Research Case Study – Cheap Research Essays

Research Case Study
SampleA – Case Study
Illegal Downloading Research Case Study
An international television producers association wants to gauge the extent of online piracy of popular television shows by Australians. The Age newspaper reported on the 11 June 2013, that the Game of Thrones Season 3 finale was the most downloaded show of all time . However, whilst the viewership statistics can be verified through market research firms such as Nielsen Ratings, the figures around downloading cannot be easily verified and it is not clear how accurate they are.
The producers association has previously commissioned a survey of the downloading habits of Australians but they were not convinced by the accuracy of the results. They decide to commission two different companies to conduct studies to find out about the downloading behaviors of Australians, particularly with regards to pirated television shows. The two firms, Drogo Ltd and Stark and Associates each have been asked to find out about the downloading behaviors of Australians.

The Drogo Study
Drogo Ltd conducted a phone poll of Australians to find out about downloading behavior. The researchers only called landlines as they had a more reliable database of land line numbers than mobile numbers. They selected a random sample of 2000 people from this database, ensuring that all of the states of Australia were represented, as well as differing levels of socio-economic status. Participants were asked whether they had illegally downloaded any television shows in the last 2 weeks.
The researchers found that their sample had proportionately more older people than the general population, but weighted their results to adjust for this. The study found that approximately 10% of households had illegally downloaded a television show in the past two weeks.

Stark& Associates Study
Stark and Associates recruited participants from a database of people who had signed up to an online research rewards scheme. They sent out an email to rewards scheme members inviting the participants to install some market research software on their computer. The participants would receive a $5 credit on the rewards scheme account that they could put towards movie tickets and other vouchers.
The participants were told that the software would record internet activity but they were not told exactly what was being recorded. The software recorded each time the user went to the “Pirate Bay” website.
Based on the Pirate Bay pages visited, the researchers estimated that approximately 10% of households had illegally downloaded a television show in the past two weeks.

SampleA – Case Study (Questions)
Read the case study in Appendix A and then answer the questions that follow.
a) Describe in detail two sources of non-sampling bias from the Drogo Study
b) Explain what was meant by the Drogo study “weighting their results”? Why would they do this?
c) What is the main advantage of the Stark & Associates methodology over the Drogo Study methodology?
d) Describe in detail three sources on non-sampling bias from the Stark & Associates study.
e) Why did the Stark & Associates study not tell participants what was being recorded? Are there any issues with doing this?
f) Both studies concluded that about 10% of households were illegally downloading television shows. Given that the results were so similar, despite the very different methodology; could we conclude that this seems like a fairly accurate estimate for the Australian population? Why/why not?

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Sample B – Case Study

Educational Technology Research Case Study
A statistics lecturer at a large university wants to examine the effectiveness of a new educational technology that has been built around smart watches. He has been given a grant to fund his research and is going to conduct two trials during the year. One (the Summer study) will be run during the summer school that the university runs. The second (the Winter study) will be run during the busy winter/spring semester.
Summer Study
The summer term is a shortened semester that is run over summer. It typically attracts two groups of students: students who are very motivated and want to complete their degree early, and students who have to repeat subjects that they have failed. The lecturer chose the summer term as the class is much smaller and he felt that this made the first trial more manageable. If there were any issues with the research he could then address these in the second trial during the winter semester.
The lecturer randomly allocated students in to one of two groups. The first group received a smart watch to use during the semester and additional learning resources to accompany it. The second group received the normal resources that had always been used.
The lecturer wrote a detailed questionnaire that was administered to all of the students, whether they received a smart watch or not. He included numerous scales, and a wide range of questions about study behaviours. Most students who completed the questionnaire took over an hour to do so, but many students’ skipped questions or did not complete the questionnaire. Several questions also contained contradictions or errors. As a result, considerable time had to be spent cleaning the data.
Winter Study
For the winter semester, the lecturer made numerous changes to his research design. Students in the summer term had complained that not everyone who wanted a smart watch got one. For the winter study the lecturer used a self-selection model. Instead of being randomly selected, students had to volunteer if they wanted to have a smart watch and the additional resources. In order to receive a watch, the student needed to complete a demographic survey and a pre-test about the subject.
This time, the lecturer used a much shorter survey. He launched it on Blackboard the same day that students received their mid-semester test results because he knew they would be on Blackboard and would be more likely to see it. He found some students had been confused by the mixture of positive and negative statements in the summer questionnaire so this time he ensured that all questions and items were variants of “I like using smart watches in my studies”.
The lecturer also hired a research assistant to organize a focus group of students. The research assistant invited students to participate by visiting tutorials and asking them. The research assistant also conducted the focus group. The lecturer was not present at the focus group. The research assistant also did all of the advertising of the questionnaire.
Both studies found that students liked using the smart watches as part of their studies.
Sample B – Case Study (Questions)

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Read the case study in Appendix A and then answer the questions that follow.

a) Describe in detail two sources of bias from the Summer Study
b) Explain what was meant by the Summer study “cleaning the data”?
c) Are there any ethical issues with the Summer Study? Explain your answer.
d) Describe in detail three sources bias from the Winter study.
e) Explain why the Winter Study had a survey and a focus group?
f) Explain why the lecturer had a research assistant promote the research and run the focus group?
Case Study

Eating Habits Case Study
A health researcher is interested in examining the eating habits of Australian adults. In particular she is interested in finding out more about people who eat a vegan or plant-based diet. Her main research question is to find out what differences there are between those who eat a vegan diet and those who do not. This is then broken down into looking at what demographics are related to being vegan, whether there is a difference in other health related behaviours between vegans and non-vegans, and whether there is a difference in health outcomes between vegans and non-vegans. The researcher was able to gain grant funding to perform two separate iterations of data collection. She decided to use two different data collection methods that are described below.
Study One
The first study that the researcher undertook was a large scale phone survey. The research used a Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) team to call numbers randomly selected from a database of Australian phone numbers. Given that the researcher believed younger people to be more likely to be vegan, she decided that the call centre team would only call mobile phones. The CATI centre that was contracted to make the calls only worked during business hours, so all calls were made between 9am and 5pm Monday-Friday.
The study gathered a random sample that was proportionately representative of the states and territories of Australia, with a sufficient sample size to conduct the appropriate statistical analyses. In the survey, the participants were asked about their current diet, a range of health behaviours, and a selection of demographic questions. Participants were also asked to recall whether they had made a change of diet in the last year, and whether they had had any health issues in the last year.
Study Two
For the second study, the researcher wanted to collect more detail on health behaviours and what kinds of foods people actually ate. She hired some developers to create a food and health diary application (app) that could be installed on the smartphone of each participant.
The researcher decided to limit the scope of Study Two to Victoria, so that she could send research assistants to the homes of potential participants to show them how to use the app and administer and initial survey. A multi-stage random sample was drawn using Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) guidelines to select suburbs and streets for the researchers to recruit from. Participants would have the app installed on their smartphone so that they could record their eating, exercise, and other information over the period of a month.
The researcher also conducted follow up phone calls two weeks into the research period, where she would remind participants to use the app, and also confirm some of the data collected by the research assistants on their initial visit.
Due to an error with the app the data for several important variables was only recorded for about half of the participants. However, the data in this study and Study One had shown strong correlations between these variables and some that had been successfully collected. The researcher was able to use these relationships to interpolate the missing values.