Data Collection in Research Methodology

Data collection is the systematic procedure of obtaining observations or measurements in the form of samples, which will either validate or invalidate your hypothesis. Data collection allows you to get first-hand expertise and unique insights into your study challenge, whether you are conducting research for an industry, the government or academia.

But how much data should you collect to start your analysis?

In the next video, Chris will talk about data collection limits.

In this video, you learnt that data collection is a matter of strategy.

First, it depends upon the type of research that you have undertaken in each case. At the end, your collected data should produce a compelling argument on the conclusion of your research. 

Moving ahead, in the next video, Chris will talk about how to extend your sample size based on time and space.

In this video, you learnt that sample collection is dependent on the amount of time and resources available at your disposal to carry out your research. Therefore, you should gather enough data as per the time and resource availability.

While the availability of time and resources is a major hurdle, you can overcome it by increasing the data in the following ways:

1. Extending the time: For example, in order to study the political risk factor of a company, you can study the annual report of not one but more than one year to increase the sample size (n). Remember to extend it only till the relevant time period.
2. Extending the space: Break down single large data into multiple small components. For example, while studying the socioeconomic landscape viable for a product at a country level, data segregation up to the street level is not a fruitful activity.