Answer

Assessment Task 4: Data Collection Methods

Suitable Research Design

My research study seeks to answer the following research question. “Do recently settled refugees to Tasmania Australia access to individual health care a right or a privilege?”. The type of quantitative study design that I will use to investigate this research question is survey research, which is a subcategory of descriptive research. Unlike correlational, observational, and other forms of quantitative research designs, survey research is appropriate for my research question because it focuses on encouraging participants to describe their opinions, experiences, and attitudes among other characteristics (Fischer et al., 2014). As such, employing the approach will ensure that my respondents (refugees to Tasmania) describe their experiences with and attitude towards access to individual health care, and above all, give their opinions regarding whether they see/perceives the access as a right or a privilege.  

Survey Administration Method

The survey will be administered through electronic (email/online) survey administration. I chose this method for a number of reasons. First, in comparison to other methods such as one-on-one, telephone, and group, electronic survey administration is more practical and feasible in terms of time and cost. Furthermore, it makes it possible to access a large participant pool, thereby increasing the potential to collect large amounts of data. However, some population types, for instance, older adults and those living in rural areas may be underrepresented due to technology gap.

Measures to Include in the Questionnaire

Being quantitative research, whose data will be analyzed statistically, my study will utilize formal standardized questionnaires as opposed to exploratory questionnaires. This category of questionnaires features mostly closed-ended and thus will be characterized by prescribed explanations for each question, prescribed framing and order of questions, and specified response format to ensure consistency in the handling of questions as well as enable quick completion of the questionnaire. To apply these measures, I will use various rating scales (ordered set of responses from which respondents must choose), including the Likert scale (Jhangiani, Chiang, & Price, 2015).

Type of Sample and Participant Recruitment

The data to inform this research’s findings will be collected from a random sample. This means that participants will be selected/recruited through probability sampling, specifically systematic sampling. The rationale for choosing systematic sampling over other sampling techniques is that it is more convenient, less time-consuming, and easier to administer. However, the downside is that the method is more prone to periodicity that may introduce bias in the resulting sample, and ultimately lead to biased findings.