RECENT ASSIGNMENT

Its an assignment for the subject -Research Methodology-
- 3000 Words
- Properly Cited and Referenced
- Quality Work
- Work from at least 7 to 10 scholarly articles
Assignment 2
Dr. John Nottingham is a researcher at the Jackson State University of Technology - Northern Area City Campus. He noticed many incidents of student deaths around the campus. Each week someone seems to be killed or injured in crossing the roads near the campus. He wants to investigate why there is such a high rate of incidents. The social issue is so obvious and so important. Given this he decides to skip the tedium of structuring a formal research question and boring conventional motivation. Instead he concentrates on establishing a set of locations at which to observe driver and pedestrian behaviour. He decided to employ paid observers at the four intersections on the southern side of the campus. Day and night they will record details of any incident, and if there is a collision between a pedestrian and a vehicle he instructs the observers to take a photograph and collect details of the pedestrian and the driver. The details include: gender, race, height, weight, type and colour of clothing. He also instructs them to record the day and time (noting if the incidents occur at peak times when students come to and exit from campus).
He starts to design the study and think about the data collection process. He then turns to reading the relevant research literature and discovers that car accidents involving pedestrians seem to be concentrated where and when there are -swarms- of pedestrians and where frustrations occur as drivers want to get through such -swarms-. So his model involves an interaction between the type of crowds of pedestrians (or density’) and the time delay experienced by car drivers. He gives a stopwatch to each observer so that they can measure the delays experienced by drivers. The four locations all have pedestrian lights so it is easier for the observers to measure what is going on in the road in front of them.
After just two days, a student pedestrian is killed by a speeding black sports car, only 200 metres away from one of his observers. John writes to the University Provost advising that the research has now started and that he will soon be able to show proof of the underlying cause of the deaths and injuries occurring to students. He asks for $A70,000 in funding to support more data collection points on the northern side of the campus.
The University Deputy Vice Chancellor (Policy and Administration) (DVC) writes back saying that she will consider the request and writes to you - an expert in the Universitys Research Services Office, asking for an examination and written review of the quality of the research.
The assignment is worth 30 percent of your overall grade. For this assignment you are required to answer the following:
(A) As an expert user of research you are asked to comment on:
(1) the research design of the study (5 marks)
(2) challenges in respect of validity and reliability (5 marks)
(3) other methodological issues (5 marks)
(B) What enhancements do you see as useful to improve the research and potential contribution of the research? (10 marks)