I am working on studying the perception of menstrual leave policy amongst male and female employees. This policy has been implemented in few organisations in India and currently it is tabled in the Parliament for discussion.
I would like to study beforehand about what employees perceive regarding this policy and whether it will be fruitful to turn this policy into a law based on its acceptance amongst employees.
As a beginning, I have difficulty figuring out which connotation of perception would be most appropriate here and which methodology would be suitable to extract accurate and informative data.
This requires an in-depth study of peoples' opinions on a subject. A qualitative approach is suited to this type of study where you seek peoples' opinions on the subject. The alternative policy options should be explained to the participants so that they give in depth views which can be analysed thematically. My opinion!
You have to follow and adopt the qualitative methodological approach for assessing the perceptions (on any theme/issue). Once you get the responses, then you can evaluate through SPSS or MS Excel according to the importance of its prioritization.
I agree with a qualitative approach . i would do case studies as this helps with greater insight .Good Luck keep us informed .
A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches is adequate. First you can ask a yes or no (agree or disagree) with the general idea. Then you can ask "why" to get at motivation for the agree o disagree answer. If there is a law being discussed you can ask again about agreement or disagreement ( only if the population knows about the content of the law). You can further ask the opinion about specific aspects such an time to be given (people may agree if the time is short, but not if it is long, for example). And never forget to distinguish between males' and females' answers and also by age groups (it is pobable that they differ in their views). And always have a "why" question at every step to qualitatively understand the answers.
I think you should first have a clear vision of your group / society and understand their diversity / heterogeneity and define subgroups through a deep bibliographic synthesis and even a first discovery study. Once this is done, define your objectives taking into account your scientific and logistical resources.
Good luck
In my opinion, if you want to carry out your study through quantitative approach, Likert scale can also be used to measure the perception of
people. However, adding qualitative approach to support the quantitative data will be an added value.