Motivation Factors Influencing Passenger Attitude to Travelling Using Regional Airports

Methodology on a Study to Determine the Motivation Factors Influencing Passenger Attitude to Travelling Using Regional Airports in the United Kingdom

Theory of Research

This study adopts a qualitative design, specifically through administering questionnaires to a set of selected respondents, who are campus students. These questionnaires consist of several questions that the participants will answer by marking boxes that are adjacent to their responses. Krosnick (2018) purports that questionnaires are the crux of a survey since the research questions being investigated solely depend on the questionnaire design. To reduce chances of response inaccuracies occurring, questions posed to the respondents should be shaped in accordance with best practices. To this end, the questionnaire designed for this investigation incorporates the use of both single option multiple choice and Likert-scale type of questions.

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Usefulness of these Questionnaire Designs

The single option multiple choice questions will provide a set of possible answers that the respondents can specify, however, without an explanation of why they indicated these choices. Since one of this survey's objective is to quantify the definite judgment of its participants on the motivation factors that influence their outlooks towards travelling using regional airports in the UK, this type of questions represent a viable approach to achieving the predetermined purpose. For instance, one of the questions requires the respondents to indicate the number of times they have travelled to and from a regional airport within the past year. The researcher can gauge their opinions from the set of alternatives given, which include "0", "1-2", "2-4" and "5+". Krosnick (2018) acknowledges that closed-ended questions or a combination of both open-ended and closed-ended questions are useful in measuring firm decisions in which choices signify different items rather than points along a single scale.

On the other hand, the Likert-type scale questions are crafted to measure the participants' opinions and attitudes. Rattray and Jones (2007) argue that this ordinal scale quantifies the respondents' degree of agreement or disagreement on a field from vehemently agree to vehemently disagree. In this survey, for example, ticket prices is one of the motivation factors that the researcher is verifying its extent of influence on travelling decisions using regional airports. A Likert-type scale is presented to the study subjects whereby they will indicate either "To a great extent", "To some extent", "To a small extent" or "Not at all". Moreover, the Likert scale presents a more sophisticated survey approach that can amplify the level of understanding of the participants' views.

Disadvantages of these Questionnaire Designs

Regardless of the usefulness of single option multiple choice questions described in the preceding section, this approach also exhibits some demerits. Reja et al., (2003) states that the richness of responses is limited in this type of questions since respondents can only specify their opinions depending on the choices indicated in the questionnaire. For that reason, the researcher cannot gain an in-depth understanding of the rationale behind their preferred choices. Nevertheless, its ability to reduce the variation of responses and missing data outweighs this weakness thereby further justifying its applicability for this study rather than open-ended questions. With regards to the Likert scale questions, Malhotra (2006) stipulates that the chief drawback of using this technique is that it requires more time to complete compared to alternative rating continuums. This limitation is due to the fact that the survey subjects have to read through the whole statement to understand what is required of them as opposed to just a section of the question.

Description of the Methodology's Undertakings

This survey will involve administering feedback forms to a sample of 200 randomly selected campus students. In this line, a random sampling technique is adopted, which Marshall (1996) claims to offer an equal chance of being selected to all members of a well-defined population. The researcher will approach the participants and request them to give their feedbacks to this questionnaire on his iPad. Such a method is expected to be rigorous albeit definite in nature.

Studying the random student sample enhances generalization of the findings on the most important motivation factors that determine their outlooks towards travelling using regional airports, to the entire campus population. However, this technique has a weakness, in that the sample selected is so small such that it is highly inevitable to experience a huge sampling error, which results in unavoidable biases (Marshall, 1996). Additionally, generalizing results will only be possible if the student features or traits are normally distributed across the entire college population.

After data collection, a detailed analysis will be conducted through the SPSS software. A primary processing of this information by converting it into data that can be introduced into the SPSS application will precede this comprehensive evaluation. Specific variables such as the degree of preference for certain travel factors can be isolated from the data obtained, in line with the predetermined research questions. These variables will then be weighed to determine the most crucial one among them in swaying attitudes towards travelling through regional airports in the UK.

Reliability and Validity

Some questions will adopt a 4-point Likert scale in this research. Chang (1994) conducted a psychometric analysis of the validity and reliability of 6-point and 4-point Likert scales and found out that the heterotrait monomethod (HTMM) validity and internal consistency vary with the number of scale points. Seemingly, raising the number of points on a Likert scale enhances the chances of deriving response sets that concurrently strengthen the validity and reliability of this approach. However, using extra scale points does not guarantee reliability since regardless of the enhanced statistical correlation if more points are used, when a certain threshold is reached, the study's measurement consistency starts weakening (Chang, 1994). In measuring the participants' attitudes towards motivation factors, this 4-point scale provides a solid knowledge base for the researcher and participants to estimate their own standpoints on each factor indicated in the questions.

On another note, the reliability of the single option multiple choice questions depends on how well the answers that these respondents give can be replicated if another approach, such as an interview, would be used simultaneously with the questionnaire. According to Zohrabi (2013), internal validity determines the congruence of results obtained through these questions. To this end, the triangulation technique can be incorporated into this study through an interview to corroborate this questionnaire's findings thus eliminating any biases and doubts cast over collecting data using the survey questions exclusively. If similar outcomes are observed, then the single option multiple choice questions will be deemed valid. Not only does this technique enhance the question's validity but also their reliability, with regards to replicability in another similar research context as well as its consistency. Therefore, such a combination of questionnaires and interviews in this research would enhance the validity and reliability of questions posed to study participants.

References

Chang, L., 1994. A psychometric evaluation of 4-point and 6-point Likert-type scales in relation to reliability and validity. Applied psychological measurement, 18(3), pp.205-215.

Krosnick, J.A., 2018. Questionnaire design. In The Palgrave Handbook of Survey Research (pp. 439-455). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Malhotra, N.K., 2006. Questionnaire design and scale development. The handbook of marketing research: Uses, misuses, and future advances, pp.176-202.

Marshall, M.N., 1996. Sampling for qualitative research. Family practice, 13(6), pp.522-526.

Rattray, J. and Jones, M.C., 2007. Essential elements of questionnaire design and development. Journal of clinical nursing, 16(2), pp.234-243.

Reja, U., Manfreda, K.L., Hlebec, V. and Vehovar, V., 2003. Open-ended vs. close-ended questions in web questionnaires. Developments in applied statistics, 19(1), pp.159-177.

Zohrabi, M., 2013. Mixed method research: Instruments, validity, reliability and reporting findings. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3(2), p.254.