The Rockness festival on the other hand, celebrates its 3rd year running so it is a fairly new event and is held on the outskirts of Inverness which is located in the remote highlands of Scotland. It is a commercial music event holding 30,000 revellers on the banks of Lochness. The locals are not used to big entertainment so over the past two years this festival has been a large talking point. The local farmers were given free access for them and all their families. Nothing like this festival has ever been staged in Inverness so almost all of their population are very interested in ‘Rockness’.
Perhaps this makes it different from other festivals down south where the locals are used to bigger commercial events and feel that these festivals do not contribute any more to the local area. While in Inverness the local government also is supportive of the festival since “Fatboy Slim” the organiser of the 2006 festival contributed a part of his profit from the festival to the city and the council made use of the contribution to build a playground for use of the children of Inverness. Chapter 3 Methodology Introduction
Although the Literature Review can answer many of the questions linked with this study, it does not have first hand information. It is the responsibility of the Primary Research to collect this first hand information. The following chapter will identify the approach the researcher has taken to collect results from the local community in Newcastle Upon Tyne and Inverness. This research will make use of survey questionnaires to acquire data and correlate the results in order to come up with feasible answers to the query at hand and provide input on relevant issues as provided by the data.
Research Approach The research approach for this dissertation is qualitative in nature, through the thematic analysis of interview responses. The motivation for undertaking qualitative research comes from the observation that qualitative research methods are designed to help researchers understand people and the social and cultural context within which they live. Kaplan and Maxwell (1994) argue that the goal of understanding a phenomenon from the point of view of participants and its particular social and institutional context is largely lost when textual data are quantified.
Qualitative research in general is more likely to take place in a natural setting (Denzin, 1971). This means that topics for study focus on everyday activity as defined “defined, enacted, smoothed, and made problematic by persons going about their normal routines” (Van Maanen, 1983). Moreover, because a qualitative research is a deep and exploratory investigation by the researcher it provides a more holistic view on the subject matter as facts and ideas from different school of thought are gathered upon to draw up a conclusion.
Examples of qualitative research include: interviews, questionnaires, case-study, research, documents and texts. Although this research will not make use of direct interviewing, however it would include the use of documents, texts, in-depth investigative research and an in-depth exploration of case studies. This form of observatory research methodology will be achieved indirectly, by studying the company reports, online resources and company documentation (Easterby-Smith et al, 2002).
A survey is a means of gathering information about the characteristics, actions, or opinions of a large group of people, referred to as a population (Salkind, 2000). There are several ways of collating data; surveys are the primary means through which data is measured and captured. They have varied purposes, and encompass marketing surveys, opinion surveys, and political polls, among others Sampling Plan In all research work, it is usually impossible to survey the whole populace under study.
Therefore it is of foremost importance to target correctly and determine a sampling frame and a sampling size that will allow the result to be generalizable to the whole population. A sampling frame is a representation of the elements for determining the target population (Malhotra & Birks, 1999). The methods of how sample size is worked out can be found in the ‘Pilot’ section. “The target population has to be defined in such a manner that it contains information on sampling elements, sampling units, and the area of coverage” (Aaker et al, 1995).
It is important to target the correct people with the questionnaires in order to get an overall view of the festival . Random sampling is often the preferred form of research used to collect accurate data. White (2006, p. 60) states that random sampling means, “Every sampling unit or member of the population has an equal chance of being selected. ” This means that the selection of people is completely at random. As the research needs to include people who have been to the festivals, a proportion of the questionnaires were selectively given only to people who had attended the events.
Sekaran (2003, p. 277) refers to non- random sampling as, “The sampling here is confirmed to specific types of people who can provide the desired information, either because they are the only ones who have it, or conform to some criteria set by the researcher. ” It is therefore the researchers plan to hand out 20 sample questionnaires to the people hanging out in local night clubs and aside from that it is also planned to hand out same questionnaires to another 20 residents living in the area near the event, so as not to target only clubbers and party goers.
The survey would also target two festivals, the ‘Evolution’ festival of Newcastle Gateshead and the ‘Rockness’ festival to be held at Inverness. Instrument McClelland (1994) states that custom-designed questionnaires are of the kind which are made to comply with observance to addressing barely defined issues. The instrument has been a self-constructed survey questionnaire aimed at procuring data on the frequency and willingness of population to go to festivals particularly the festivals to be held this year at Inverness – the Rockness festival and Newcastle-Gateshead – the Evolution.