Data Gathering and Compilation Methods
Introduction
Data gathering entails the systematic collection data in a manner that will allow it to be meaningfully used in drawing of statistical inferences after analysis. On the other hand data compilation is the arrangement of data in a manner that can make analysis meaningful and easy to carry out. There are various means of data collection and compilation. This paper reviews the method of using questionnaires in data collection and compilation basing the data collection elements of the questionnaire on the likert scale.
Questionnaires are tools used in collection of data when gathering data through the use of questionnaire method. Questionnaires are documents with questions that are supposed to be answered by people from whom data is being collected. These questionnaires contain closed-ended questions as well as open-ended questions that are used to elicit the feelings of the people to answer them. The open-ended questions could have answers that are relatively different in intensity of the answers that they elicit. As such the answers are rated on a likert scale that determines the weight that the answer carries (Stringer, 2007).
The outline of a five-level Likert item scale may contain the following levels of relativity: Strongly disagree, disagree, I neither agree nor disagree; I agree and lastly strongly agree. These responses are grouped according to these items on the likert scale used in collecting answers to the designated questions. There averages are weighted on the scale’s items to determine the results of administering the questionnaire questions (Stringer, 2007).
Compilation of data gathered by questionnaire administration using the likert scale are scored and analyzed either per item or in some instances the responses to the questions are summed to get a score for each group of items. This is the reason why the likert scales are termed as summative scales. The compiled data item-by-item may be regarded by some as an interval level data or categorical-ordered data (Meyers, Anthony & Glenn, 2005).
References
Meyers, L. S., Anthony, G. and Glenn, G. (2005). Applied Multivariate Research: Design and interpretation. . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers.
Stringer, E.T. (2007). Action Research, 3rd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers
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