Management Of Food Waste In Melbourne: Research Design, Data Collection, And Ethical Considerations

Research Design

Discuss about the Management Of Food Waswatge In Melbourne.

The researcher will rely on both primary and secondary data to develop the proposed study. Notably, a mixed research design will be used to strike a balance between the biases and limitations of employing one method (Aguinis, 2006). In environmental surveys, the mixed research approach is widely adopted in surveys involving waste management (Li, 2011) .The researcher will use the results of interview analysis as an enhancement for the results from quantitative analysis to develop the discussion section.

To assess the achievability of the study, both primary and secondary data will be collected and reviewed. First, current research on the topic of waste management in Australia will be gathered, and both reports from government opinions and independent researchers will be considered. The materials will be collected from many sources including websites, PDFs, newspaper articles, books, and other electronic sources for example conference recordings and interviews (Morrissey and Browne, 2004). For primary data, the researcher will use online survey that will be circulated through different social media sites but limited to the Australian audience.

Though the researcher expects this to have, a limited the number of respondents, the researcher it essential to evaluate only the attitudes of the Australian people regarding the project. The waste products collected from the sampled organizations will be placed in a plastic bin. The researcher will then measure the volume of waste at the end of each production day and record that volume in a data log (van Dijk, 2014). The amount of waste will be scrutinized and documented cautiously to be likened to the size of garbage testified by employees. The total quarts of waste will be recorded for separate zones over four weeks by the employees and will be compared with the aggregate number of quarts of garbage that will assess and separated into ingredients over four weeks by the researcher.

Prior to rolling out the survey to respondents, approval will be got from the University. To optimize on the response rate, the researcher will make use of two data collection methods for each survey: i.e., online study and posting the survey tools to managers and directors of the sampled companies who will not respond through the other means. Also, phone surveys will be piloted with the manufacturing company’s managers. Because the researcher expects this population to have many issues to do with the time constraints, a shopping voucher will be offered as motivation to those who complete the survey. Come early June; the polls will be emailed through Qualtrics Online Survey Software (Peer et al., 2012) to all directors and managers with an invitation letter elucidating the aim of the study, the incentives that will offer if they will reply to the survey, and the confidential kind of the feedback. Besides, the researcher will also be sending a weekly reminder to respondents who not have responded to the study for three weeks. Concurrently, the researcher will mail surveys to managers and directors from whom complete answers will be missing. Each envelope will contain the questionnaire, invitation letter, and another envelope with the return postage and address. Furthermore, the directors of manufacturing firms who will not have replied will be called on the daily basis by the researcher during the last two weeks of June.

Data Collection Methods

Certainly, the survey will be conducted among the stakeholders that are involved in solid waste management of manufacturing industries in one of the popular industrial states in Australia. The survey will use both a semi-structured interview and structured questionnaire to achieve research hypotheses. Since the survey will involve different categories of manufacturing firms, a simple random sampling technique will be adopted to arrive at the sample size. In this technique of sampling, each zone will have an opportunity to be surveyed with different numbers and types of companies (Mingers and Rosenhead, 2011). About 1700 manufacturing firms are situated in the study area hence the calculated sample size of the study will be 312 (at 95% confidence level) using the Cochran (1977) formula (Aguinis, 2006).

Waste management is a sensitive topic owing to several ethical hullabaloos which are linked to social values and responsibility concerning environment, society, and economy (Lazaridesa, 2011).  As such, the researcher will adhere to the ethical rules and procedures of the lead partner organization (campus of learning) and align with the ethical authorization values from specific organizations to be surveyed.  Ethical values are ordered into four: absence of informed consent, deception, harming the participants, and invasion of discretion (Humphreys, 2016). To start with, the researcher will adhere to the ethical principle of the absence of informed consent. According to di Norcia (2006), eligible participants should get as much info necessary to choose whether to engage in a survey or not. For the planned researcher, the researcher will give out information to the respondents regarding the study and his contact details for further questions by the participants when a needed arises.  Another ethical issue that the researcher will observe is the risk of harming both the respondents and the business to be surveyed (Aguinis, 2006). The danger of hurting the participants in this survey will be avoided by making the data collection instrument anonymous and by keeping the responses as confidential as possible. Furthermore, to protect the participation of the nominated organization in the proposed survey, the researcher will keep their names unidentified. Other than the above two ethical values, the researcher will also take note of the invasion of the privacy principle of research ethics (Schwab, 2006). The researcher expects that at one point the participant could regard some inquiries to be so sensitive and thus would prefer not respond. For the looming study, the researcher will allow the participants to skip some questions that will deem too sensitive to them. Last, of all, the researcher will also adhere to the principle of deception in research ethics. According to Schoonenboom (2017), deception in research occurs when a participant is made to accept that a survey is a different thing than what it is. For this research, clear clarification of the purpose of the study will be given by the researcher. Besides, the researcher will be willing and remain available to answer any arising questions from respondents when needed.

Qualtrics Survey

The collected quantitative data will be analyzed using IBM-SPSS (version 22 software), and the analytical technics that will be used will include paired sample T-test, Spearman correlation, descriptive statistics, and multiple regression analysis. Correspondingly, exploratory data analysis will be conducted at an earlier stage to give evidence for choosing the type of inferential statistics like multi-collinearity and normality (Nagahara, 2004). For instrument validity in the proposed study, the researcher will use content validity because according to Schoonenboom (2017), it is sufficient to evaluate the goodness of an instrument. It warrants that the objects in the study are appropriate, sufficient, and demonstrative enough to be certified by a panel of judges (Schwab, 2006).

Paired Sample T-test

The first section of the questionnaire will be designed to collect data concerning the quantity of solid waste generation (tons/year) before and after implementing waste management practices. In the proposed study,   the researcher will use a paired sample T-test to compare the mean score of the overall waste generation before and after performing waste minimization using Multiple Linear Regression and Spearman Correlation. The other section of the survey instrument will be about the waste minimization techniques as applied by the sampled industries. In this part, the participants will be requested to give the frequency practicing waste minimization. The researcher will use the five-point Likert scales to give numerous frequency choices for minimization approaches practicing where 1 will be used to indicate never practices at all, 2 to represent rarely practices, 3  to denote sometimes practices, 4 to denote often practices and 5 to symbolize always practices. In this section of the survey, the researcher will first use frequency analysis to demonstrate the extent of practicing among manufacturing companies. Also, correlation analysis will be used to investigate the interrelationship waste minimization methods and between the quantity of waste reduction. This will be followed by multiple linear regression analysis to prove the significant results of approaches in decrease in wastes.

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