Research Methodology for Exploring the Impact of HRM Practices on Employee Retention in the Food and Beverage Industry in Qatar

This chapter presents the research methodology for exploring the impact of Human Resource Management practices on employee’s retention, with a special focus on the evidence from the Food and Beverage industry in the state of Qatar. It highlights the chosen data type, research design, its strengths and limitations, sampling technique and size, tools and technique of data collection, method of analysis, timeline, and ethical issues involved in the data collection process.

CHAPTER 3:
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.0 Introduction
This chapter represents the research methodology for the study on exploring the impact
of Human Resource Management practices on employee’s retention, with a special focus on
the evidence from the Food and Beverage industry in the state of Qatar. Research methodology
presents the basic strategy to be followed for data collection and analysis. This chapter will
highlight the chosen data type, research design, its strengths and limitations, sampling
technique and size, tools and technique of data collection, method of analysis, timeline, and
ethical issues involved in the data collection process. The researcher collected primary data
through a survey on the employees, who had left their previous organizations in the Food and
Beverage industry in Qatar in the past 6 to 12 months of the survey. The research methodology
is as follows:
3.1 Research design
Research design refers to the systematic approach that is used to conduct a scientific
research study. It represents an overall synchronization of the components of research and the
data leading to a plausible conclusion (Lewis 2015). There are four types of research designs,
namely, exploratory, explanatory, descriptive and evaluation research. In the given study, the
researcher focused on exploring the effect of HRM practices on the employee retention, and
hence, the topic could be best explained with primary data. Primary data is the one that is
collected directly from the field of study, that is, people, who are directly affected or involved in
the research subject (Heiman 2013). Thus, to address the research question, the researcher
chose the descriptive research design. Under descriptive design, the researcher got the scope
to observe, study or analyze the subjects and finally describing the behavioral pattern without
influencing the subject (Rovai, Baker and Ponton 2013). Descriptive research design includes
approaches like case studies, survey, and observational research. In this study, the researcher
followed survey approach under descriptive research design.
3.2 Strengths and limitations of descriptive research design
Descriptive research is beneficial in presenting an in-depth overview of the research
topic. This type of research design presents extremely valuable detailed observations. This

allows the researchers to observe the research participants in an unchanged and natural
environment and results in a more unbiased outcome. It is also beneficial to identify the
variables that can be examined further and thereby creates scope for further research. The
data collection method allows the researchers to gather detailed information about the
subjects that can be either qualitative or quantitative in nature. Thus, it is beneficial for
collecting multifaceted data and large amount of data, which leads to precise outcomes. Survey
is one such descriptive research method that helps in collecting large amount of data within a
short time, and hence, it is commonly used by organisations to gather information about the
beliefs, behaviours, habits and attitudes of the target audience in their natural environment
(Nardi 2018). Moreover, the reliability of primary data is quite high, hence, survey method is
mostly used to collect information directly from the participants.
The limitations of this type of research design include its inability to determine a causal
relationship, and lack of guarantee that the participants provide truthful data. The information
gathered through this study does not always help to determine the cause and effect
relationship between the variables. The researcher must be very careful while observing the
participants as they can change their behaviour if they know that they are being observed.
Similarly, during a survey, the researcher must choose their words very cautiously, especially
for a sensitive issue, as the participants might get offended or might be scared to answer
truthfully due to social norms. Moreover, confidentiality can be an issue during the survey,
which would make the participants about answering the questions truthfully and that might
lead to unscientific and unreliable outcome (De Vaus 2013). At the same time, the outcome or
interpretation may be affected by researcher’s biasness. Moreover, this type of research
design, that is, survey method cannot target a big geographical region and focus only on a
smaller region.
3.4 Population of the study
Population of a study refers to the group of individuals sharing common characteristics
(Levy and Lemeshow 2013). The population must have the similar characteristics as that creates
the foundation of the data collection for the study. There should be some general demographic
factors, such as, age, sex etc. and some study specific factors for collecting the data. In this
study, the common characteristic of the group of individuals to be studied is that they must
belong to the food and beverage industry of Qatar. Hence, gender, years of association with the
food and beverage industry and reasons for leaving previous organisation were considered as
the base of the grouping of the population for the study. There are a huge number of people
working in the food and beverage industry of Qatar. From them, 200 people were chosen as the
population for the study, based on their tenure and their contact information was collected
from two organisations in this industry. A sample is drawn from these 200 people for data
collection.
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3.3 Sample size and Sampling technique
There are two types of sampling technique, probability and non-probability (Palinkas et
al. 2015). Probability sampling technique illustrates that all the respondents are able to
participate in the research and can get equal opportunity. In other words, all the samples have
equal chance of being selected and selection is random. On the other hand, Levy and
Lemeshow (2013) highlight that non-probability sampling technique does not provide equal
chances for getting equal opportunity for participating in the research. The judgment of the
researcher influences the chance of being chosen of the samples. The most commonly used
probability sampling techniques are simple random sampling, cluster sampling, stratified and
systematic sampling, and some of the most common non-probability sampling techniques are
purposive sampling, quota sampling, snow-ball sampling (Setia 2016). In the given study, the
researcher used simple random sampling to select the employees in the Food and Beverage
industry in Qatar to minimize the chances of sampling error or fluctuations and biasness in the
data.
Sample size
By applying the simple random sampling technique, the researcher chose almost 25% of
the chosen population of the study, that is, 53 food and beverage employees. Among the 53
employees, 50 belonged to the Front and Back of House job profiles, while 3 employees
belonged to the management position in the industry. These type of job profiles and positions
were chosen to get the information that would reflect the attitudes of employees belonging to
these sectors.
3.4 Data collection tools and techniques
As mentioned earlier, the researcher collected primary data by applying the survey
method. Thus, a survey questionnaire was the data collection or research instrument. The
questionnaire contained 14 close ended questions, divided in two sections, demographic and
non-demographic. The demographic section contained questions on gender, years of
association with the organization, and few workplace related factors, such as, top 5 reasons of
leaving previous organization, factors that made the respondents happy at work, their
achievement desires and goals at the workplace. This section aimed to gather an overview of
the attitude of the respondents about their current or previous workplace. The non-
demographic section contained two parts, quantitative study on the effective HR practices and
factors of employee retention. These sections collected the response data in 5 point rating or
replicable scale, such as, Likert scale, in which 1 denotes ‘strongly disagree’ and 5 denotes
‘strongly agree’. The quantitative data collection section contained questions that were framed
in a way that would best describe the factors influencing employee retention and HR practices
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(Joshi et al. 2015). The aim of this section was to gather information on the elements that
influence the employees to stay associated with the organizations in food and beverage
industries or leave the organizations. The survey questionnaire was designed using Google
form.
The researcher chose two large food and beverage companies in Doha, Qatar and from
their HR database, found the names and contacts of the employees, who had joined the
organization within the past 6 to 12 months. After applying the simple random sampling
technique to choose the sample size, the chosen survey respondents were contacted via e-mail
or face to face to inform them about the purpose of the survey and its terms and conditions.
They were given the link to the questionnaire through their emails or hardcopies by meeting
them in person. The survey was conducted for 5 weeks.
3.5 Validity and Reliability analysis
Validity and reliability analysis was performed after the research instrument was
prepared. Different types of validity processes are there, that are used to examine the accuracy
of the research instrument. Those are face validity, content validity and construct validity. Face
validity is the estimate of if a test appears to evaluate a certain criterion (Bolarinwa 2015).
However, there is no guarantee that it would actually measure the research phenomena.
Content validity refers to a non-statistical type of validity involving a systematic evaluation of
the study content. This is done with a purpose of testing of whether it was covering all the
relevant aspects or characteristics of the representative sample (Escamirosa et al. 2015). Lastly,
construct validity refers to the concept of measuring the extent of accuracy of the instrument,
that is, to what extent the instrument is accurate in measuring the research topic is the concept
of construct validity (Heale and Twycross 2015).
In the given study, the survey questionnaire was designed to find out the HR factors that
affects the employee retention in the food and beverage industry in Qatar. The survey
questionnaire is attached in the Appendix section. Going by the questions, it can be seen that, it
had face validity as well as content validity as all the questions contained elements addressing
HR practices and employee retention. The aspect of construct validity was examined by
conducting a pilot study to check how far it was measuring the objective of the research.
Reliability is also a measure of quality of the instruments used for research. The results
would only be considered valid when the measurement procedure is reliable (Heale and
Twycross 2015). It primarily measures the consistency of data collected using the research
instrument. Cronbach’s alpha is used to examine the reliability of the data. A score of 0.7 or
more is considered as the acceptable score for reliability. In the given research also, the internal
consistency of the data was measured by applying the reliability test.
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3.6 Data analysis technique
Data analysis techniques are of two types, qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative
data analysis methods emphasize more on the words than on the numbers. This type of
research is beneficial for getting a bigger and generalized picture and identifying the factors
that have a scope for further research. Interpretation skill of the researchers is very significant
in this type of study (Neuman 2013). On the other hand, quantitative data analysis techniques
deal with the numbers and thus, apply the statistical methods for analysis of the numbers
(Bryman and Bell 2015). This type of analysis technique or research method focuses on a
specific issue and then draws inferences about the general picture. The researcher applied
quantitative data analysis methods in this study. The survey responses were converted into
numeric values as those were collected through replicable scale. This was done for the purpose
of applying the scientific data analysis tools (Barua 2013). Inferential statistics was used for
analyse the findings from the data. To test the research phenomenon, four research
hypotheses were framed (Refer to Appendix). After the reliability test was conducted, multiple
regression analysis was applied to test the hypothesis. Visual representation tools, like, charts,
graphs, etc was used to present the survey responses. These are beneficial to highlight the
pattern in the responses as well as to get an overall view of the perception of the participants
regarding the factors affecting the research issue.
3.7 Ethical issues involved in data collection
There are some ethical issues in the research studies that involve humans for data
collection. These issues must be considered by the researchers while collecting primary data.
Firstly, the legal, personal, and bureaucratic compliances must be met by the researcher.
Informed consent should be taken from the participants and from the concerned organisation
before proceeding with the data collection (McDaniel and Gates 2013). The researcher must
explain the purpose of the study clearly and also the rules of participation. The participants
should be informed that they can withdraw from the survey anytime. They should not be
harmed, forced or bribed to answer the questions or manipulate the answers. However, if
these are not followed, then there would be ethical issues. Secondly, the researcher must
explain the confidentiality and anonymity agreement to the survey respondents. Moreover, it
should be made clear that the data will be kept secret and to be used only for educational
purposes. The researcher has followed all these ethical aspects before conducting the survey to
avoid any type of ethical issues in future.
3.8 Summary of chapter
This chapter presented the methods followed to conduct the study on the impact of the
HR practices on the employee retention with a special focus on the food and beverage industry.
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Descriptive research design has been followed for this study, which also adopted the survey
research approach. As this research design is beneficial in gathering detailed information by
observing the participants in natural environment, and collecting multifaceted data, it also has
the risks of collecting incorrect data. However, for the ease of large amount of data collection,
this approach was adopted. 200 employees’ information was collected from the database of
two large organisations in the food and beverage industry in Qatar. From them, 53 employees
were chosen through simple random sampling technique to conduct the survey. The survey
questionnaire contained 14 close ended questions with a focus on the research topic. Validity
and reliability test were also performed to check the accuracy of the research instrument.
Lastly, mixed method, that is, both the qualitative and quantitative methods of data analysis
were applied to analyze the data.
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Appendix 1
Research Questionnaire
Q1. What is your gender?
 Male
 Female
Q2. How long you have been/did you associated with the organization?
 Less than 1 year
 3 years
 5 years
 More than 5 years
Q3. What are the top 5 reasons you left your previous organization (Please tick and rank the
number)?
 Work-life imbalance
 Discrimination/biasness from the management
 Poor communication
 Feeling undervalued
 Lack of decision-making ability
 Improper promotional activities
 Lack of Growth opportunities
 Poor communication
 Lack of inclusion in the organization
 Ineffective relationship with team members
 Regular changes in job responsibilities
 Insufficient Rewards and Recognition and benefits
 Lack of employee welfare
 Misalignment of culture and value system in the organization
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 Lack of support from Line Managers
Q4. What makes you happy at work?
 Workplace environment
 Support from leaders
 Transparency in the workplace
 Clear promotional goals
 Opportunities for growth
 Inclusion of employee in the decision-making sessions
Q5. What do you want to achieve at work?
 Promotion
 Social recognition
 Appreciation
 Extra Rewards and Benefits
 Gaining experience
 Effective Management and support from the top
 Healthy environment to work in
 Happiness at work
Q6. What are your goals?
 Remain in the organization for longer time
 Search for other company, where you can showcase your skills better
 Lead other members and guide them in critical situations
 Position of a leader after a certain year of experience
Quantitative data on effective HR practices
Q7. How far do you agree that HR should recognize the skills of the employee for retaining
them?
 Strongly Agree
 Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
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 Strongly Disagree
Q8. Do you agree that job flexibility provide reason to employee for not leaving the
organization?
 Strongly Agree
 Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree
Q9. How far do you agree that HR should conduct necessary training for employee retention?
 Strongly Agree
 Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree
Q10. How far do you agree that HR must ensure two-ways communication for ensuring that no
employee will leave the organization?
 Strongly Agree
 Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree
Quantitative data on employee retention
Q11. Do you agree that proper promotion helps you to sustain in the organization for longer
time?
 Strongly Agree
 Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree
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Q12. How far do you agree that social recognition is necessary for employee retention?
 Strongly Agree
 Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree
Q13. Do you agree that frequent change of job roles should be avoided to retain employee in
food and beverage industry?
 Strongly Agree
 Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree
Q14. Do you agree that proper rewards and recognition will promote employee sustainability in
the company?
 Strongly Agree
 Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
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Appendix 2
Research hypotheses
H1: HR Recruitment policy significantly affects the employee retention in the food and
beverage industry in Qatar.
H2: Training and development program significantly affects the employee retention in the food
and beverage industry in Qatar.
H3: Performance appraisal system has significant impacts on the employee retention in the
food and beverage industry in Qatar.
H4: Reward system in organisations has positive impact on employee retention in the food and
beverage industry in Qatar.
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Appendix 3
Approval letter
Respected Sir/Madam,
I, ………., a student of ……….. University in Qatar. I am conducting a study on the impact of HR
practices on the employee retention in the food and beverage industry in the state of Qatar.
This study is only for educational purpose as this aims to provide a useful insight for the
industry about the potential reasons for employee turnover. Using the outcome of the study,
the organisations can focus on improving their HR practices so that employee retention rate is
improved.
Kindly give me approval to proceed with the study. I declare that the data will be kept
confidential and anonymity of the participants will be maintained strictly. No unethical means
will be adopted throughout the study.
Thanks and regards,
[Name of the student]
[Contact number of the student]
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Appendix 4
Questionnaire guide
Respected Sir/Ma’am,
This survey intends to assess the impact of the HR practices on the employee retention policies
in the food and beverage industry in Qatar. This is an academic study and the data will remain
confidential and will only be used for educational purpose. The guidelines for the survey are
mentioned below.
1. There are 14 multiple choice questions. Kindly go through each of the questions
carefully before answering.
2. All the questions are mandatory to answer and hence, before hitting the Submit button,
kindly review your answers.
3. Your participation is voluntary and you can back out any time from the survey.
4. Kindly do not write your personal information as the responses will be anonymous.
Your kind cooperation is highly appreciated.
Thanking you,
[Name of the student]
[Contact number of the student]
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