Assembling The Project Compendium - Computing Technical ...

CHAPTER 4 DATA COLLECTION
4.1 INTRODUCTION
Data collection involved identifying who, from where and how survey participants could be
sought. Once the data was collected, it was filtered, manipulated and analysed. Finally the
data was checked for answer consistency.
4.2 PROCESS AND DATA SOURCES
The data sources were selected by compiling a list of all personal acquaintances with
experience managing software/IT projects. They were personally requested to participate in
the survey and additionally to forward the survey link to their personal contacts. The other
data source was a web link posted to the Open University course chat sites including M865
Project Management and M80. The links were left open for three weeks and then closed.
There was a sixty percent response rate to the personal email invitations which contributed
to thirty percent of the overall responses. Approximately sixty percent of the responses
were a result of „friends of friends‟ completing the survey. Approximately ten percent of
responses were from links posted on websites.
4.3 PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS
All completed surveys were reviewed. Five responses were deleted as no core answers had
been completed. Data from the remaining seventy-nine responses was extracted.
Numerical data was re-entered into spreadsheets for quantitative analysis and worded
answers were copied and pasted into a word document for qualitative analysis. (Refer to
appendix C for extracts of the raw data.)
Qualitative analysis involved summarising over ten thousand words extracted from the open
ended questions. For each answer set, key themes were identified and all answers were
coded under these themes and clustered into lower level ideas.
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