Hi,
I am a postgraduate Human Resource Management student currently completing my dissertation. My research is focusing on the experiences of working mothers with flexible working. The research is solely quantitative and the data being collected is through a questionnaire with a 100 person sample.
I'm struggling with the type of quantitative research to use - the questionnaire asks questions like "with flexible working, what do you think could be the biggest career disadvantage as a working mother", "is the opportunity to work flexibly something that is important to you in a job role", "if you have worked/currently work flexibly, what impact do you feel that flexible working has had on your career", "before having children, did you have concerns about how having children could affect your career progression?" "did you find it difficult to arrange childcare upon your return to work?". Ending with statements that they can either strongly disagree or strongly agree with.
I was leaning towards descriptive research because I don't exactly have hypotheses in mind but rather wanted to discuss the findings like "x number of working mothers feel that x is the biggest career disadvantage for as a working mother" with visual graphs, and making comparisons like "those who stated they were single generally found it more difficult to arrange childcare and stated that the opportunity to work flexibly was important to them compared to x".
My question really is, for research like this is it appropriate to use descriptive research such as this?
Thank you
Personally, as an examiner, I would not accept purely descriptive research for a dissertation, unless it was qualitative in nature. If you have included a number of Likert scales, then you could conduct exploratory factor analysis to see what factors unfold, then you could could conduct cross-tabulation (using t-tests, Anova, generalized linear model, etc.) with the other aforementioned questions (independent variables) to see if there are any significant differences. There are a number of very relevant YouTube videos that take you through the above step by step. You can also refer to Prof Gaskins's website http://statwiki.gaskination.com/index.php?title=Main_Page, which has much useful information and videos. However, having said all this, what you do ultimately depends on your research questions and objectives. Though, descriptive statistics has very little value in my personal opinion, since it merely describes the sample, which means one can generally not "statistically" draw valid conclusions from the results that can be generalized.
Dear Chloe O H ,
I would agree with Rodney Duffett that descriptive research is usually qualitative or mixed methods. I think you already have some idea of the kinds of relationship you might be looking for. The problem with broader general explorations for potential relationships is that they require more complex statistical models which manage the risks of false positives (known as Type I errors) and are more difficult to interpret. If you were to reframe your study as a deductive one with a few stated hypotheses based on a literature review it would be easier to analyse your data.
Yes, I do suggest that you attempt to apply some form of statistical analysis with a significance value!
You will always go back to the main objective of the paper that you are working on. Yes descriptive research can be an approach to answer your problem, however based on your description the questionnaire did not quantifiably measure the construct of interest and you gave areas for open ended responses, I would suggest that you consider presenting it as a descriptive study which utilize quantitative and qualitative data analysis. The qualitative responses can be analyzed and can somehow help inform the quantitative data gathered.
Also review the validity and reliability of your research instruments. Good luck on your research project.
I think your approach is appropriate for the research objective. If possible, increase the number of observations and grouping of working mothers by type of work or number of children they have.
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