Melva International Ltd. provide data collection services as well. We collect vast amounts of data through a standardized process. It is fairly common for a Research Plan to be divided into two stages:
The first stage is where we start with the research question, go through what others have done, modify our own research question(s) and set some kind of hypothesis or theory.
The second stage is that part of research where we decide on our research design i.e. qualitative or quantitative or a combination of both and assemble our conceptual framework.
There are different ways through which you can collect data depending, for example, on whether it is primary or secondary data or whether it is quantitative or qualitative data.
The most common procedures we use for data collection are:
- Primary Data Collection
- Questionnaires
- Self-administered questionnaire
- Interview administered questionnaires
- Open-ended interviews
- Focus Group Discussions
- Observations
- Secondary Data Collection
- Secondary data collection is basically collecting data from documents, records, and reports of others.
It is also important for us to compare all these procedures, and find out their comparative advantages and disadvantages before we finally settle for a particular data collection procedure.
However, whichever procedure we use, certain guidelines regarding ethics in data collection, management of data collection, and designing of data collection instruments will be kept in mind.