Research method and data analysis procedures
Chapter II Research Design
Introduction
The present chapter deals with the methods used in this research. It describes the research design of the study, the procedures of data collection and the methodology of data analysis.
This study aims at analyzing teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards collaborative visualization as a technique that can help students to develop their communication skills in English.
This chapter is composed of two sections. The first section is about data collection procedures taking into account the participants, the context where the study is conducted, the research method that is used to gather data (the mixed method), as well as data collection tools used to collect both quantitative and qualitative data (questionnaire and interview).
The second section is about the procedures of data analysis that contains the different methods used to analyse the research.
Statistics and percentages are used for the analysis of the quantitative data obtained from the students’ questionnaire; whereas, a descriptive analysis was relied on to interpret the qualitative data obtained from open- ended questions included in both the questionnaire and the interview.
1. Context of the Investigation and Population Sample
This investigation has taken place at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi Ouzou in the Department of English. The overall objective of this research is to investigate teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards collaborative visualization as a technique that can help students to develop their communication skills in English.
The target population in this research consists of students of Master I of different specialties and teachers who have experience with technology, mainly teachers of Information Communication and Technologies (ICTs) and those of film studies.
Besides, a questionnaire has been distributed to 220 students, 130 of them have answered and a structured interview has been conducted with 06 teachers.
2. Research Method
In order to gather data, the mixed methods approach is adopted. It is defined “as the combined use of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies within the same study in order to address a single research question” (Claire, 2006:180). In other words, it combines the elements of both quantitative and qualitative method to answer one research question.
In the case of our research, the quantitative method is used to get numerical data from the closed-ended questions included in the students’ questionnaire; whereas the descriptive qualitative method is used to analyse the data obtained from the open ended questions included in both the questionnaire and the interview conducted with teachers.
We have used the mixed methods approach because it combines the qualitative and quantitative methods (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998; cited in Jupp, 2006). First, it allows us to study participants’ points of view. In addition to that, it gives us more evidence about the findings grounded on participants’ experience.
2. 1. 1. Data Collection Procedures
In order to gather data that support our investigation which is students’ and teachers’ attitudes toward developing students’ communication skills in English through collaborative visualization, we have used two different instruments: a questionnaire handed over to Master one students and an interview conducted with teachers of the Department of English at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi Ouzou.
2. 1. 2. Description of the Students’ Questionnaire
The questionnaire is defined by Craig (2006:252) as “a set of carefully designed questions given in exactly the same form to a group of people in order to collect data about some topic(s) in which the researcher is interested”.
In other words, a questionnaire is a list of questions, related to a particular topic, administered to a group of people. In this study, it is to examine students’ attitudes towards collaborative visualization in developing their communication skills in English. We have adopted it because it is less time consuming.
The students’ questionnaire seeks to collect data about their attitudes toward collaborative visualization, to know whether it may develop their communication skills in English or not. First of all, we have distributed the questionnaire to 6 students to test it.
After having collected them, we have analysed the students’ answers. Eventually, the students seem to have understood the questions and have answered without any problem; therefore, this has convinced us to distribute more.
After that, two hundred and twenty (220) questionnaires have been distributed to Master One students of the Department of English at MMUTO of different specialities, and only 130 have answered. This questionnaire consists of fourteen (14) questions presented in three (3) sections.
The first section is about the general information about the participants. The second one deal with students’ attitudes toward collaborative learning in the Department of English and the third section is related to the students’ attitudes toward developing their communication skills in English through collaborative visualization.
2. 1. 3. Description of the Teachers’ Interview
According to Pamela (2006: 157) “an interview represents a meeting or dialogue between people where personal and social interaction occur”. She adds that it is “A[a] method of data collection, information, or opinion gathering that specifically involves asking a series of questions”.
To put it differently, an interview is a meeting during which the interviewee cooperates with the interviewer by answering some questions about a particular subject. For the purpose of this research, a structured interview has been conducted with 06 teachers of the Department of English at MMUTO around June 9th, 2019 until June 13th, 2019.
It comprises twelve (12) questions and three (3) parts: the first section comprises general questions about the teachers; the second one is about teachers’ attitudes toward collaborative learning. The third one deals with their attitudes toward developing students’ communication skills through collaborative visualization.
2. 2. Data Analysis Procedures
In our research, we have adopted two techniques for the analysis of the collected data: statistical content analysis and descriptive analysis for qualitative data. The reason behind choosing these two techniques is the fact that our research results and findings are both quantitative and qualitative.
2. 2. 1. Quantitative Data Analysis
The data collected from the students’ questionnaire are obtained using percentages and statistics through the quantitative analysis. To calculate the percentages, we have applied therule of three.
It is applied as follows: 𝑥 = Z×100. x is the calculated percentage, z is the y numerical quantity of the answers and y is the total number of the population. Besides, to better understand the results, we have presented the findings in visual forms (tables, diagrams and pie charts).
2. 2. 2. Qualitative Data Analysis
To analyse the open ended questions of the students’ questionnaire and the questions of the teachers’ interview, we adopted a descriptive analysis of qualitative data . We have first started by the presentation of the data through transcribing the answers then presenting them in the form of paragraphs and summaries .
Conclusion
This chapter has described the methodology used to conduct this study. First, there is a presentation of the participants in this work and the context in which it has been conducted.
Then there is a description of the procedures followed to collect data from either students’ questionnaire or teachers’ interview and the ones followed for the data analysis, which consist of statistical analysis for quantitative data and a descriptive analysis for qualitative data. The next part will be the presentation of the findings.
