Introduction
Professional and disciplinary researches are two perspectives that are similar yet different. Disciplinary research is concerned with the act of getting information and analyzing it for a particular discipline such as accounting. Professional research is the one carried out by graduate students, professors and any other field that is concerned with a study to analyze a student or a person’s ability to do carry out a study. This paper looks at the two perspectives and offers a case study of professional research.
Analysis
Online marketing research is hailed from many different points of view. The response rate is big and the base for the research is wide. It is multifaceted and involves a response from many and diverse people. This leads to a good result on which to base our arguments. Though the same methodology is used, similar questionnaires, it is evident that online research in marketing generates better and informative responses than postal research (Smith and MacDonald, 2003).
Though the discipline of marketing can be able to gauge and evaluate the type of persons to respond to their questions as well as demography dynamics using the postal way, it is really hard to do that using the online way. This is because it is easy to say that the respondents are over 30 years and have a degree but this may form a small population of your response. Also, the respondents may be required to come from a certain area but unless there is software to trend the whereabouts of the populace answering the questions, it is hard to do that (Opperman, 1995).
The online data collection may restrict the respondents from answering some questions especially if they touch on the personal lives of the respondents due to the perceived lack of security and trust of online usage. This propels the usage of postal data collection at a high pedestal in terms of better and well-responded questions. Therefore its usage for analysis is better and the outcome more informative. The online way is also quite cheap and the access for the uninhibited population for data collection is enormous as compared to the postal way that is bound to be quite expensive (Hanson, 2000).
Case Study
Teachers in this study carried out research in which they wanted to know the impact of acquiring a second language on students and people. Research is the driver of every profession worldwide including the teaching profession. The teachers involved themselves in studying the impact of second language acquisition, each carrying his/her study and using an earlier study on the same topic as the baseline. A specific group of teachers was the target group. They were sent questionnaires with 28 questions asking about their perceptions regarding teacher research (Smith and MacDonald, 2003).
The teachers also employed personal and group interviews and each teacher involved was given a certain theme to tackle. Different and very divergent responses emerged and reasons that may have fostered this were analyzed. This included a big workload for teachers that constrained them time-wise and the different administrations in schools that had different views in terms of encouraging teacher research. The teachers also had the problem of managing and understanding the whole research process and the manner to conduct it. While some may have employed emails on their own, it became hard for them to use the prescribed methods (Jeurrisen and Keith, 2006).
Conclusion
Professional discipline research can be interesting and enjoyable if the participants find it so. The participants include the target audience and the interviewers. The methods used may be the defining factor of the results and analysis as it was noted with the online and the postal responses. In the case study, it is also evident that the time and knowledge of research affects the findings.
References
Hanson, W. (2000). Principles of Internet Marketing. Cincinnati, OH: South-Western College Publishing.
Keith, M. & Jeurrisen, M. (2006). Teacher study as tessol professional development: a case study. New Zealand Journal of Teachers Work, 3(1), 33-41. Web.
Opperman, M. (1995). E-mail surveys. Potentials and Pitfalls. Marketing Research, 7(5), 29-33.
Smith, A. & MacDonald, H. (2003). A comparison of online and postal data collection methods in marketing research. Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 21(2), 85-95.