Ex Post Facto or Correlational Research

Ex Post Facto or Correlation Research-The first broad class of non –experimental research is ex post facto research. The literal translation of the Latin term ex post facto is’ from after the fact. This expression is meant to indicate that the research in question has been conducted after the variations in the independent variable have occurred in the natural course of events. Ex Post Facto research attempts to understand relationships among phenomena as they naturally occur without any researcher intervention. Sometimes Ex Post Facto research is referred to as correlation research. The precise meaning of correlation will become clear when some statistical concepts are covered. Basically a correlation is interrelationship or association between two variables that is a tendency for variation in one variables leads to a corresponding variation in another variable. For example in human adults, height and weight tend to be directly related because there is a tendency for taller people to weight more than shorter people Ex Post Facto or correlation studies obviously share a number of structural and design characteristics with experimental, quasi- experimental and pre-experimental research.

In Ex Post Facto research, on the other hand, the investigator does not have control of the independent variable because it has already occurred.”The examination of the independent variable-the presumed causative factor- is the after the fact. As a result, attempts to draw out cause –and – effect conclusions are often problematic. For example, we might hypothesize that there is a correlation between the number of cigarettes smoked and the incidence of lung cancer, and empirical data would most likely corroborate this expectation.

CONCLUSION

In this unit, we have looked at Questionnaire Design and Issues. Many Researchers, unaware of the underlying theory, still believe that questionnaire designing is an art rather than a science. Questionnaires are however hierarchical structures consisting of four different components: words, questions, formats, and hypotheses. Most surveys are descriptive instruments that rely heavily on the

collection of state-of-being or state of intention data that allow for predicting changes in people’s attitudes and behaviours as well as testing hypotheses. Good questionnaires allow researchers to gain a true report of the respondent’s attitudes, preferences, beliefs, feelings, behavioural intentions, and actions/reactions in a holistic manner, not just a fragment. Through carefully worded questions and clear instructions, a researcher has the ability to control a respondent’s thoughts and ensure objectivity .By understanding good communication principles, researchers can avoid bad questioning procedures that might result in either incomprehensible information requests, unanswerable questions that obscure, prohibit, or distort the meaning of a person’s responses

SUMMARY

Questionnaire development is much more than just writing a set f questions and people to answer them. Designing good surveys goes beyond just developing reliable and valid scale measurements. There are a number of design factors, systematic procedural steps and rules of logic that must be considered in the development process. In addition the process requires knowledge of sampling plans, construct development, scale measurement and types of data. It is important to remember that a questionnaire is a set of questions/scales designed to generate enough raw data to allow the researcher and decision-maker to generate information to solve the business problem.

TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT

1. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the unstructured (open-ended) and structured (closed-ended) questions in developing a direct mail survey instrument. 
2.  Discuss the value of a good questionnaire design 
3. Identify and discuss the guidelines available for deciding the form and the layout of a questionnaire.