Week 1 – Framing Question

With companies continuing to expand globally and reaching broader audiences especially through the internet, do these companies limit their research to a country by country or culture by culture basis? Depending on the culture, responses and the reasons behind them can vary greatly but do companies look to see if there are similarities in responses even though the cultures differ greatly? Is it feasible to conduct more globally representative research or is the scope too great?

If we were to conduct a survey on say, Facebook, where a person can have many friends, located globally, should all responses be counted or should we limit them to a specific region, such as the US, or if the survey encompasses a certain ideal candidate, such as music listeners or video game players, is it acceptable to include responses from different parts of the world? Or would it affect the validity and reliability of the results?

For our research paper, which type of data should we be more focused on collecting – qualitative or quantitative? Should we be collecting original data if it’s quantitative (would it even accurately represent a broad audience?) or should we be looking at research already done?