System and Objectives of Research Design
Research design is the plan and structure of investigation so developed as to obtain answers to research questions. The plan is the overall scheme or program of the research. According to Cooper & Schinder, there are many definitions of research design but no one definition impacts the full range of important aspects. The research design used for the study was descriptive research design. Gay defines descriptive research as a process of collecting data to test hypothesis or to answer questions concerning the current study. Hypothesis are made but not yet tested or questions are asked but not yet answered. The researcher has to collect data to answer questions to research questions in order to provide recommendations.
Furthermore, descriptive research determines and reports the way things are. It portrays the facts as it really is; if another researcher goes to the field now, he or she will find the situation as described. These writers claim the descriptive research design is one of the best methods for conducting research in human contexts because of portraying accurate current facts through data collection for testing hypothesis or answering questions to conclude the study. The study questions for this study were answered through the description of the current status of long-term debt financing in an organizations.
Research Respondents
Population
A population is an entire group of individuals, events or objects having common characteristics that conform to a given specification. According to Saunders the population is the full set of cases from which a sample is taken. The population of interest was 5 companies quoted. The target population included all the quoted companies.
Study Sample
Sampling is the process of selecting a number of individuals for a study in such a way that the individual selected represents the large group from which they are selected. Sampling procedure may be defined as a systematic process of individuals for a study to represent the larger group from which they are selected.
This study employed a census method as the sampling technique that involved the entire population of the 5 companies. According to Cooper & Schindler a census is feasible when the population is small and necessary when the elements are quite different from each other. When the population is small and variable, any sample we draw may not be representative of the population from which it is drawn
Sample Size
According to Chandran a sample is a small proportion of an entire population; a selection from the population. The entire population of 5 companies quoted was taken
Response Rate
This section sought to show the actual number of respondents who responded in the study against the targeted sample size.
Frequency Percentage
- Non-respondents 2 19.1%
- Actual Response 3 80.9%
- Target Population 5 100%
The study targeted 5 companies quoted at Dipolog City who were a representation of 100% of the total sample size. However, the study managed to successfully collect data from 3 respondents who represented 80.9% of the total sample size. This sample size was reliable to meet the objectives of the study. Only 19.1 % of the respondents did not respond. sample size of 5 companies quoted at Dipolog City was used and 3 of them successfully responded.
Research Instruments
Data Collection
Data collection is gathering empirical evidence in order to gain new insights about a situation and answer questions that prompt undertaking of the research. Primary and secondary data are the types of data collected. Primary data is defined as first hand information received from a respondent. Data that has been already collected and process is secondary data. According to Chandran, questionnaire is a series of written questions on a topic about which the respondentsâ opinions are sought. Questionnaires provide a high degree of data standardization and adoption of generalized information amongst any population. They are useful in a descriptive study where there is need to quickly and easily get information from people in a non-threatening way. In this study, questionnaires were circulated to the companies through drop and pick method.
The secondary data was collected from the companies. The companies maintains annual financial statements of all listed companies. They were deemed to provide an accurate and true position of the firmâs operations in any given year. Data relating to interest rates, tax rate, and debt ratio was derived from these financial statements. The same financial statements provided the debt equity (DE) ratio for each of the sampled companies annually for the entire research period.
Research Procedures
The whole process which starts immediately after data collection and ends at the point of interpretation and processing data is data analysis. Chandran, defines statistics as a discipline that provides the tools of analysis in research and one which refers to facts, information or data and to a system of data collection and analysis.
Factor analysis, a statistical method used to describe variability among observed variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved variables, was utilized in this study. The information gained about the interdependencies between observed variables can be used later to reduce the set of variables in a dataset. In this study, data was analyzed and was presented in tables and graphs.
