Research Methodologies for Crane Workers Safety

Abstract

Crane workers safety is a serious employee and social problem all over the World in crane employees. Safety is first recognized as a separate a human resource issue that is given care for a long time. Often misunderstood as split personality, it is actually a serious human resource with low productivity production.

Research Problem/Research Question

There is a need to pay more attention to improve the safety of the crane workers. An increased safety can help pursue better productivity in these companies. Lack of proper safety plays a major role in production for companies. I chose to work on this question because safety directly affects crane workers, performance and their productivity and targets. If crane workers understand how different people the safety issues of crane operators in different companies. There is a relationship between crane workers and safety.

Methodology

Qualitative research methods usually require the researcher to have a general thought of how he will conduct his research in a qualitative manner. These methods normally provide a good description of all the major purposes of the qualitative research, the researchers role, the different stages that will be involved in the research and lastly the data analysis method. The main focus will be on the phenomenological method of qualitative research (Baker & Stern, 1992).

Phenomenology is always considered as qualitative methodological approach but sometimes it is seen as a philosophical perspective. It is said, phenomenology, to be a school of thought which has got its major emphasis on the subjective experiences of different people and their interpretations of the world. That is to mean that the phenomenologist would always want to come to an understanding of how different people view this world. In this case, the phenomenologist would want to understand how different people the safety issues of crane operators in different companies.

For many years, philosophical research has always been perceived as being irrelevant. This, philosophical research, will continue to be perceived as irrelevant if the philosophers continue with their independent operations in the internal means of philosophy coupled with their straying from human experiences. For many years now philosophical research has been viewed as being irrelevant. And since the researchers continue to fail in putting their findings in experience to test, the philosophical research will also continue to be perceived as an impractical thing. The question of relevance will lead to the inquiry as to why philosophy should be accepted into the community of the qualitative research method. As it is evident in many articles, philosophy has a structure of methodology which is almost similar to those of other research methods and it does show its genuine relevance to the general experience (Charles, 1990).

The qualitative methods of research usually give results that are well detailed and very rich in content that provides new concepts and ideas that will work to inform your program. The qualitative research methods will provide the researcher with information on how people and also on what people think about the safety of the crane operators but it will fail to provide the information on how many people feel and think in that particular way. If one researcher wants to carry out a research using the qualitative method, the following guidelines have to be used; the researcher will have to select a particular group of people who have similar characteristics in common and thereafter the researcher will have to convene a discussion by the use of either focus groups, interviews or observation of the behavior of an individual through such interviews such as the so called in-home interviews. The researcher should make sure that the discussion he will start will not have a specific structure so that all the participating people will be free to pick the discussion from any angle and that no specific response will be required for specific questions. He should also have in mind that an interview guide can be used to ensure that the right questions are directed to the right people during the progression of the interview (Creswell, 1998). These questions being talked about here should be asked according to the response of the participant and care should be taken not to ask the questions in predetermined manner or rather order.

The results from qualitative research should be presented as percentages; they should also not be subjected to an analysis of statistics or even be projected to wider population. This is merely because those people participating in this kind of research usually do not make a sample which has been randomly selected and the given samples are usually relatively small and not all the participants are normally asked the same questions. And no matter how much qualitative research one or rather a researcher will conduct, he will still not be sure of how exactly the participants feel or of they are experiencing similar things and at this point is where a researcher will have the preference of using a quantitative research.

There are those tools are normally in common use in a qualitative market research and these tools are the focus groups and those interviews carried out on individual basis and are called the in-depth interviews. Additionally, there are many other methodologies that can be used to assist the researcher to know more about his sample group of twenty crane operators. Some of the examples of these include; pairs of friendships from which people who claim to be best friends are picked to have a discussion on the subjects that are more sensitive and the other example is observations made on behaviors and how people interact in the natural environment of the targeted participants (Dick, 2005).

The qualitative research method is commonly used when the researcher has one of his goals as exploration of a specific idea or even a topic (Hopwood, 2004). And also it can be used when one wants to fully understand the results obtained from the quantitative research method and lastly can be used when the researcher wants to get some input from his major informants or other people who lie outside the targeted audience. Here much information will be needed from the crane operators.

Data collection

Qualitative strategies of data collection are very important and useful at the same time. These strategies can at times be independent and at other times they can be combined with the quantitative methods (Richardson, 1999). Some of the qualitative strategies will include the following:

Semi-structured interviews

These kinds of interviews usually have some kind of questions that are in a way very specific about issues of the project being researched on. For instance the semi-structured interview will have its own set of questions concerning the safety of the crane operators. These interviews though allow the interviewee to give very detailed answers to the questions.

Focus groups

These groups will be seeking to have a full understanding of the attitudes. This will be achieved by carrying out a series of group discussions that will be guided by one researcher leading the discussion and the other one taking the notes. Five or even six questions can selected to act as the guideline for an open ended discussion. The main goal of the discussion will be to achieve a consensus as a group (Robson, 2000). At the end of the discussion the facilitator and the person who was doing the recording will do a summary in written form of the major points that would have been discussed in response to every question that was given

Observations

Observation will be made on the activities of the project and this will be guided by the semi-structured and the structured protocols that have been specifically designed to monitor if the key items that will be discussed in the interviews will be verified. That is if the safety measures that will be proposed in the interview will be implemented on the crane operators.

Personal interviews:- In this method, the investigator follows a procedure and seeks answers to a set of pre-conceived questions through personal interviews. This method of collecting data is usually carried out in a structured way where output depends, to a large extent, on the ability of the interviewer. This can apply to those will not be able to use the questionnaire / or cannot be able to read or write.

Strengths

The researcher is able to read the respondents mind as they are discussing. There is that atmosphere of free expression between the interviewer and the interviewee.
Confidence is built between the researcher and the respondent as there is a provision for confidentiality.
As the discussion takes place, new information comes into the fold, some which may be beneficial to the researcher.
Information gathered is reliable. The information that is collected through this method deals with the feelings, emotions, sentiments etc. Only the person who is affected can give description of their depth.

Weaknesses

The method is time consuming; at times the respondents can talk for too long at the expense of the researcher. Sometimes it becomes very difficult to control them and so persevere till the exercise is over.
Language barrier- the researcher may not be able to speak the local language and therefore need the services of an interpreter.
Some clients may not be willing to give out some confidential information to the researcher for fear that they may tell the same to other people. They could rather prefer write it on paper but not including their names.

Questionnaires:-This is the method most commonly used when respondents can be reached and are willing to cooperate. This method can reach a large number of subjects, who are able to read and write. If need be it can be translated into the language which the respondent will be able understand or the researcher can translate it for the respondent to understand.

Strengths

The method saves time. The respondent is able to answer the questions on the questionnaire within a very short time without asking any other additional questions.
The researcher is able to get many respondents. The questions in the questionnaire are easy to understand and so respondents answers quickly and return to them to the researcher who then moves to the next respondent.
Free from external influence. The respondent is able to all the questions without being influenced by anybody, hence provide information according to their knowledge, views and attitudes.

Weaknesses

It is expensive to many copies of the questionnaires. The researcher may not be able to have enough resources for making the copies for the target number of respondents.
Sometimes, if questionnaires are left with the respondents, there is a possibility that they may not be sent back to the interviewer. This can seriously affect the end result of the study.
Respondents may answer some questions irrelevantly. This will force the researcher to make a follow up on the respondent so that he can answer the question well.
This method applies best to those respondents who are able to read and write. For those who are unable to read and write will shy away from the exercise.
Incomplete entries and bad handwriting. Respondents are sometimes not responsive and aware of the importance of the study and so they will leave out many questions unanswered, and some have very poor handwriting which cannot be clearly visible to the researcher.

Analysis

There are several steps that will be involved in the analysis of data and these steps are; understanding what qualitative data analysis is all about. The major core of qualitative analysis lies in giving a good description to the phenomenon, classifying the phenomenon and finally seeing how all the concepts interconnect (Roselyn, 2000). The next step will be introducing computers as a main data analysis tool. There are several aspects that will need the help of computers in their analysis and at this point the computers will come in handy.

The following step in the procedure of data analysis will be finding focus. In fact this should have been the first step. The researcher should always have his focus right in place. In finding focus the researcher can use the available resources to make sure everything is in the right place. Then after the focus finding, data management will be the next one. Any good analysis will require that the researcher should have good management of the data found. Information found can best be managed by filing them and giving a good access to the filed information.

A good analysis will depend on how well one reads and understands the data that would have been collected. This requires one to have good reading and understanding skills. Creation of categories will also be necessary in data analysis. These categories will help in easy analysis of data in a faster way. At this point, the data will have to be linked to the actual research project to make sure that everything blends with the other. Once the data or information flows, a conclusion will have to be made on the whole process of analysis.

The analysis of data requires a number of closely related operations such the establishments of categories to raw data through coding, tabulation and then drawing statistical inference. It should be anticipated that that the large amounts of field data should eventually be condensed into few manageable groups and tables for further analysis.

Reflexivity

The type of research is very hectic and needs total commitment to it. The researcher has got to be crane workers because of the type respondents he / she is going to handle. Most of them have safety concerns and so have to be handled with a lot of care. The researcher has to risk his/ her life at times as respondents may become very violent or non-responsive during the interview. Anyone researcher venturing into this kind of study must take all the precautionary measures in order to attain his/ her objectives.

Expected contributions

The expected findings could include the following;

The hypothesis could have been proved right or wrong, whether the men with safety concerns more likely to poor producers.
The study could have assessed the impact of safety concern on the crane workers, how their lives, lifestyle and their socialization has changed from the time they have been hurt of the circumstance up to now, what are their feelings and how they feel they should be treated.
The efforts that will have been made to address the needs of these workers and it will also be important to know how they are being handled.

The qualitative methods of research as seen are the best methods to be used when carrying out such projects. However in most cases these methods should be used hand in hand with the quantitative methods of research. They are therefore interdependent.

References

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