Research Design and Statistics Concepts Worksheet
Concept Application of Concept in Scenario Reference to Concept in Reading
Research methods – focus groups and random samples
USA World Bank has conducted two researches using two different methods to identify and introduce a new product in the market.
Mary Monroe, VP of New Product Development, relayed on Best Market’s survey which took a random sample of online survey with 140,000 respondents.
Jim Wilson, VP of Marketing used focus group method of 40 small business owners identifying their needs and spending habits.
“To infer something about a population, we usually take a sample from the
population. Why take a sample instead of studying every member of the population? A sample of registered voters is necessary because of the prohibitive cost of contacting millions of voters before an election”
Measurement levels – nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio
Bea Hansen, the new board member of USA World Bank has found and mentioned that the data of the two researches conducted were not categorized and sorted in an appropriate manner, which is necessary to identify the best result of the surveys. The data of the surveys have to be sorted on the basis of nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio levels. “There are actually four levels of measurement: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio. For the nominal level of measurement observations of a qualitative variable can only be classified and counted. There is no particular order to the labels. For the Ordinal level of measurement the data classifications are mutually exclusive and exhaustive and are ranked or ordered according to the particular trait they possess. The interval level of measurement is the next highest level. It includes all the characteristics of the ordinal level, but in addition, the difference between values is a constant size. The ratio level is the highest level of measurement. It has all the characteristics of the interval level, but...