Research Project Assignment: Report on the Questionnaire Pilot Test

Question

Task: Questionnaire Piloting & Administration
Based on the questionnaires designed by all students, a final questionnaire will be developed by the unit coordinator. In pair pilot test this Final Questionnaire by administering it to ten (10) people by way of a convenience sampling technique. These people must all be over 18 years old and have previously dined in a boutique restaurant in the last six month. You can administer the questionnaire face-to-face, by telephone or online.

Once the fieldwork has been completed, in pair write a 1,500 word reflective report detailing:
• Your reasons for selecting the particular method of survey administration used? What were the advantages and disadvantages of using this method?
• Was the administration procedure a success i.e., did respondents understand the questions (look confused or ask questions)? was there missing data (i.e., skipped questions)? on average, how long it take for respondents to complete the survey?
• What suggestions would you make for improving the administration procedure used?
• What, if any changes, would you make to the questionnaire before administering it to a larger group of respondents?
• On reflection, what were the key lessons you learnt from the survey administration process?

Answer

Introduction
Pilot tests refer to as a to minor-scale initial studies to determine the viability of a complete-scale project, costs, time and other vital factors to enhance the overall research design (Story and Tait, 2019). It is vital for every research work to in recognising the independent variables effectively. In this Pilot study, the researcher also selected specific target groups and questionnaire based on selected objectives of the study. This research aims to recognise more with a view to the service environment, reliability, employee compassion and knowledge that will influence the future behavioural intention of the potential employees of the boutique restaurant. For that reason, gather feedback from the potential customers is essential to recognise the current organisational position adequately, and it will also indicate the research variable factors that will provide a researcher with a validate outcome from this research work.

Reflection on survey administration
In order to get an effective outcome from this research project, a pilot study has been used (Story and Tait, 2019). At first, researcher focused on the selection of the target group for this study, and it is vital to recognise the educational level of the respondent for understanding the instructions and questions. For that reason, some demographic question has been used to recognise the educational level, age, and occupation of the respondent. Selection of a suitable target group will help the analyst to get a better outcome from this research project.

For analysts, the sample must not be extended to understand whether the list of questions and the techniques of managing the survey will be sufficient. In this specific research study, the sample size is ten, and the use of lower samples will help to generalise all the data perfectly for analysis. The size of the sample of a research study mainly depends more on the variation rather than the size of the target audience (Fraser et al., 2018). Smaller sample size will help the analyst to identify all the information regarding independent variables that influences the overall behaviour of the employees in a boutique restaurant. The restaurants usually are small or medium-sized, concentrating on individuality, the value of food, customer service and architecture (Kim and Shim, 2019). The administration of this organisation collects the email address and phone numbers of potential employees for that reason, and it will be easy for an analyst to conduct the survey online. The researcher sent the questionnaire through email and also reminds the respondent through phone calls. Selection of online data collection method will reduce the overall cost of survey and analyst can access all the information quickly by using emails and other online tools.

The main advantages of Pilot study is to establish the credibility of research focused on the know-how of other research workers in the field and thus avoids the recognition of fake work in a field of the research study (Fraser et al., 2018). At the same time, it provides vital information with a view of the subject, so that before publication, authors can update and improve their articles. The researchers can pick from the unbiased and independent reviews from the expert community the most significant research outcomes before the publication of their papers. On the other hand, the pilot study is very time consuming, and the analyst does not have any other option to review the validate information effectively. The usefulness of the peer review process in identifying mistakes in scholarly articles has been widely discussed.

A successful survey generally depends on different administrative procedure, and the researcher used all the procedure effectively based on existing literature (Kim and Shim, 2019). In the questionnaire, the researcher also mentioned the aim and objective of this research project, so it generally helped respondents to understand the questions correctly. Frame the questions based on research objectives helps to gather all the information with a view to this topic, so the chances of missing data is very less. At the same time, the analyst also generalises all the information after gathering and it generally reduces the chances of data missing. The significant challenges of this survey process are prolonged-time consumption, so the respondent took two days to answer the questionnaire.

Use of proper administration procedure is vital for every project work to get effective result. For this survey work, the management used both demographic and research variable question based on research objectives. The respondents are not interested with a view to long survey question so that next time the analyst needs to make a precise questionnaire to gather more quick and effective responses (Kenbubpha et al., 2019). It is also essential to ask a direct question to gather in-depth information about the research topic. The analyst needs to ignore the biased or leading question; otherwise, it will confuse the respondents. In this survey, most of the questions are framed with Likert scale so that it will provide authentic and precise information and help the analyst in the identification of independent variables effectively. It is essential to choose survey methods for the collection of data for a dissertation or research project. In future researcher will use different online tools such as survey monkey, question pro etc. in order to get more validate information leads to get a better outcome from the research work.

Reflection on the questionnaire
The main objective of the research project is to recognise the staff empathy, authenticity and experience that will influence the future behaviour of the organisation. For that reason, the analyst also used these independent variables such as authenticity, staff empathy, employee experience etc. for framing the research variable questions. Before final distribution of the questionnaire, the analyst needs to check all the aspects carefully in order to access original and authentic information regarding the variables that influence the future behaviour of the boutique restaurant (Fraser et al., 2018). The researcher also changed the modes and formats of the question and used a Likert scale to access precise answers from the respondent. Precise answers from the potential respondent will help the researcher to generalise the data easily that leads to improving the analysis procedure. In present days most of the researcher is focused on close-ended questionnaire because the respondents are less interested in open-ended questions due to more time consumption.

Due to the close-ended questionnaire, the respondent can provide quick answers. The analyst also can compare the answers of various respondents easily. It is effortless to code and analyses the answers statistically. The respondents also provide the answers about sensitive topics, and the number of the irrelevant answer is deficient. For that reason, the researcher gets the exact answers, and it helps to get an efficient outcome from the project work. In this survey questionnaire, the research questions are divided into four sections. The first section mainly focused on general questions with a view of the restaurant. The second section that means section B mainly focused on the independent research variables such as empathy, servicescape, experience, authenticity, and behavioural intention of the employees as well as the overall organisation. From this research variable close-ended question, the researcher can quickly identify the relations between the dependent and independent variable and based on frequency level researcher also can select or ignore the null hypothesis. The nest section generally focused on an open-ended question, such as the experience of the respondent in this restaurant. In section- D, some demographic question has been selected to recognise the demographic characteristics of the target sample. For that reason, based on the questionnaire, the analyst will get all the variables and in-depth information about a restaurant that influences the future behaviour of this organisation.

Overall reflection on lessons learned
Surveys have gained significant recognition as a method for assessing opinions, perceptions, and aspirations between the populations studied for many years in research and analysis (Basias and Pollalis, 2018). In this research project pilot study mainly used and I have learned all the administrative procedures to conduct pilot research effectively. Pilot studies can also try throughout the research of the research process to identify possible practical issues. The survey administration process is vital in order to gather vital information with a view to this topic. I also recognised the process of data collection during the survey. Frame questions based on research objectives also help me to recognise the variables adequately. That pilot study will help us discuss future research, despite the small size of sample data. At the same time, these administration procedures also help me to gather data from different secondary sources such as research journals, books etc.

Moreover, this administration procedure also focused on different tools and technologies that re extensively used for data analysis procedure, so that gather knowledge with a view to this tools and technology generally improved my skills further (Kenbubpha et al., 2019). In this regard, telephonic communication with the respondent and discuss the research objectives also improved my communication skill, so now I can handle the long term project work easily. I have also learned that the survey process I very time-consuming so that to reduce the time it is essential to make the question close-ended to get a quick response from the respondent. This knowledge gained from this survey administration process will also help me in future to conduct a pilot test in other research works.

References
Story, D.A. and Tait, A.R., 2019. Survey research. Anesthesiology: The Journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, 130(2), pp.192-202.
Fraser, J., Fahlman, D.W., Arscott, J. and Guillot, I., 2018. Pilot testing for feasibility in a study of student retention and attrition in online undergraduate programs. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(1).
Kenbubpha, K., Higgins, I., Wilson, A. and Chan, S., 2019. The development and pilot testing of a new instrument “Promoting Active Ageing in Older people with Mental Dsiorders Scale”. ClinNurs Stud, 7, pp.1-7.
Kim, H.S. and Shim, J.H., 2019. The effects of quality factors on customer satisfaction, trust and behavioral intention in chicken restaurants. Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business Vol, 10(4), pp.43-56.
Basias, N. and Pollalis, Y., 2018. Quantitative and qualitative research in business & technology: Justifying a suitable research methodology. Review of Integrative Business and Economics Research, 7, pp.91-105.