Data gathering methods

Published on April 30, 2023   7 min

Other Talks in the Series: Key Concepts - Academic Research Methodologies in Business

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0:00
Hello. My name is Dr. Christina Quinlan. I work at the Graduate Business School at the Technological University of Dublin, and I'm going to talk to you today about data gathering methods.
0:13
Data gathering methods are research methods and the term research methods means data collection methods are data gathering techniques. Data collection methods are the means by which researchers gather the data required for the research project. There are very many research methods that can be used in gathering data for social science research project. Commonly used research methods include questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, scales, projective techniques, diaries, documents, records, and visual methods, such as photographs and/or videos. Each research method, or each data gathering technique, each questionnaire, each series of interviews, and so on, must be either designed by the researcher specifically for each research project, or borrowed - and referenced of course - from another research project.
1:14
Deciding on the data gathering methods to use. The choice and design of data collection methods used in the research project are fundamentally influenced by the aim of the research being undertaken, the population of the study, the kind of data required for the study, and the location of that data. Now you can see on the slide a model of the research process. At this point in the research project, we are devising data collection methods. Looking at the model, that suggests that we're about halfway through the research project at this point. The model of the research process is taken from my textbooks on research methods.