000s private sector was emerged as a key provider of education services in Pakistan both in  absolute terms and relative to the public sector. One piece of evidence relates to the number of private schools, which increased by 69%, as compared to mere 8% increase in number of schools. In 2000 private sector was  catering the educational needs of about 6 million children. This number increased to 12 million in 2007-08 –  equivalent to 34 percent of total enrolment. The number of teachers also doubled in private1 educational  institutions during this period. Awan and Saeed (2014) plead that private educational institutions are playing key  role not only in eradicating illiteracy but also enhancing the level of students as well as teachers by providing  better academic environment. Awan (2012) disclosed that private sector contributed significantly in eradicating  illiteracy in the emerging economies. If private school properly managed they can uplift educational standard in  Pakistan as well. Awan (2012) revealed that educational system was completely shattered in the Soviet Union  after its disintegration in the late 1990s due to non-existence of private educational institutions. When the Soviet  Union was collapsed its public school system was also collapsed.

Main Research Questions

Main research question of our study is the “Comparative analysis of public and private educational institution: A  case study of District Vehari-Pakistan.”

The mushroom growth of private school in Pakistan has raised many other important questions: what are the  causes of the rapid growth of private schools? Is public private partnerships is effective for meeting the growing  demand of education? Are private schools are providing better and qualitative education as compared to public  schools? Why are public school system declining? We will try to explore the answers to these question in this  paper.

Teacher Quality Factors Influencing School Choice:

Lower teacher absenteeism and better teacher accountability in private schools as compared to public schools. In  the private sector, teacher remuneration is more closely linked to student outcomes than in the public sector.

Private school teachers are less likely to be absent than teachers in public schools. So, teachers operating at low- fee private schools would be under pressure to perform and meet certain result-oriented outcomes. In the public  sector, on the other hand, there is greater job security. Thus, the differential incentive package in the private  relative to the public sector may be a factor in explaining why private schools out-perform government schools.

The quality of the class teacher’s teaching and captures three dimensions:

(i) parents knowledge of the teacher’s educational qualifications

(ii) parents opinion of the teacher’s regularity

(iii) parents rating of the teacher’s teaching skills.

There is a fixed salary package and pay scale for the government school teachers. Pay scale usually starts from  9th grade up to 15 in government sector. But this pay scale is not too much sound full.  In case of private school teachers it is not confirmed to get such fixed package or place in any grade of pay scale.  They get very little amount on the name of salary, depending on student’s strength, fees and their performance  about class output. But in high private schools which are providing facilities of O levels or A levels, situation is  different.

Once a person appoints as government school teacher he gets the surety about his job future. They don’t have  any fear about their job lose in case of taking classes regularly or not or even on worse performance of students,  while private school teachers do not have permanent jobs. They always involve in the fear of in secure job  future. Mostly fresh and young pass outs of intermediate appoint as secondary school teachers in private schools.

There is no concept of training for them. Usually private school administration terminates them and appoints  new teachers after summer vacation for salary saving. If they are not showing best results and obedience towards  management they can easily be terminated situation of job surety for private school teachers.

Facilities in School:  School infrastructure is based on five measures:

(i) parents observations about the condition of the school building, and their knowledge

(ii) school has a boundary wall

(iii) school has a functional latrine

(iv) school has a electricity

(v) school has a Water

 . Child safety:

It is based on parents’ knowledge of whether the child’s school has a gatekeeper, and on their perceptions of the  frequency of corporal punishment and the likelihood of peer harassment.

Quality of education:

The quality of English, science, and mathematics teaching is generally higher at private schools than at public schools. Parents’ ratings of the quality of teaching of these three subjects at their child’s school are very  important. The teaching quality gap between private and public schools is evident—a larger percentage of  public school-going children’s parents rate the teaching as ‘average’ (or ‘poor’) compared to those of private  school-going children. Conversely, the percentage of children whose parents rate the teaching as ‘excellent’ is  higher for private schools.

 . School Fee:

The educational cost is assumed to be the most important factor for not only the decision of schooling but also  the choice of public vs private schooling as well. We have used the fee of school as the proxy of school cost.  Although the transport cost, the expenditure on educational material and uniform have significant share of the  total cost of schooling. Moreover, in poor households the opportunity cost of schooling also remains high. We  have found inverse relation between the school fee and choice of private school. As the fee rises, the probability  of attending private schools falls.

Medium of Instruction:

The English attained the language of high status in Pakistan. Proficiency in English is assumed to be required for  joining and advancement in armed forces, civil services, better paying jobs in private companies and NGOs. It is  also medium of instruction in universities that is why it is required by parents in schools. The English language  was seen as the major determinant of this expansion and as basic requirement by the parents. So, we have found a positive association between the choice of private school and medium of instruction as English. Medium of  instruction in English along with discipline and status symbol associated with private schools is responsible  for preference of private schools. On the other hand, most of the public schools are Urdu medium so parents do  not prefer public schools. Now The Punjab Government’s initiative of transforming Urdu medium public sector  schools into English medium may result into increase in enrolment in public sector schools.

Student teacher ratio:

Student teacher ratio is very high in public schools and seventy plus students in one class. So a teacher cannot  give proper attention to each student and all students also cannot communicate with teacher easily. On the other  hand in private schools there are thirty plus students in a class so there is much better student teacher relationship  and a teacher gives proper attention to students.

Better results:

Students of private schools are showing better results than public schools. Our data proves that private school  students are getting higher marks then students of government schools in District Vehari , same is the case in all  districts of Pakistan.

Research Methodology

.Data and types:

There are many sources of data collection that can be used like newspaper, media, internet, surveys,  questionnaire, and personal interviews. We take primary data by using questionnaire, which were filled by  students, teachers, and administration of the school. This study is a survey study and is descriptive type of  research. Two groups were involved in this study; one group was from Private schools and the other one from  the Public schools. The administrators were taken from the randomly selected private and public schools.

Population and sample:

All the Private and Public Secondary Schools of rural as well as urban area of Vehari District were included in the population of the study. We used stratified sampling technique in the selection of sample. First we selected some schools from Vehari district, and then we selected students from these schools. We collected information  from teachers who taught the pupils in these institutions. The samples were taken from each school and data on  school resources and expenditures was taken by interviewing each respondent from these selected sampled  schools. Finally, mostly for consistency checks and for additional information, each child was sent home with a  questionnaire which was filled out by the parent (or the child asking the parent questions if parent was illiterate)  and returned to authorities. School type effectiveness is measured as the difference in pupils’ learning  achievement in the two school-types. Achievement differentials are estimated using education production  functions with the outcome of schooling.

Selected Variables

The results of 9th Board Examination for the year 2014 was taken as a dependent variable while family income,  education of parents, teacher’s qualification, teachers/students ratio, facilities in the schools, curriculum,  discipline, and regularity were taken as independent variables.

Question no 4..

What are the components a research report? Provide guidelines to write a good research report.

.RESEARCH REPORT COMPONENTSAs

mentioned  above, research  components  include the  instruments, materials,activities, participants,  methods and  techniques involved  a  research. Familiarity  to  thosecomponents are required in  order to  get more  comprehensive  understanding  of  research.However, to directly  verify every component of a research being conducted would be timeand energy consuming. That’s why, the most realistic way to get to know those componentsis  by  looking  them in  the  final  product  or  the research  report. In  addition  to  get  a  morecomprehensive understanding, studying this module will also provide you the skills to writea research report.Figure  1  describes  the  typical  format  of  ELT  research  paper  which  describes  theelements usually included in the paper. It should be noted that the format above belongs toquantitatively oriented research articles. This  format  is used as a  starting  point  to get anappropriate idea of what components a research report should have, because quantitativeresearch reports  use a  relatively standard  format for  reporting, while  qualitative researcharticles are more wide-ranging in terms of organization.TitleThe title is a very essential component of  a  research  paper  because  it  serves  four things.First, it predicts content. Second, it catches the reader’s interest. Third, it reveals the natureor genre of the manuscript. Fourth, it contains keywords that will make it easy to access bya computer  search  (Hairston  &  Keene,  2003,  p.  73).  Bavdekar  (2016)  supports  this  byaccentuating that a research paper title condenses the manuscript’s content in a few wordsand  captures  readers’ attention.  A good  research article title should  be able to conciselyintroduce the research work to the fullest scope. It is also the entryway to the contents for itis  the  first  (and  usually,  also  the  only)  part  of  an  article  that  readers  see.  Based  on  themeaning they got from the title, readers will decide if the article is relevant to them or not.The title  should, therefore, be  specific and  indicate  the problem  the research  project hadaddressed using keywords that will be helpful in literature reviews in the future.Based on their construction, titles are typically categorized into four types: nominaltitles,  compound  titles,  full  sentence  titles  and  question  titles.  Most titles  are  “nominaltitles”  capturing  the  main  theme  of  the  paper  e.g. Using  Short  Stories  to  Develop EFLLearners’ Writing Competence. Compound titles, also called hanging titles, are those madeusing a colon, e.g., “The Use of Short Stories to Develop EFL Writing Competence: Students’Perception” is a compound title consisting of two phrases on either side of the colon. Fullsentence titles are apt to be longer and accentuate the outcome of the study, “Blended learning implementation in ELT is essentially not a matter of following a trend but a necessity Question titles are generally aimed to catch the reader’s attention, e.g. “Is blended learning implementation in ELT merely a matter of following a trend or a necessity.

Soler’s (2007) analysis showed that the most popular title type used in both the social sciences and (natural) sciences was the nominal title. Compound titles were used mostly in the social sciences. The full sentence titles were employed only in the sciences. The question type was rarely used and occurred mainly in Linguistics. Moattarian and Alibabaee (2015) found nominal titles constituted more than three-fourths of the titles in the 420 analyzed research articles. Its dominant use is due to its remarkable ability to make information condensed in an economical way by means of various pre-and post-modifiers so that it is more informative and explanatory than other structures. Consequently, research article writer favors the nominal titles How many words the title of a research article should have? Most novice writers always ask this question. Yet, there is no definite rules for this. Even journals hardly provide an. explicit limit in their instructions to authors. They instead favor phrases such as ‘clear and concise or ‘brief and specific’. Soler (2007) found that titles in the three hard sciences she investigated (biology, medicine, and biochemistry) contained more words (14.15-15.48 words per title) than titles in the soft sciences (ranging from an average of 7.98 words for linguistics to 12.63 for psychology). While Moattarian and Alibabaec (2015) found the average title length of articles in Applied Linguistics was 12.88 words, in Dentistry, 10 38 words; and Civil Engineering, 13.54 words. Why dotitles’ length vary? Yitzhaki (2002) found that articles with longer titles are more likely to be longer in length. This probably due to the fact that longer articles are usually the results of large projects and they are the major publication medium for the projects outcomes. Therefore they are longer in length. To conclude, to write your research article title, do your best to make it meaningful and specific by keeping in mind that a good title should: (1) indicate the article content; (2) catch the reader’s interest; (3) reflect the tone or slant of the piece of writing; and (4) contain

keywords that will make it easy to access by a computer search. The title should be neither too short nor too long. A title consisting of 4 to 15 words will do. However, your title’s length depends on the length of your article. Longer articles generally need longer titles. Finally,since the nominal group is the most frequently used type in research articles, it’s safer towrite your title in that construction.

Question no 5 ..

What type of research tools are used in qualitative research? Mention the characteristics of any three tools for qualitative research.

qualitative research

“Conversations with people” isn’t very specific, so let’s go a little deeper. By definition, qualitative research is an inquiry into the way people interpret a certain social condition around them. It usually involves interviews or conversations, which produce non-numerical data. An example of qualitative research is identifying how effective a government welfare program is by talking to the people directly affected by it.

Qualitative research is often time intensive, primarily because it requires collecting data by interacting with people over long periods of time. Then, after collecting data, analyzing conversations and bringing out insights is also time consuming.

Qualitative research is useful in two situations:

When research questions need to be sharpened: In the beginning of any study, researchers may only have a rough idea what they want to collect data on and how they can collect that data. Using qualitative research can help researchers understand their problem, zero in on their hypothesis, and create a design for further research (either qualitative or quantitative) as the study unfolds.

When you need detailed description of an issue: For complex issues, simple statistics may show what is happening, but not why it’s happening. In these scenario, qualitative research is helpful for exploring social conditions and explaining them in detail. For example, quantitative data may show how many girls drop out of school, but qualitative data can help researchers understanding the barriers that stop parents from sending girls to school.

There are several different qualitative research methods. Which method you should use depends on what you’re trying to achieve. However, the three most commonly used qualitative research methods are in-depth interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs) and observation.

1. One-on-one interview:

Conducting in-depth interviews is one of the most common qualitative research methods. It is a personal interview that is carried out with one respondent at a time. This is purely a conversational method and invites opportunities to get details in depth from the respondent. One of the advantages of this method provides a great opportunity to gather precise data about what people believe and what their motivations are. If the researcher is well experienced asking the right questions can help him/her collect meaningful data. If they should need more information the researchers should ask such follow up questions that will help them collect more information. These interviews can be performed face-to-face or on phone and usually can last between half an hour to two hours or even more. When the in-depth interview is conducted face to face it gives a better opportunity to read the body language of the respondents and match the responses.

2. Focus groups:

A focus group is also one of the commonly used qualitative research methods, used in data collection. A focus group usually includes a limited number of respondents (6-10) from within your target market. The main aim of the focus group is to find answers to the “why” “what” and “how” questions. One advantage of focus groups is, you don’t necessarily need to interact with the group in person. Nowadays focus groups can be sent an online survey on various devices and responses can be collected at the click of a button. Focus groups are an expensive method as compared to the other online qualitative research methods. Typically they are used to explain complex processes. This method is very useful when it comes to market research on new products and testing new concepts.

3. Ethnographic research:

Ethnographic research is the most in-depth observational method that studies people in their naturally occurring environment.

This method requires the researchers to adapt to the target audiences’ environments which could be anywhere from an organization to a city or any remote location. Here geographical constraints can be an issue while collecting data. This research design aims to understand the cultures, challenges, motivations, and settings that occur. Instead of relying on interviews and discussions, you experience the natural settings first hand. This type of research method can last from a few days to a few years, as it involves in-depth observation and collecting data on those grounds. It’s a challenging and a time-consuming method and solely depends on the expertise of the researcher to be able to analyze, observe and infer the data.