Hey guys, the research question of my master thesis is " Effects of age on attitude towards information disclosure on e-commerce platforms". For testing my hypothesis, I gathered data through survey. Its a self constructed survey, with certain limitations and now I realize I should have tested more items mentioned in the literature review for certain variables which I didn't.
I plan to mention it in the limitations but not sure what valid reason to give for not testing certain items in contrast to the ones which I have tested in the survey. Please advice. Thanks in advance.
The proper place to discussion limitations is in the Discussion or Conclusions section (depending on how you structure your paper). Because it isn't possible to test everything at once, I would emphasize the value of testing the concepts that you did include. Beyond that, I would acknowledge that there are other relevant factors, and suggest the study of those factors as directions for future research.
You may also elaborate on substantive limitations with future postulates for addressing in supply. appendix material.
Good news first: every empirical research has some limitations. In most survey-based research one is restricted by the lenght of the questionnaire. Many researchers make a purposeful decision to leave out constructs and/or items since the questionnaire would be too long. In your case it seems that you have realized ex post that you should have included them. In other words you have gained new insights and you should mention this in your work. Given that this is a Master thesis, I do not see much of a problem. You can also frame it as a recommendation for future research. It is much more problematic if you have a finished paper and a reviewer recommends to include more measurement items, which in most cases is not feasible, since it means that you have to do the survey again. In a Master thesis, this is simply "lessons learned".
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