You have been awarded a contract by ASU to complete a study of all students registered for at least one class this current semester. The purpose is to learn as much as possible about how these ASU students feel about their safety while at or near ASU. ASU is interested in various components of safety, including the safety of a student's property and personal affects, the physical safety of students, and the emotional safety of students (such as safe from bullying, ridicule, and public ostracism). Importantly, safety also includes being safe from disparaging comments, name-calling, and discrimination based on racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, gender, and other characteristics of the students at ASU.
The University informs you that there is a total of 71,368 students currently enrolled in at least one class, but the University will not provide you with a listing of those 71,368 students -- not a name, an email address, a telephone number, or any other type of listing. After a lot of thought, you have developed a methodology that will allow you to obtain the information you need from the students. What is that methodology?
You should address the question above as well as: Sampling and Survey Strategy. These should be addressed in the order given:
Sampling:
- What is the population of your research design?
- Does the research (or the research question) require a representative sample of your population? Why or Why Not?
- What sampling method will you use to get your sample? Explain in some detail the steps you will take to select the sample.
- Using this method, what is the likelihood of a strong external validity? How or Why?
Survey Strategy:
- What challenges will you face if you try to use the questionnaire? What are the benefits of using the questionnaire?
- What challenges will you face if you try to use interviews? What are the benefits of using the interview?
- Considering all the advantages and disadvantages of the questionnaire versus the interview for collecting the data, which of the two formats will you use to collect the data from the students?
- Why did you make that choice - what is basis of the choice?
- How will your choice affect the validity of measurement and the degree of measurement error?