Assignment No:2

Q.1 Discuss different types of research tools. How questionnaires are useful and
what are the problems face using a questionnaire?
Ans: A questionnaire is a research instrument that consists of a set of questions or other types
of prompts that aims to collect information from a respondent. A research questionnaire is
typically, a mix of close-ended questions and open-ended questions.
Open-ended, long-form questions offer the respondent the ability to elaborate on their
thoughts.
Research questionnaires were developed in 1838 by the Statistical Society of London.
The data collected from a data collection questionnaire can be both qualitative as well as
quantitative in nature. A questionnaire may or may not be delivered in the form of a survey, but
a survey always consists of a questionnaire.
A questionnaire a research tool featuring a series of questions used to collect useful
information from respondents. These instruments include either written or oral questions and
comprise an interview style format. Questionnaires may be qualitative a quantitative and can
be conducted online, by phone es paper or face-to-face, and questions don't necessarily have
to be administered with a researcher present.
Questionnaires feature either open or closed questions and sometimes employ a mixture of
both. Open-ended questions enable respondents to answer in their own words in as much or as
little detail as they desire. Closed questions provide respondents with a series of predetermined
responses they can choose from.

Is a Questionnaire Just Another Word for "Survey"

While the two terms seem synonymous, there are not quite the same. A questionnaire is a set
of questions created for the purpose of gathering information; that information may not be
used for a survey. However, all surveys do require questionnaires. If you are using a
questionnaire for survey sampling, it's important to ensure that it is designed to gather the
most accurate answers from respondents.

Why Are Questionnaires Effective in Research?

Questionnaires are popular research methods because they offer a fast, efficient, and
inexpensive means of gathering large amounts of information from sizeable sample volumes.
These tools are particularly effective for measuring subject behavior, preferences, intentions,
attitudes, and opinions. Their use of open and closed research questions enables researchers to
obtain both qualitative and quantitative data, resulting in more comprehensive results.

Pros and Cons of Using Questionnaires in Research

Though the importance of questionnaires in research is clear, there are both pros and cons to
using these instruments to gather information. Learn more about questionnaire advantages
and disadvantages to determine if they're suitable for your study.

Advantages of Questionnaires
Some of the many benefits of using questionnaires as a research tool include:
Practicality: Questionnaires enable researchers to strategically manage their target audience,
questions and format while gathering large data quantities on any subject
Cost-efficiency: You don't need to hire surveyors to deliver your questions - instead, to no cost.
Speed: You can gather survey results quickly and effortlessly using mobile tools, obtaining
responses and insights in 24 hours or less.
Comparability: Researchers can the same questionnaire yearly and compare and contrast
research results to gain valuable insights and minimize translation errors.
Scalability: Questionnaires are highly scalable, allowing research to distribute them to
demographics anywhere across the globe.
Standardization: You can standardize your questionnaire with as many questions as you want
about any topic.
Respondent comfort: When taking a questionnaire, respondents are completely anonymous
and not subject to stressful time constraints, helping them feel relaxed and encouraging them
to provide truthful responses.
Easy analysis: Questionnaires often have built-in tools that automate analyses, making it fast
and easy to interpret your results.

good questionnaire
Your survey design depends on the type of information you need to collect from respondents.
Qualitative questionnaires are used when there is a need to collect exploratory information to
help prove or disprove a hypothesis. Quantitative questionnaires are used to validate or test a
previously generated hypothesis. However, most questionnaires follow some essential
characteristics:

Uniformity: Questionnaires are very useful to collect demographic information, personal

opinions, facts, or attitudes from respondents. One of the most significant attributes of a
research form is uniform design and standardization. Every respondent sees the same
questions. This helps in data collection and statistical analysis of this data. For example, the
retail store evaluation questionnaire template contains questions for evaluating retail store
experiences. Questions relate to purchase value, range of options for product selections, and a
merchandise. These questions are uniform for all customers.

Exploratory: It should be exploratory to collect qualitative data. There is no restriction on

questions that can be in your questionnaire. For example, you use a data collection
questionnaire and send it to the female of the household to understand her spending and
saving habits relative to the household income. Open-ended question gives you more insight
and allow the respondents to explain their practices. A very structured question list could limit
the data collection.

Question Sequence: It typically follows a structured flow of questions to increase the

number of responses. This sequence of questions is screening questions, warm-up questions,
transition questions, skip questions, challenging questions, and classification questions. For
example, our motivation and buying experience questionnaire template covers initial
demographic questions and then asks for time spent in sections of the store and the rationale
behind purchases.

Q.2 When you can use interview as a research tool and what are the merits and
demerits of interview as research tool?
Ans: An interview is a conversation for gathering information. A research interview involves an
interviewer, who coordinates the process of the conversation and asks questions, and an
interviewee, who responds to those questions. Interviews can be conducted face-to-face or
over the telephone. The internet is also emerging as a tool for interviewing.
When is an Interview an Appropriate?

Research Method
Interviews are an appropriate method when there is a need to collect in-depth information on
people's opinions, thoughts, experiences, and feelings. Interviews are useful when the topic of
inquiry relates to issues that require complex questioning and considerable probing. Face-to-
face interviews are suitable when your target population can communicate through face-to-
face conversations better than they can communicate through writing or phone conversations
(e.g., children, elderly, or disabled individuals).

Types of Interviews
Interview can be designed differently depending on the needs being addressed and the
information. They can be grouped into three types:

Structured interviews:
In a structured interview the interviewer asks a set of standards, predetermined questions
about particular topics, in a specific order. The respondents need to select their answers from a
list of options. The interviewer may provide clarification on some questions. Structured
Interviews are typically used in surveys (see out "Survey Research Methods” Tip Sheet for more
information).
Semi-structured interviews. In a semi-structured interview, the interviewer uses a set of
predetermined questions and the respondents answer in their own words. Some interviewers
use a topic guide that serves as a checklist to ensure that all respondents provide information
e interview supplementary questions for clarification. Semi-structured interviews are useful
when there is a need to collect in-depth information in a systematic manner from a number of
respondents or interviewees (e.g., teachers, community leaders).
Unstructured interviews: In an unstructured interview, the interviewer has no specific
guidelines, restrictions, predetermined questions, or list of options. The interviewer asks a few
broad questions to engage the respondent in an open, informal, and spontaneous discussion.
The interviewer also probes with further questions and/or explores inconsistencies to gather
more in-depth information on the topic. Unstructured interviews are particularly useful for
getting the stories behind respondents' experiences or when there is little information about a
topic.

Steps in Conducting an Interview: Before the Interview:

1. Define your objectives identify what you want to achieve and the information you need to
gather. Make sure an interview is the appropriate way to meet your objectives.
2. Choose the type of interview - Review your required information, budget, time, and
potential respondents and decide whether you need to conduct structured, semi-structured, or
unstructured interviews.
3. Choose the appropriate respondents — Depending on the type of interview, decide on the
characteristics of interviewees and the number of interviews required.
4. Decide how you will conduct the interviews → Consider telephone or face-to face
interviews. For large surveys, consider computer-aided interviewing and recording.
5. Decide how do recruit your respondents –- Obtain contact information, for a number of
respondents larger than the number of interviews you need, since some may not respond.
Contact them by phone.de-mail, or regular mail and introduce yourself, your organization, and
your project
Explain the purpose of the interview, the importance of their participation, and set up an
appointment.6. Decide how you will record the interviews → Depending on the type of
interview, you may fill in a prepared form, use written notes, voice recorders, or computer-
aided devices.
7. Make a list of questions and test them with a sample of respondents – the questions must be
aligned with the type of interview. If you are running structured inter- views, see our Tip
Sheets on “Questionnaire Design" and Survey Research Methods” for more information.
8. Decide who will conduct the interviews develop an information kit that includes an
introduction to the research topic and instructions. For unstructured interviews, you may need
to hire skilled interviewers.

Q.3 Develop a research proposal on “Analysis of Management Practices in

Secondary School in Lahore “mention all necessary steps properly.
Ans: Education is necessary for the personality grooming of individual. There are different
types of institutions available like private and public institutions, technical institutions, and

madrasas (religious institutions). These institutes are having the triangle of three main pillars,
consisted of Teachers, Students, and Curriculum. There are two main types of schools in
Pakistan and all over the world. One is public and other is private school system. Now a days
private schools are becoming more favorite and attractive for majority of the students due to
their better education systems, test criteria and knowledge creation vis-a-vis public schools,
which comparatively very cheap but inefficient are losing their attraction. Parents prefer to
send their children in private schools and avoid public schools. The main objective of this
study is to investigate why people prefer high charging private schools over free public schools
(That charge nothing)? We use primary data collected through constructed questionnaire and
survey method was applied for collection of data from the target respondents of private and
public schools located in District Vehari, Pakistan. The results show that five main factors
emerge as important determinants of private school choice. These include the socioeconomic
status of the household, the degree of a school's accessibility, the cost of schooling, parents'
perceptions of school quality and their perceptions of the available employment opportunities
in the region.

Keywords: School choice, private, public, perceptions, school quality,

employment, wealth, access, cost of schooling
Awan (2014) says that education plays a pivotal role in the rise and fall of nations especially in
21st century. It is mainly due to the emergence of global competition in education and
technology. This competitive any ironman is the core need for progress of any country. Awan
(2011) argues that all countries including Pakistan have different school systems but when we
divide them we find two major categories of school systems: private and public schools. In
Pakistan private schools are getting mass acceptance today to ensure sustained progress of the
country. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to analyze the quality of education
introduced in private schools. The quality of education is assessed by education levels of
teachers, method of teaching, curriculum, and study environment.
During 1990s and 2000s private sector was emerged as a key provider of education services in
Pakistan both in absolute terms and relative to the public sector. One piece of evidence relates
to the number of private schools, which increased by 69%, as compared to mere 8% increase in
number of schools. In 2000 private sector was catering the educational needs of about 6 million
children. This number increased to 12 million in 2007-08 - equivalent to 34 percent of total
enrolment. The number of teachers also doubled in private educational institutions during this
period. Awan and Saeed (2014) plead those private educational institutions are playing key role
not only in eradicating illiteracy but also enhancing the level of students as well as teachers by
providing better academic environment. Awan (2012) disclosed that private sector contributed
significantly in eradicating illiteracy in the emerging economies. If private school properly
managed they can uplift educational standard in Pakistan as well. Awan (2012) revealed that
educational system was completely shattered in the Soviet Union after its disintegration in the
late 1990s due to non-existence of private educational institutions. When the Soviet Union was
collapsed its public school system was also collapsed.

Main Research Questions

Main research question of our study is the "Comparative analysis of public and private
educational institution: A case study of District Vehari-Pakistan.
The mushroom growth of private school in Pakistan has raised many other important questions:
what are the causes of the rapid growth of private schools? Are public private partnerships
being effective for meeting the growing demand of education? Are private schools are
providing better and qualitative education as compared to public schools? Why are public
school system declining? We will try to explore the answers to these question in this paper.

Teacher Quality Factors Influencing School Choice:

Lower teacher absenteeism and better teacher accountability in private schools as compared to
public schools. In the private sector, teacher remuneration is more closely linked to student
outcomes than in the public sector.
Private school teachers are less likely to be absent than teachers in public schools. So, teachers
operating at low- fee private schools would be under pressure to perform and meet certain
result-oriented outcomes. In the public sector, on the other hand, there is greater job security.
Thus, the differential incentive package in the private relative to the public sector may be a
factor in explaining why private schools out-perform government schools.
The quality of the class teacher's teaching and captures three dimensions:
(i) parent’s knowledge of the teacher's educational qualifications
(ii) parent’s opinion of the teacher's regularity
(iii) parents rating of the teacher's teaching skills.
There is a fixed salary package and pay scale for the government schoolteachers. Pay scale
usually starts from 9th grade up to 15 in government sector. But this pay scale is not too much
sound full. In case of private school teachers, it is not confirmed to get such fixed package or
place in any grade of pay scale. They get very little amount on the name of salary, depending
on student's strength, fees, and their performance about class output. But in high private
schools which are providing facilities of O levels or A levels, situation is different.
Once a person appoints as government schoolteacher, he gets the surety about his job future.
They don't have any fear about their job lose in case of taking classes regularly or not or even
on worse performance of students, while private school teachers do not have permanent jobs.
They always involve in the fear of in secure job future. Mostly fresh and young pass outs of
intermediate appoint as secondary school teachers in private schools.
There is no concept of training for them. Usually, private school administration? terminates
them and appoints new teachers after summer vacation for salary saving. If they are not
showing best results and obedience towards management, they can easily be terminated
situation of job surety for private school teachers.

Facilities in School: School infrastructure is based on five measures:

(i) parent’s observations about the condition of the school building, and their knowledge
(ii) school has a boundary wall
(ii) school has a functional latrine
(iv) school has an electricity
(v) school has a Water

Child safety:
It is based on parents' knowledge of whether the child's school has a gatekeeper, and on them
perceptions of the frequency of corporal punishment and the likelihood of peer harassment.
Quality of education:
The quality of English, science, and mathematics teaching is generally higher at private schools
than at public schools. Parents' ratings of the quality of teaching of these three subjects at them
child's school are very important. The teaching quality gap between private and public schools
is evident—a larger percentage of public school-going children's parents rate the teaching as
"average' (or poor') compared to those of private school-going children. Conversely, the
percentage of children whose parents rate the teaching as 'excellent is higher for private
schools.

School Fee:
The educational cost is assumed to be the most important factor for not only the decision of
schooling but also the choice of public vs private schooling as well. We have used the fee of
school as the proxy of school cost. Although the transport cost, the expenditure on educational
material and uniform have significant share of the total cost of schooling. Moreover, in poor
households the opportunity cost of schooling also remains high. We have found inverse
relation between the school fee and choice of private school. As the fee rises, the probability of
attending private schools falls.

Medium of Instruction:
The English Stained the language of high status in Pakistan. Proficiency in English is assumed
to be required for joining and advancement in armed forces, civil services better paying jobs in
private companies and NGOs. It is also medium of instruction in universities that is why it is
required by parents in schools. The English language was seen as the major determinant of this
expansion and as basic requirement by the parents. So, we have found a positive association
between the choice of private school and medium of instruction as English Medium of
instruction in English along with discipline and status symbol associated with private schools is
responsible for preference of private schools. On the other hand, most of the public schools are
Urdu medium so parents do not prefer public schools. Now The Punjab Government’s
initiative of transforming Urdu medium public sector schools into English medium may result
into increase in enrolment in public sector schools.

Student teacher ratio:

Student teacher ratio is very high in public schools and seventy plus students in one class. So, a
teacher cannot give proper attention to each student and all students also cannot communicate
with teacher easily. On the other hand, in private schools there are thirty plus students in a
class so there is much better student teacher relationship, and a teacher gives proper attention
to students.

Better results:
Students at private schools are showing better results than public schools. Our data proves that
private school students are getting higher marks then students at government schools in
District Vehari, same is the case in all districts of Pakistan.

Research Methodology
. Data and types:
There are many sources of data collection that can be used like newspaper, media, internet,
surveys, questionnaire, and personal interviews. We take primary data by using questionnaire,
which were filled by students, teachers, and administration of the school. This study is a survey
study and is descriptive type of research. Two groups were involved in this study: one group
was from Private schools and the other one from the public schools. The administrators were
taken from the randomly selected private and public schools.

Population and sample:

All the Private and Public Secondary Schools of rural as well as urban area of Vehari District
were included in the population of the study. We used stratified sampling technique in the
selection of sample. First, we selected some schools from Vehari district, and then we selected
students from these schools. We collected information from teachers who taught the pupils in
these institutions. The samples were taken from each school and data school resources and
expenditures were taken by interviewing each respondent from the selected sampled schools.
Finally, mostly for consistency checks and for additional information, each child was sent home
with a questionnaire which was filled out by the parent (or the child asking the parent
questions if parent was illiterate and resumed to authorities. School type effectiveness is
measured as the difference in pupils’ learning achievement in the two school types.
Achievement differentials are estimated using education production functions with the
outcome of schooling.

Selected Variables
The results of 9th Board Examination for the year 2014 was taken as a dependent variable while
family income, education of parents, teacher's qualification, teachers/students’ ratio, facilities
in the schools, curriculum, discipline, and regularity were taken as independent variables.

Q.4 What are the components a research report? Provide guidelines to write a
good research report.
Ans: RESEARCH REPORT COMPONENTSAs
mentioned above, research components include the instruments, materials, activities,
participants, methods, and techniques involved research. Familiarity to those components
are required in order to get more comprehensive understanding of research. However, to
directly verify every component of a research being conducted would be time and energy
consuming. That's why, the most realistic way to get to know those components is by looking
them in the final product or the research report. In addition to get a more comprehensive
understanding, studying this module will also provide you the skills to write research
report. Figure 1 describes the typical format of ELT research paper which describes
the elements usually included in the paper. It should be noted that the format above belongs
to quantitatively oriented research articles. This format is used as a starting point to get
an appropriate idea of what components a research report should have, because
quantitate research reports use a relatively standard format for reporting, while qualitative
research articles are more wide-ranging in terms of organization. Title The title is a very
essential component research paper because it serves four things. First, it predicts content.
Second, it catches the reader's interest. Third, it reveals the nature or genre of the manuscript.
Fourth, it contains keywords that will make it easy to access by a computer search (Hairston &
Keene, 2003, p. 73 Bavdekar (2016) supports this by accentuating that a research paper
title condenses the manuscripts content in a few words and captures readers' attention. A
good research article title should the able to concisely introduce the research work to the
fullest scope. It is also the entryway to the contents for itis the first and usually, also the only)
part of an article that enders see. Based on the meaning they got from the title, readers will
decide if the articles relevant to them or not. The title should, therefore, be specific and
indicate the problem the research project had addressed using keywords that will be helpful in
four types: nominal titles, compound titles, full of sentence titles and question titles. Most
titles are “nominal titles" capturing the main theme of the paper e.g. Using Short Stories
to Develop Learners' Writing Competence. Compound titles, also called hanging titles, are
those made using a colon, e.g., "The Use of Short Stories to Develop EFL Writing Competence:
Students ‘Perception" is a compound title consisting of two phrases on either side of the colon.
Full sentence titles are apt to be longer and accentuate the outcome of the study, "Blended
learning implementation in ELT is essentially not a matter of following a trend but a necessity
Question titles are generally aimed to catch the reader's attention, e.g. "Is blended learning
implementation in ELT merely a matter of following a trend or a necessity.

Soler's (2007) analysis showed that the most popular title type used in both the social sciences
and (natural) sciences was the nominal title. Compound titles were used mostly in the social
sciences. The full sentence titles were employed only in the sciences. The question type was
rarely used and occurred mainly in Linguistics. Mousterian and Alibaba (2015) found nominal
titles constituted more than three-fourths of the title in the 420 analyzed research articles. Its
dominant use is due to its remarkable ability to make information condensed in an economical
way by means of various pre-and post-modifiers so that it is more informative and explanatory
than other structures. Consequently, research article writer favors the nominal titles How many
words the title of a research article should have. Most novice writers always ask this question.
Yet, there is no definite rules for this. Even journals hardly provide an explicit limit in them
instructions to authors. They instead favor phrases such as 'clear and concise or 'brief and
specific'. Soler (2007) found that titles in the three hard sciences she investigated (biology,
medicine, and biochemistry) contained more words (14.15-15.48 words per title) than titles in
the soft sciences (ranging from an average of 7.98 words for linguistics to 12.63 for
psychology). While Mousterian and Alibaba (2015) found the average title length of articles
in Applied Linguistics was 12.88 words, in Dentistry, 1038 words: and Civil Engineering,
13.54 words. Why do titles' length vary? Yitzhaki (2002) found that articles with longer titles are
more likely to be longer in length. This probably due to the fact that longer articles are usually
the results of large projects and they are the major publication medium for the projects
outcomes. Therefore, they are longer in length. To conclude, to write your research article title,
do your best to make it meaningful and specific by keeping in mind that a good title should: (1)
indicate the article content: (2) catch the reader's interest; (3) reflect the tone or slant of the
piece of writing; and (4) contain keywords that will make it easy to access by a computer
search. The title should be neither too short nor long. A title consisting of 4 to 15 words will do.
However, your title's length depends on the length of your article. Longer articles generally
need longer titles Finally, since the nominal Group is the most frequently used type in research
articles, it's safer to write your title in that construction.

Q.5 What type of research tools are used in qualitative research? Mention the
characteristics of any three tools for qualitative research.
Ans: qualitative research
"Conversations with people isn't very specific, so let's go a little deeper. By definition,
qualitative research is an inquiry into the way people interpret a certain social condition around
example of qualitative research is identifying how effective a government welfare program is by
talking to the people directly affected by it.
Qualitative research is often time intensive, primarily because it requires collecting data by
interacting with people over long periods of time. Then, after collecting data, analyzing
conversations and bringing out insights are also time consuming.

Qualitative research is useful in two situations:

When research questions need to be sharpened: In the beginning of any study, researchers may
only have a rough idea what they want to collect data on and how they can collect that data.
Using qualitative research can help researchers understand their problem, zero in on them
hypothesis, and create a design for further research (either qualitative or quantitative) as the
study unfolds.
When you need detailed description of an issue: For complex issues, simple statistics may show
what is happening, but not why it's happening. In these scenario, qualitative research is helpful
for exploring social conditions and explaining them in detail. For example, quantitative data
may show how many girls drop out of school, but qualitative data can help researchers
understanding the barriers that stop parents from sending girls to school.
There are several different qualitative research methods. Which method you should use
depends on what you're trying to achieve. However, the three most commonly used qualitative
research methods are in depth interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs) and

1. One-on-one interview:
Conducting in-depth interviews is one of the most common qualitative research methods. It is a
personal interview that is carried out with one respondent at a time. This is purely a
conversational method and invites opportunities to get details in depth from the respondent.
One of the advantages on this method provides a great opportunity to gather precise data
about what people believe and what their motivations are. If the researcher is well experienced
asking the right questions can help him/her collect meaningful data. If they should need more
information the researchers should ask such follow up questions that will help them collect
more information. These interviews can be performed face-to-face or on phone and usually can
last between half an hour to two hours or even more. When the in-depth interview is
conducted face to face it gives a better opportunity to read the body language of the
respondents and match the responses.
2. Focus groups:
A focus group is also one of the commonly used qualitative research methods, used in data
collection. A focus group usually includes a limited number of respondents (6-10) from within
your target markets. The main aim of the focus group is to find answers to the "why" "what"
and "how questions. One advantage of focus groups 1s. you don't necessarily need to interact
with the group in person. Nowadays focus groups can be sent an online survey on various
devices and responses can be collected at the click of a button. Focus groups are an expensive
method as compared to the other online qualitative research methods. Typically, they are used
to explain complex processes. This method is very useful when it comes to market research on
new products and testing new concepts.

3. Ethnographic research:
Ethnographic research is the most in-depth observational method that studies people in them
naturally occurring environment.
This method requires the researchers to adapt to the target audiences' environments which
could be anywhere from an organization to a city or any remote location. Here geographical
constraints can be an issue while collecting data. This research design aims to understand the
cultures, challenges, motivations, and settings that occur. Instead of relying on interviews and
discussions, your experience the natural settings firsthand. This type of research method can
last from a few days to a few years, as it involves in-depth observation and collecting data on
those grounds. It's a challenging and a time-consuming method and solely depends on the
expertise of the researcher to be able to analyze, observe and infer the data.