THE INVESTIGATION ABOUT THE SUCCESS OF THE SAFETY BUS IN TYNE AND WEAR UNIVERSITY (TWU) potx

Overview of student’s background information...8 Gender...8 Origin...10 Postcode...11 1.1 The feeling of students about the threat in the city at night:...14 1.2 Investigate the relation

THE INVESTIGATION ABOUT THE SUCCESS OF

THE SAFETY BUS IN TYNE AND WEAR

UNIVERSITY (TWU)Words count: 3,218 words

PROGRAMME: MSc of Business with Hospitality and Tourism Management

BM0421 BUSINESS RESEARCH ANALYSIS

Tutor: Dr Ian Charity

PART 1: Development and Critical Evaluation of a Questionnaire 3

1 Data collection method: 3

2 Questionnaire plan 4

3 Questionnaire structure and flow of questions 4

4 Questionnaire types 5

5 Coding plan 6

6 Reliability of instructions 6

7 Implication of postal data collection 6

Part 2: Data Analysis and Evaluation 8

1 Overview of student’s background information 8

Gender 8

Origin 10

Postcode 11

1.1 The feeling of students about the threat in the city at night: 14

1.2 Investigate the relationship between students’ feelings of safety and gender, origin and postcode 16

1.2.1 Investigate the relationship between students’ feelings of safety and gender: 16

1.2.2 Investigate the relationship between students’ feelings of safety and origin: .18

1.2.3 Investigate the relationship between students’ feelings of safety and postcode: 19

2 Overview of the characteristics of Safety Bus users: 22

2.1 Number – Users: 22

2.2 Distance from term-time accommodation to TWU Union 23

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2.3 Distance from term-time accommodation to nearest public transport 24

2.4 Predict the expectation of the TWU 25

2.5 Investigate the amount of usage of the safety Bus differs according to gender, origin and postcode area 26

2.5.1 The amount of usage of the Safety bus differ by gender 26

2.5.2 The amount of usage of the Safety bus differ by origin 28

2.5.3 Relationship between postcode area and the amount of usage of the Safety Bus 29

3 Predicting price willing to pay for the Safety Bus 31

Overview of the data regard the donation 31

3.1 The test to identify significant how much students would be willing to pay 32

3.2 Measure the relationship between the donation and distance-home, distance-public and rent 33

3.2.1 Relationship between the distance-home and donation 34

3.2.2 Relationship between distance-public and donation 36

3.2.3 Relationship between rent and donation 38

3.2.4 Forecast the donation 39

PART 3: Report to the university safety officer 41

Reference 43

Appendices 45

1 Cover letter 45

2 Coding plan 45

3 Questionnaire 45

PART 1: Development and Critical Evaluation of a Questionnaire

1 Data collection method:

The questionnaire (survey) is a useful tool for Tyne and Wear University (TWU) to access and justify the success of the safety bus In order to collect the greatest number of respondents with accurate response, the university need to design and distribute the effective questionnaire

The reason for choosing the questionnaire is caused by several advantages it brings to the business According to Robson, Pemberton and McGrane (2011), the questionnaire seems to cover a numerous people, so, it increases the sample size Moreover, the highly targeted of chosen sample is planned and provides the very affordable cost in printing and distributing the questionnaire to chosen respondents Due to Bryman (2008), the critical factor which leads to the efficiency of the

questionnaire is that is gives the respondents time to think and justify their suitable answer due to the absence of the interview bias The sample size should not very large but not very small because it will bring some limitations to the investigators in term of the results are not cover the aims of the business or too wide to conclude thestatus of the strategy Therefore, TWU targets the random sample size is 1000 students in overall of 3500 students The postal method will support the TWU in saving time and expenditures for distributing the questionnaire in various ways

Together with the advantages, there are also some disadvantages which need to be take in account such as just few people would like to spend time and find interested in filling in the questionnaire delivered to them (Walonick, 2004) This caused the ineffective in the responses of respondents will be low Moreover, withoutthe explanations from the distributors, it might lead to the misunderstood and made the inaccuracy of the survey (Wilson and McLean, 1994)

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2 Questionnaire plan

The questionnaire plays a critical role towards the quality of the survey, in term ofproviding an accurate and good quality questionnaire; any single question should be considered and planned before concluding to write down (Brace, 2008) Due to Hague (1993), the questionnaire should be relevant to the research objectives in term of while collecting the data from respondents, it also help to address the

business issue Thus, it is very important to identify what information areas the questionnaire needs to cover

The aim of TWU is to assess the success of the Safety Bus by gathering the information of students through the questionnaire about feeling and experiences of crime Based on that, the structure of the questionnaire should be designed includes of: background information (gender, age and country of origin); evaluation of

respondents towards their feeling in donation, quality of safety bus, and

recommendations/ comments/ suggestions on how the programs could be include and improve in the future (Brace, 2008)

3 Questionnaire structure and flow of questions

As it had been discussed above that the structure of the questionnaire will be concluded 4 parts: background information (gender, age and country of origin); evaluation of respondents towards their feeling in donation, quality of safety bus, andrecommendations/ comments/ suggestions on how the programs could be include and improve in the future The good structure of questionnaire will demonstrate the ensuring of covering all topics relevant to the research and respondents (Peterson, 2000) As the designer for the questionnaire, it has to be ensure that each question

is read and considered by the respondents is easy to understand and avoid the confusing of multiple answers or information (Lewis and Thornill, 2003) Moreover, the business always puts their ambiguous into the questionnaire to assess and reachmore information from the respondents to understand their expectations, but, Wilson and McLean (1994) suggest that question must be easy to understand and

order to motivate and encourage the respondents to read and fulfil the questionnaire with the best answer Foddy (1994) suggests that the content, grammar and spelling

of questions should be considered carefully to reach the study’s objective and show the respect to the respondents

4 Questionnaire types

There are two main types of question are open-ended and closed questions (Robson, Pemberton and McGrane (2011) The various of questionnaire will help thestudy utilize the potential answering abilities of respondents in term of using mix of question types is important to make the questionnaire more interesting, easier and significantly raise respond

As the dean’s expectation to target a large number of respondents, almost of the question are closed However, the questionnaire also includes one open question which would be useful get addition comments and explanations Thus, on the one hand it is easy for the respondent to answer Besides, quantitative data could be analyzed straightforwardly On the other hand, the data is still detail and potential (Robson, 2011)

Furthermore, the answers are designed using numerical scales The answers for almost of the closed questions are balanced between positive and negative

response As the intention not to force respondent to choose positively, the option of neutral response is available In addition, there is also the option to answer “not applicable” Thus, it would not exclude any possible opinion

The questions for demographic information are design to be multiple choice questions or dichotomous questions where only two answer These types of questionare easy to answer because the ranges of answers are presented In fact, that simplicity also influences people willingness to response to the questionnaire (Web, 2000)

Andrews (2003) discussed that the questionnaires should be ended by ended questions because it will allow the respondents to show their expectations or understanding and feelings about the questionnaire But instead, this type of

open-question is difficult for the analyst to coding, analysing and interpreting data There

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should be an open-ended question in the survey of TWU to investigate the

perceptions/ expectations or thinking of the respondents

5 Coding plan

Coding plan is the collection of responses and convert these responses into numbers or code Lewis and Thornill (2003) stated that responses on the survey need to be coded before data entered for analysis into the SPSS software The coding plan helps the researcher to track the respondents who complete the questionnaire

Robson, Pemberton and McGrane (2011) claim that an ‘official use’ column should be involved in the right hand side of the questionnaire format This column supports the researchers to code the responses to each of the questions into the SPSS

7 Implication of postal data collection

As it had been discussed above that the method of data collection and

distribution of this research is postal survey, thus, as Robson et al (2011, p.50),

“postal surveys is one of the most accepted, valued and applied methods for

collecting survey data in business research”

The reason for choosing this method rather than mail survey is because of postal survey does not require a significant cost but also efficiency in time management by the time between dispatch and return is flexible and comfortable enough for the respondents to spend couples time on it and get it done accurately (Robson, 2011)

However, the post survey also finds that the rate of response from the

respondents is lower It is normally around 39.2% as the result of TWU found in the later of this research Robson et al (2011) discussed that this low rate can only be enhanced by having a good questionnaire design and short time required to

complete There is also a difficulty in providing response back to the TWU of the respondents The reason is the limited contact between researcher and respondents.Thus, the questions and answers need to high level of brevity, accuracy and clarity (Agrawal, 2009)

In general, this questionnaire is designed with the sufficient characteristics as

to achieve the objective of ensuring a high response rate and highly reliability

Besides, its questions flow and structure is also appropriate to do the interpretation Moreover, its accuracy, brevity and clarity could definitely help TWU to achieve survey expectation

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Part 2: Data Analysis and Evaluation

1 Overview of student’s background information

Gender

The graph indicates that student’s gender Normal Distribution, which

theoretically have a distinctive shape

The table presented that 45.2% of male responded the questionnaire within

392 respondents That ratio is similar to the proportion of male students at TWU and considered as less than the number of female Moreover, out – of 1000 delivered questionnaires, TWU received 392 responses, which accumulated 39.2% students participated from in this survey

Hence, the rate of male respondents hardly becomes representative of

population who resent their answers to school

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The table and diagram showed that from 392 results achieved from students, there are 79.3% respondents from UK, 7.4% of those come from EU and the others are international is calculated at 13.3%

Therefore, the proportion of origin of students is drawn in asymmetric shape

In addition, the mean in the table 4 ranges from 1.27 to 1.41

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The majority of first – year students (41.1%) chose NX2 as their living place during a year whereas only 10.5% of 392 students are living in the other places which are determined further location than TWU campus

an asymmetric skewed distribution According to the mean of population, its range is from 2.71 to 2.95

1.1 The feeling of students about the threat in the city at night:

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The table showed that the highest level at 39.3% belongs to the group of students seldom feel unsafe when travelling outside their accommodations at night Only 13% of students are scared to hang out at night

The figure is inconsiderable to highlight the rate of crime in the city, some investigates associate with gender, origin and postcode will analysed deeply about how safe the night activities are from the point of view of students

95% Confidence Interval for Mean

of 2.37 and 2.54

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1.2 Investigate the relationship between students’ feelings of

safety and gender, origin and postcode

In the comparison with two interferences, the chi-square test is used for

determining if the differences are found in the frequencies is meaningful or not Obviously, frequencies are defined to be related to classification at different or

continuous variables and the numerical methods are applied in various situations (Sprows C.R., 1964) Therefore, the test demonstrates a normal distribution to emphasize model That is why Chi – square test will be utilized to investigate the relationship between student’s feelings of safety to gender, origin and postcode

1.2.1 Investigate the relationship between students’ feelings of safety and gender:

The null and alternative hypothesis:

Gender * Threatened Crosstabulation

Threatened

Total

Expected Count

Expected Count

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1.2.2 Investigate the relationship between students’ feelings of safety and origin:

The null and alternative hypothesis:

The table shows that the p-value is 0.297 which is greater than 0.05

Therefore, this research accepts the H0 at 5% significant level It means that there is

no relationship between origin and student’s threatened feeling

Origin * Threatened Crosstabulation

Expected Count

Expected Count

The table presented the comparison between the observed and expected count Due to the almost similar between practical and expected count, we accept the H0 as conclude that the student origin does not affect to the threat of crime at night

1.2.3 Investigate the relationship between students’ feelings of safety and postcode:

The null and alternative hypothesis:

Significant level: 5%

SPSS supplied the results’

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Asymp Sig sided)

Postcode * Threatened Crosstabulation

Threatened

TotalNever

Expected Count

Expected Count

Expected Count

Expected Count

Expected Count

Moreover, as the result in the table above gave the explanation about the

differences between the observed and expected account Students who are living in NX4 feel to be the most threatened when they go round the city during the night rather than the others For those who accommodate in NX2 normally feel safe when travelling at night Moreover, most students rarely think that they will be attacked by the criminals at night

The distribution of number of usages rating is normal distribution with

asymmetrical shape with the skewness of 0.538 Furthermore, the mean of 2.96 and the median of 3 are not much different The standard deviation is 1.845, therefore; the mean of population is between 2.77 and 3.14 at 95% confident interval