Matriculation Number: Examination Number: Business Research Methods-1 Course Organiser: Professor Date of Submission: October 29, 2014 Word Count: 963

Research Proposal: Sampling the Population of
Edinburgh’s Attitudes Towards the Extension of the Trams
Research Proposal: Sampling the Population of
Edinburgh’s Attitudes Towards the Extension of the Trams
Abstract
In the last year the Edinburgh Tram network has reopened after being closed for fifty eight years. The tramway network runs from Edinburgh Airport to York Place in Newtown with 15 stops along the route. Due to the vast size of Edinburgh county the tram line only extends to a small percentage of the districts within greater Edinburgh. Therefore interest has been raised to extend the tramway to cover more of the city. This proposal will explain how we would sample the population and use the information gathered to assess attitudes to the idea of extending the tram route.
Content
Since the council has asked for the entire population of Edinburgh’s feelings towards the extension of the Edinburgh Trams, we can say that our target population are the citizen living within the city of Edinburgh. Although Edinburgh has thousands of visitors each year, we are specifically looking at the attitudes within the communities around the city. Therefore we need to specifically look at the citizens who would be affected by the extension of the tram in their everyday life.
In order to get a consensus of the entire city of Edinburgh, we would first think about gathering information from different districts within the city. We can then make our sampling frame the different neighbourhoods around Edinburgh. This would mean gather information from the districts of Marchmont, Newtown, or Newington, for example. By doing this we have created a stratified random sample; it is where a population is divided into mutually exclusive and exhaustive subsets and then a simple random sample is taken from within those subgroups. Therefore in this situation our subgroups would be the different districts within the city limits of Edinburgh. One could potentially use a cluster sample in order to sample the population by taking all the subgroups (neighbourhoods in Edinburgh), taking a random sample of those subgroup, and then within the subgroups chosen, sample every subject in that group. A cluster sample has more room for error than a stratified random sample, as it is not sampling the entirety of the districts within Edinburgh, it is only showing the results from the districts chosen by simple random sampling. Therefore a stratified random sample is the better sampling method as it is more exhaustive than a cluster sample.
Now we have the sampling frame and method of sampling the next step is to choose a method of data collection. A questionnaire would be the most cost effective and efficient way to collect data across an entire city. Although we could consider having focus groups or in-depth community discussions, a questionnaire administered to single person would give the council more accurate data on how the population feels about the trams. You could argue that in focus groups you are bringing the community together which would mean an accurate representation of the community as a whole. However, within the context of a group, there is room for error such as people whose opinions aren’t heard, only certain types of people may attend the group session, or group bias where people are afraid to speak against the group. While a questionnaire also has errors, it would be able to gather data from all different types of people and everyone in the community could be heard individually. The questionnaire would be able to gather other types of data such as age, gender, occupation, or area of work, all of which could help see which type of people use the trams. The questionnaire would use closed multichotomous questions in order to assess attitudes in the