ability to design a research project | My Assignment Tutor

Assignment This assignment tests your ability to design a research project, create your own questionnaire, analyze data, and write-up how you did so in a style consistent with a proper aviation/management journal article. The assignment will be marked out of 100 and will be worth up to 40% of the overall marks for this paper. Make sure you read through this assignment brief and that you fully understand what is required of you. General aim Imagine that you have been given funding of NZ$50,000 to undertake a project for the New Zealand Airports Association (NZAA) to compare levels of passenger satisfaction with NZ airports departing on trans-Tasman flights (flights to Australia) from Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch. The funding specifies that you must use survey/questionnaire methodology and that your final report will rank these three airports from best to worst. Apart from that, you may conduct the study however you like (as you are the expert in conducting research). The funders expect the final report to be written up like an academic article that might be submitted to a journal that uses APA style formatting. In addition to finding out which airports have the most satisfied passengers, they have also asked that you investigate if there is a difference between the satisfaction levels of: i) male and female passengers; ii) younger (55yrs); iii) business travellers and leisure travellers; and iv) between business, economy and premium economy passengers. It is up to you how you operationalise and measure ‘passenger satisfaction’, and also how you design, format, and administrate your survey/questionnaire. However, you must justify what you do and you will be marked on the completeness and the logic of what you have done. Obviously, you will also need to collect some demographic information from your participants; for example, age, gender, and reason and class of travel. You should also justify the number of participants you will try to get to complete your survey. How to write-up your assignment You are to write-up this assignment in a style consistent with that suitable for publication in an academic journal that uses APA style. (So spelling, grammar and appropriate language should be considered.) You should therefore begin with an abstract of around 125-175 words. Next should be your introduction, in which you explain why airline passengers’ ‘level of satisfaction’ is an important consideration for economic viability and how previous researchers have operationalised and measured it. You should also include literature on differences due to gender and age, and possibly on class of travel and reason of travel, if you can find any that seems relevant. Your ‘introduction’ should be around 1000 words. It will require ‘proper’ academic citations and references (e.g., up to around 20) and they must be in APA style. You do not need to add a hypothesis, but you can add one or several if you want to. Up to 20% of the marks for this assignment will be awarded for the content and clarity of expression and overall style of the introduction and abstract. I advise that you try to emulate the style you see in proper journal articles that you have read/cited. NOTE: Do not format your assignment so that it is in multiple columns on each page. Use only MSWord and do not convert the file to PDF format before submitting for marking. After your introduction, just as you would see in a real journal article, you require a method section. Under the appropriate sub-sections that you have been taught in this course. Somewhere in your method you should include an explanation of how you would ‘operationalise’ the concept of ‘satisfaction’, in the context of passengers, which should explain why you asked questions about the specific areas that you used, whether your items were ‘statements’ or ‘questions’, and why you chose the response format that you did. Also explain how you would administrate your questionnaire: how you would get people to fill out your questionnaire, how you would select who would be participants and how many you would need, and an overview of who the participants would ideally be. Questionnaires are used for a purpose, so, in the appropriate section, you must also explain in detail how you would analyse the completed questionnaires you collect. Your method section is worth up to 40% of the marks for this assignment. Marks for the design of your questionnaire are also included within this section. You will require a short results section. This is worth up to 20% of the marks awarded for this assignment. Because you obviously haven’t collected any data, you must make this up. You can either explain what you would do (e.g., I would report the mean age of participants and how many there were etc) or you can pretend you actually have collected data to report (e.g., There were 147 males and 152 female participants, etc) Also in the results section, you should describe: i) What statistical test would you use to explore if there is a difference in the mean overall ratings of male and female passengers; ii) What statistical test would you use to test if there is a difference or relationship between young, middle aged, and old passengers’ satisfaction scores; iii) What statistical test you would use to see if the difference in satisfaction between airports is statistically significant. iv) What statistical test you would use to see if there is a difference in satisfaction due to reason for travelling (i.e., business or leisure). v) What statistical test you would use to see if there is a difference in satisfaction due to class of travel Next, write a brief discussion section. In this section, worth up to 7.5%, you should include speculate on any potential limitations to the study you have conducted, a summary of the main findings, and a little bit of actual discussion Next is your reference list, in APA style (referencing is also worth up to 7.5%). The questionnaire that you have designed must be added after the reference list, as an appendix. Questionnaires that are particularly good and professional looking will receive extra bonus marks, so make an effort with design and presentation. You are not to add a link to a google doc or anything like that. You can attach screenshots or images of your questionnaire. For the whole assignment, I would expect a word length of approximately 2500 to 4000 words (not including references). Marking guide: The maximum marks that can be attained for the specified sections of your assignment as follows: SectionQualityvery poorweakaveragegoodvery goodAbstract/Introduction4%8%12%16%20%Method10%20%30%40%50%Results3%6%9%12%15%Discussion1.5%3%4.5%6%7.5%Referencing1.5%3%4.5%6%7.5% General tips Your ‘article’ should be written clearly, simply, and to the best of your ability. It should be spell-checked and grammar-checked. Try to emulate what you will have observed to be the style in proper academic journals. So try not to write long unwieldy sentences or use big unnecessary words. Do not use jargon/slang etc. A plain, easy to read style is what will communicate your knowledge the best. It would be a good idea to read a few journal articles which report the development of a questionnaire.