Data collection methods and peer-reviewed research resources

¶ … Tollak, Spillan, & Harcar (2011) investigate the consumer cell-phone habits of young Turkish individuals assessing whether aspects of differentiation exist between them and other users in order to discover reason for the marketing intensity of this specific population. Methodology involved survey research, descriptive statistics and Structured equation Modeling (SEM). Results indicated that adolescent users tended to fall in one of three groups: trendy style, heavy-usage style and price conscious style. Contributions towards marketing strategy are discussed

Using an infographic, Dusan (2011) quantifies the global amount of texting that we do: approximately 190,000 text messages are sent per second and 6.1 trillion texts were sent in 2010. He shows that the celphone is the #1 electronic product that consumers buy, and that they even precede necessities such as electricity and bank accounts. Finally, he concludes that texting is revolutionizing and improving the developing world.

3. The International Telecommuting Union (ITU) predicted that the number of cell phone users will increase to 5 million people by the end of partially de to the introduction of smart phones that, in the developing world, at least, have proved useful for mobile banking and health services. Smart phones are invaluable in more ways than one, with their advantages extending to saving lives and expense.

4. Life expectancy data: According to the World Health Organization (WHO), globalization is endangering health care systems. The U.S. is the highest spender on healthcare expenditures, whilst for health care instance the U.S. ranks third worst. The U.S. infant mortality rate is also not comparably good and its life expectancy, too, is slightly below average.

Describe how article applies to research topic

1.

Define population from which sample came

1. 2,140 adolescent Turkish individuals from 30 randomly selected schools in a certain urban city. 48.6% were females. The average age was 16.3 years. Socio-economic demographics varied. (Tollak, Spillan, & Harcar (2011))

2. This is a global / international population with the focus being on developing countries. ( (Dusan, 2011)

3. This is a global / international population. Conclusions reached from 4.6 billion subscribers.

4. The WHO generated its study from 28 developed countries. Its focus is on the U.S.

Was the sample size appropriate for research topic?

5. Yes. The sample represents almost 10% of the city's population and is large enough to be representative of the larger population of Turkish adolescents (Tollak, Spillan, & Harcar (2011).

6. This is no research topic, but the description of the population size is sufficient. (Dusan, 2011)

7. This is no research topic, but the description of the population size is sufficient.

8. Yes. The entire nation has been sampled.

Identify possible sources of bias or error that could occur when sampling

1. Problems intrinsic in survey such as users underestimating / overestimating usage; interviewee / interviewer bias; intentional / unintentional distortion of response to question; misinterpretation / misunderstanding of question, or interviewer misinterpreting / misunderstanding response. Furthermore, other factors, such as economic or personal crisis, may have resulted in one or more individuals using cell phone to a greater or lesser extent. Age may have been a factor too with an older age, perhaps, using it more often than a younger age. Business of person may have impacted, as well as academic duties / level of class / amount of schoolwork, and so forth. Situation at the moment may have pointed to certain conditions (such s trendy style or heavy-usage style) but a longitudinal study may have indicated flux of circumstances making reason for use (or typology of use) less clear.

2. No citations are brought for research. Sources may have been biased towards particular agenda (e.g. one or more soruces may have been focused on selling cell phones). Other possible errors include the fact that users may have been using another's cell phone therefore quantity of cell phone users may be in error and the research studies in each case (the original sources) need to be plumbed and studied from the source. Their studies may have been flawed in more than one way and their descriptives need to be analyzed before we accept Dusan's conclusions at face value.