tourism
Post on 22-Mar-2016
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TOURISMPETER ROBINSON MICHAEL LÜCK STEPHEN L. J. SMITH
Tourism Research17
Learning Objectives
• To appreciate fundamental approaches to doing research on tourism
• To understand key concepts relevant to doing research
• To describe the nature of research questions
• To understand different styles of research
• To discuss the nature of ‘theory’ in tourism research
• Tourism planning, development and marketing depend on good data and analysis
• Decisions should be based on evidence– May be either empirical (numerical or
independently verifiable) or subjective (not independently verifiable)
• Fundamentally: research is about asking and answering questions
Nature of Tourism Research
• Management questions– Usually multifaceted and complex– May involve personalities, institutional or
regulatory challenges, or politics– Often evolves as a result of trying to solve it– May not be solvable through research– Solution may depend on budgets, tact,
courage, ability/diplomacy of manager, compromise
Research Versus Management Questions
• Research questions – Must be answerable – not philosophical or
political ruminations– Tend to be more focused than management
questions– Answer is evidence-based– Answers based on data and analysis – not
personality of researcher
Research Versus Management Questions
• Management research: improve management activities such as marketing or operations– Often undertaken or commissioned by a
business • Planning research: future-oriented,
acquiring information to develop some project– Done by both public and private sectors
General Approaches to Research
• Policy research: supports the development of tourism policy and government priorities– Potential scope of public policy research is quite
wide• Social science research: a search for
deeper understanding of some phenomenon– Typically undertaken by a academics– Examines tourism from a wide range of
perspectives, such as a form of human behaviour or as a social phenomenon
General Approaches to Research
• Set of assumptions about the nature of reality and how individuals perceive reality– Epistemology: how we know what we know
• The relationship between the researcher and the subject
– Ontology: the nature of being or reality of the phenomenon studied
– Methodology: the methods or tools used to answer a research question
• Empirical• Subjective
Paradigms
• Usually based on numbers for coding and typically some form of statistical analysis
• Logic is explicit and can be replicated • Often involves hypothesis-testing
– The articulation of a possible relationship among variables
– Statistical tests are then used to assess whether the hypothesis appears valid
Empirical Research
• Usually based on words, thoughts, or images– Assumes people interpret experiences in
highly personal terms• Also includes ‘content analysis’ –
researcher interpreting documents, photographs, other records
• Cannot be independently verified
Subjective Research
• ‘Pure’ research: done solely to increase knowledge
• Applied or action research: done to solve a practical problem; initiated by researcher
• Consultancy research: commissioned by a client to solve his/her problem
Types of Tourism Research
• Workplace research: form of action research done internally by an employee(s) of a firm
• Delay research: a management tactic using ‘need for research’ to delay making a decision
Types of Tourism Research
• Description: provides information on what exists
• Explanation: generates insights into cause-and-effect relationships
• Prediction: forecasts likely outcome of a course of action (or inaction)
Functions of Research
• A familiar word used many different ways
• Types of ‘theory’– Theory of the first type: traditional, natural
science-type theory; only one theory accepted as valid; produces testable hypotheses
– Theory of the second type: similar to first type, but competing theories may exist; common in social sciences
The Nature of ‘Theory’
• More types of ‘theory’– Theory of the third type: label applied to
results of statistical testing– Theory of the fourth type:
untested/untestable verbal or graphic model
– Theory of the fifth type: epistemology presented as ‘theory’
– Theory of the sixth type: ‘grounded theory’– Theory of the seventh type: ‘theory’ used
without any special meaning
The Nature of ‘Theory’
• Set goals• Review related literature• Develop research design (data
collection and analysis methods)• Analysis• Articulate conclusions• Publish/report findings
Phases of a Research Project
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