Data Collection and Analysis for Research Project

Research Project
Contents
Data Collection............................................................................................................................................1
Data analysis................................................................................................................................................2
Descriptive statistics................................................................................................................................2
Inferential analysis...................................................................................................................................9
Hypothesis testing.....................................................................................................................................13
Discussion..................................................................................................................................................14
Limitation..................................................................................................................................................14
Future Research........................................................................................................................................14
References.................................................................................................................................................15
Data Collection
Data collection is one of the most important part of every research. There are broadly two types
of data which are used for the research. The first one is the primary data, which is also known as
the first hand data. The primary data are those data which are collected by the researcher as per
the requirement of the research. The major techniques used for data collection are the primary
survey (which is used to collect the quantitative data), personal interview (which is used to
collect the qualitative data). To collect the quantitative data the close end questionnaire is used
whereas for the qualitative data collection the open ended questionnaire is used.
The second type of the data which is used for the research is the secondary data. This type of
data is collected by someone else for different purpose. The major sources of the secondary data
includes the published journals, books, government data center, company reports etc. The
secondary data is cheap as compared to the primary data(Cierniak and Reimann, 2011; Mangal
and Mangal, 2013; Rajasekar, Philominathan and Chinnathambi, 2013).
For the current research the secondary data has been used. The data has been collected for 60
different firms situated in different countries around the world. The companies has been selected
from the master data set and the selection of the companies from the master data was random.
The random sampling has been used, so the results from the analysis can be generalized. Once
the sample was selected the data cleaning process has been conducted which included identifying
the missing values and the also the identification of the outliers. The missing values were
recoded so that the results are not affected. Once the data cleaning process was completed the
data was exported to SPSS and the further analysis was conducted(Armstrong, 2012; George,
Seals and Aban, 2014; Monem A Mohammed, 2014).

Data analysis
Data analysis has been conducted in two different ways. In the first section the results from the
descriptive analysis has been shown and in the next section the results from the inferential
analysis has been shown which includes the chi square test, correlation analysis and the
regression analysis.
Descriptive statistics
Descriptive results for the continuous variable are shown in the table below. Various measures of
the central tendencies and the skewness kurtosis of the variables have been included in the
descriptive analysis(M, no date; Hancock, 2009; Macdonald and Headlam, 2010).
Statistics
Disclosure
score
IV1 IV4 IV6
N Valid 59 59 59 59
Missing 0 0 0 0
Mean 88.8644 336.5706 6058634409.
1391
1.3407
Median 97.0000 5.6700 56400.0000 5.6500
Mode 100.00 -99.00 -99.00 -99.00
Std. Deviation 22.66051 1779.60974 44634118769
.61965
28.54073
Variance
513.499 3167010.833 19922045583
40513600000
.000
814.573
Skewness -3.274 6.564 7.671 -2.978
Std. Error of
Skewness
.311 .311 .311 .311
Kurtosis 10.556 45.942 58.895 8.649
Std. Error of Kurtosis .613 .613 .613 .613
Minimum .00 -99.00 -99.00 -99.00
Maximum 100.00 12986.40 34294700000
0.00
34.70
Results from the descriptive statistics of the disclosure score shows that the mean disclosure
score is 88 with standard deviation of 22.66. The standard deviation indicates that there is no
high variation in the variables and most of the data set lies around the mean value. The minimum
and the maximum value of the disclosure score are the 0 and 100 which are also the range for the
disclosure score. The Skewness of the variable is negative indicating that the variable is
negatively skewed. Descriptive statistics of other variables are also shown in the table above and

the results for those values can also be explained in similar way. Generally the median value is
considered as the more accurate measure of central tendency than the mean value. This is
because the extreme values in the series affect the mean value but do not affect the median value.
The skewness and kurtosis helps to explain the distribution of the series.
The histogram of the disclosure score shows that most of the values lies to the right of the mean
value and the value of skewness is also negative.

The histogram of IV1 indicates that the variable is normally distributed as most of the variable
lies near the mean value.