Importance Of Research Design

Research design is the structure which is considered very important to both data collection and analysis. It is the plan for achieving the aims and objectives of the investigation. Oppenheim (1992) pointed out that the term research design refers to a basic plan or strategy of research and the logic behind it, which will make it possible and valid to draw more general conclusions from it. Kumar (2009) defined research design as a procedural plan that is adopted by the researcher to answer question validity objectively, accurately and economically.

Understanding the philosophical issues of research design is of crucial importance for three reasons. Firstly, knowledge of research design philosophy can enable the researcher to clarify the research

(2007) mentioned that it is important to have a clear research strategy (design), a general plan of how the researcher will go about answering the research questions. Research strategy should contain clear objectives derived from the research questions; also, it should identify the sources from which the researcher intends to collect data. Sekaran (2003) pointed out that research design involves a series of rational decisions. These are: identifying the purpose of the study, whether it is exploratory, descriptive or hypothesis testing; identifying the type of investigation; deciding the extent of the researcher’s intervention; identifying the study setting; deciding measurement and measures; deciding data analysis; deciding data collection methods; deciding time horizon; deciding sampling design; identifying the unit of analysis.

Accordingly, the choice of research design depends on the research questions, objectives and research philosophy. More details about the chosen research design and rational reasons behind that choice will be discussed in the following subsection.

3.4.1

All the process lasted 4 months. Appendix 1 and 2 include the copy of the questionnaire in English and in Arabic We gave out 200 questionnaires and 172 people answered the questions.

3.4.3 Survey Instrument

The factors related with the TQM and Service Quality of hospitals are developed based on the operational definitions in the literature.

The questions are taken by the surveys that are conducted mentioned in the literature. By using 5 categories of likert scale, different degrees of importance are presented to the respondents. The survey starts with a cover letter mentioning the importance of the issue and guaranteeing the privacy of the data collected from the hospitals.

The questions are grouped in two categories, first starting by the demographic variables, the moving on with the question about the variables. The questionnaire contains two sections. First part includes eight socio-demographic questions. At the second part, there are forty statements, which are 5-point Likert type, and close-ended questions. These points in the scale are ‘‘Strongly Disagree’’ (5), ‘‘Disagree’’ (4), ‘‘Uncertain’’ (3), ‘‘Agree’’ (2), ‘‘Strongly Agree’’ (1).

3.4.4 Data Analysis