Most people have been asked to participate in a survey or questionnaire at some point in their lives. The question was probably in the form of a scale that the research team setup in the questionnaire. Scales help researchers by giving respondents a way of conveying their thoughts and feelings in a subjective and measurable way. The survey or questionnaire is a tool for the researcher to capture the respondent’s thoughts and feelings. Each scale has different characteristics, depending on the answers to be measured. The nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio are four scales typically used in questionnaires.
Nominal Scale
If a questionnaire consists of a question with a “this or that” type of answer it is probably based a nominal scale. A nominal scale is used to assign objects that are, "mutually exclusive, (and) labeled categories" without creating "necessary relationships among the categories" (Aaker, Kumar, & Day, 2007, p. 288). An example of a nominal scale can be as easy as a yes/no or male/female style of answer. Researchers could use this scale as a simple count or create percentages such as 55% of the respondents are male.
Mode is used to find the central tendency of a nominal scale because the researcher would want to know the answer that had the highest frequency (Aaker, Kumar, & Day, 2007). The mode answers if people answer yes or no more in the questionnaire. In a questionnaire for a refrigeration company the researcher would want to know if the person answering the question was an installer. If the respondent answered yes it would skew how other answers would be analyzed for the research. The answer would also tell the researcher what percentage of the respondents were installers and if the questionnaire was selec...
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...are good for ranking objects in the form of preference and can use mode or median for central tendency. Interval scales like the Likert scale are great for indexing attitudes toward objects and use mean for central tendency. Ratio scales are specialized interval scales that show magnitude because they are based on a zero point. Ratio scales are useful for objects as age and income. A questionnaire that combines all four of the listed scales can give researchers useful data to interpret and analyze for their marketing project.
Works Cited
Aaker, D. A., Kumar, V., and Day, G. S. (2007). Marketing research (9th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Interval scale. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.uoguelph.ca/htm/MJResearch/ResearchProcess/IntervalScale.htm
Ratio scale. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.uoguelph.ca/htm/MJResearch/ResearchProcess/RatioScale.htm
There are two basic psychometric properties, validity and reliability that have been used to evaluate the quality of scale development. Psychometric testing used to evaluate the quality of instrument (Polit& Beck, 2010).
...d for consent to proceed with the study. The participants were given thorough instructions that at any during the survey you can withdrawal your participation in the research, and that this is to benefit research to society. Participation is this survey was voluntary was emphasized. Participants were told that the surveys should take no longer than fifteen minutes and the personal information will remain confidential their results may be shared, but for research purposes only. The questionnaire will have a demographic sheet and a 50 item questionnaire divided into two sections. One part has a four point Likert scale (0= Almost Never, 1=Sometimes, 2= Often, 3 =Almost Always) and the other part is a selection of A or B. It was also reiterated that the participants had the right to withdraw from the research study at any time; there will be no consequences or penalty.
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Focusing on surveys and questionnaires, and quantitative research methods, it varies on the person getting questioned as to which method they prefer. Some individuals may prefer to fill in a questionnaire, as it is quick and simple for them, whereas someone else would rather have a face-to-face interview because they may find questionnaires to complicated. Giving people the choice gives the more chance of getting a response overall. It is important that the researchers are aware of the advantages and disadvantages because they will then be aware of what method to use, and will know what method is best to use. It is also an advantage to work with experienced researchers in order to find out the best results.
Data Collection and Analysis Questionnaire The research was carried out on both quantitative and qualitative approaches. It began with a quantitative approach—questionnaire. Bryman and Bell (2003) asserted that mail or postal questionnaires are the most popular forms of questionnaires. Another form—self-completion questionnaire—was also common because of the overlap with postal questionnaire to some extent.
On the other hand, Quantitative research refers to “variance theory” where quantity describes the research in terms of statistical relationships between different variables (Maxwell, 2013). Quantitative research answers the questions “how much” or “how many?” Quantitative research is an objective, deductive process and is used to quantify attitudes, opinions, behaviors, and other defined variables with generalized results from a larger sample population. Much more structured than qualitative research, quantitative data collection methods include various forms of surveys, personal interviews and telephone interviews, polls, and systematic observations. Methods can be considered “cookie cutter” with a predetermined starting point and a fixed sequence of
__C__ 8. Which of the following scales would be used when the information is qualitative rather than quantitative?
Armstrong G. & Kotler P. (2007) Marketing: An Introduction 8E Upper Saddle River, NJ Pearson Prentice Hall Publishers
Grover, R & Vriens, M 2006, The handbook of marketing research: Uses, misuses, and future
The name of the study I participated in was called the relationship between personality and behavior. The study asked several different kinds of questions that when back and forth between the personality and behavior. For example, a question I had was, do you prefer being the center of attention and being part of a crowd? I answered being part of the crowd. All of the questions were survey questions, some of the questions have two choices for you to answer and others had five choices for one being strongly agree and five being strongly disagree (Krant...
Cravens, D. W., & Piercy, N. F. (2009). Strategic marketing (9th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.