Midlands State University s5

MIDLANDS STATE UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT

Tourism Research methods (THM 208): Question Bank 2011

Lecturer: C. Njerekai

1. “The output from qualitative tourism research is often overwhelming. Unlike quantitative research, qualitative findings are often messy and hard to decipher” (Ladner, 2009). Discuss the techniques you would use in a bid to decipher meaning from qualitative tourism research. (25)

2. Differentiate between qualitative and quantitative tourism research (10)

3. (a) What do you understand by the term ethics in as used in tourism research? (3)

(b) A student is carrying out research on the, “The impacts of HIV and AIDS on the Hospitality industry in Zimbabwe”. Discuss the ethical issues that can arise from this research (22)

4. Discuss how computers and other interactive technology are revolutionalising the way tourism research is being conducted. (15)

5. Discuss the merits and demerits of any three methods of questionnaire administration (25)

6. You have received a tourism research report done by a consultant for your company. You have been asked to comment on its quality. What would you look for? (20)

7. (a) What are the essential differences among nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio scales? (10)

(b) How do the above differences affect the statistical analysis techniques you can use to analyse the data? (15)

8. Briefly comment on the different perspectives on observer-subject relationships in observational research (15)

9. Discus the criteria used to classify research designs (9)

10. Draw a diagram to summarise the research process in applied and basic tourism research (10)

11. Explain the relevance of each step in the research process (20)

12. Distinguish between the following concepts as applied to tourism research

(i) Theory

(ii) Model

(iii) Hypothesis and

(iv) Concept (20)

13. Discuss in detail, the items that should be included in an academic research proposal. Use a single proposed topic of your choice throughout your write up (20)

14. Explain the importance of the following terms in the tourism research process

(i) operational definitions

(ii) Assumptions

(iii) Delimitation

(iv) Limitations (20)

15. Identify and explain any ten attributes of a good questionnaire (10)

16. A student is carrying out a research entitled,”Indigenisation of tourism versus conservation in Zimbabwe”. Construct a possible questionnaire for the student consisting 15 questions. (15)

17. (a)Explain the following terms as applied to tourism research

(i) Validity (10)

(ii) Reliability (5)

(b) What measures can you put in place to ensure that your research is valid and

reliable? (10)

18. Discuss the prominent characteristics of qualitative research or naturalistic research. (10)

19. Discuss the major characteristics of quantitative research that distinguishes it from qualitative research. (10)

20. Discuss the merits and demerits of the various ways of analysing qualitative data (10)

21. The following is a poorly conceived write up on data collection methods by a final tourism year student at the Midlands State University. The dissertation title for this student read as follows, “An investigation into the effectiveness of small to medium tourism and hospitality enterprises in Harare”

Data collection methods

A questionnaire was used for collecting data from the subjects. Labovitz and Hagedorm (1981:81) describe a questionnaire as an instrument consisting of a series of questions that are filled in by the respondents. The questions contained in a questionnaire document are designed to solicit information appropriate for analysis. The major advantage of a questionnaire is that it permits a wide coverage at low cost. It enables collection of data from people who may be difficult to contact. At the same time, it allows the greater uniformity in the way in which the questions are asked and thus make it reliable (Rummely, 1964: Mouly, 1978, Bell, 1993 and Robson, 1993).

Youngman (1986:148) comments that a questionnaire gives respondents time to consider questions carefully. Respondents are more comfortable when faced with a questionnaire than the researcher. Coupled with pledge for anonymity and confidentiality, the subjects are bound to give out truthful responses. To ensure the questions contained in the questionnaire are not ambiguous, the questionnaire was pilot tested. A pilot test assisted in framing questions anew where it was discovered that one question was ambiguous.

The questionnaire technique was employed to solicit responses from the following strata; the informal tourism business owners, workers in tourism informal sector businesses doing record keeping, government departments dealing with the informal sector. The reason for the choice of technique used for these strata was because the method was suitable for literate subjects, who often had busy schedules to attend interviews. Distributing questionnaires and leaving them to collecting at a later time gave them amble time to attend to them. The questionnaires were distributed by hand. This was deliberate so as to minimize the problems of mail questionnaires. The limitations with the mailed questionnaires according to Moser and Kalton (1971: 260 – 262) are;

1 “the question of non-response,

2 can be considered when the questions are sufficiently simple and straight forward to be understood

3. not possible for the researcher to probe beyond the given answers,

4. the researcher cannot be sure that the right person completes the questionnaire.”

The questionnaire that was distributed to other informal tourism sector subjects and an interview schedule was used by the researcher on subjects from the other strata.

The other method used was personal observation. This method is preferable where a process is being studied. This is one of the methods that the researcher employed to assess the record keeping practices of informal tourism businesses in Harare regarding record keeping and accounting systems. This method has the advantage that data collected is observed directly instead of being obtained from other sources. However, there is risk of personal bias. To avoid personal bias on observations, the researcher sought second views from other observers and experts. Another advantage is that the observer being an outsider could see phenomena about a situation that those people involved took for granted.

Selitiz et. al. (1959) cites the following as problems related to observation.

1. we may not be there at the time of a spontaneous occurrence which may be of interest.

2. observations are limited to the duration of the event and therefore life history cannot be

obtained by observation.

3. they can only have applied to a small number of respondents since they are time

consuming.

The observation technique was chiefly applied when it came to identification of processes and activities in record keeping practices of the informal tourism businesses in Harare. It is through observation that the state of the records in terms of cleanliness and accuracy could be assessed.

For this write, identify its specific weaknesses and raise the issues that you think the student should attend to in order to come up with a better write up. (25)

22. With the aid of a diagram, explain what is a guantt chart. (5 marks)

23. Discuss the importance of a research proposal both to the researcher and to the organisation for which the research is being carried out. (20)

24. (a) Explain the following dichotomies and approaches to tourism research and bring out the

differences between them;

(i) Theoretical/applied research

(ii) Validity/reliability

(iii) Quantitative/qualitative research. (15)

(b) How does an understanding of these dichotomies assist one to come up with a good

research project? (10)

25. In carrying out research, the true value of whatever one wants to measure is always obscured by a variety of factors, many of which lie beyond the researcher’s control. It is important for one to be aware of these sources of error so that one can at best avoid them or take measures to mitigate their effects on the validity and reliability of the survey results.

(a) What are the sources of error in survey research? (8)

(b) For each of the survey errors you highlighted in question 4 (a), explain how best you would avoid it or mitigate its impacts on your research results. (8)

(d) For each of the editing problems you highlighted in question 4 (c), explain how you would overcome them. (6)

26. With the aid of examples, outline the characteristics of a good tourism research problem

(25)

27. Valencia, a second year Tourism and Hospitality Management student at the Midlands State University proposed the following topic for her research, “Multi-currencying and its impacts on the tourism and hospitality industry in Zimbabwe” For this topic;

(a) Formulate what you think could be a suitable statement of the problem (3)

(b) State a possible null and alternate hypothesis for the topic (2)

(d) Formulate any five research questions for the topic (5)

(e) List the study subjects for this study (2)

(f) Describe and justify how you would choose the study subjects for this study

(5)

(g) What methods would you use to collect the data for this study and why? (5)

28. Distinguish between the following sources and types of literature giving examples;

(i) Tourism articles

(ii) Tourism reports

(iii) Official tourism/legal publications

(iv) Reviews

(v) Conference literature (15)