Quantitative data collection

This questionnaire was related to all academics and experts, arbitrators and engineers in Saudi construction projects. The questionnaire consisted of 37 questions in total and was divided into seven sections as follows. Refer to Appendix 3:

The first section: the general information about the participants the information about the nationality and if those work in sectors are with Saudi nationality or none Saudi Nationality. Next, they were asked if they had been confronted with any disputes, and then, if they had participated in solving any disputes in Saudi construction projects. The next question was about the Classification of Responses According to the Saudi Council of Engineers. Then next question was about their experiences and after that, there was a question to classify the participants based on their Bachelor degree. After this, participants were asked which organization they work for, and whether they are an owner, a consultant or a contractor. The next question asked which sector is the

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participant working in, public or private. The next question was about their qualifications. The next was about the amount of dangers that a dispute can have through its impact upon Saudi construction projects, and ultimately it was this question that what the satisfied the disputes resolution in Saudi construction projects.

The second section: the impact of disputes on Saudi construction projects. The participants were questioned about the impact of disputes on Time, Cost and Quality. Through this question of disputes, dangers to Saudi construction projects were compared with the impact of disputes on Saudi construction projects.

The third section: the types and causes of disputes in Saudi construction projects. The causes were divided into eight categories and each category (type of disputes) have many of causes divided such as all. First was the Financial, with five causes. The second was Contractual, with seven causes; and the third was Owner disputes, with five causes. The fourth was Design disputes, with two causes; the fifth was People’s behaviour disputes, with six causes; and the sixth was Contractor with seven causes. The seventh was Project-related, with three causes; and the eighth was two External. Finally, there was the last question, which was to compare the causes of disputes with years of experience of participants.

The fourth section: the methods of dispute resolution in Saudi construction projects. In this section, the questions were in four series:

o First question: comparing methods of dispute resolution in government upon those individuals working in both public and private sectors.

o Second question: comparing the method of dispute resolution in non-government with those who work in private and public sectors.

o Third question: this was about the method of dispute resolution in the private sector, and the times taken by each method were compared.

o Fourth question: a comparison between the cost of each method of solving disputes in both sectors and the participants’ education level.

The fifth section: ranks and analyses the critical success factors for Alternative dispute resolution.

The sixth section: ranks and analyses the barriers of using Alternative dispute resolution in Saudi Construction Project

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The seventh section: comparison between the methods of dispute resolution in Saudi construction projects with type and causes of disputes: there were eight questions under this section that were related to comparing the cause of disputes with the individuals with Bachelor degree.

 The questionnaire design

The analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data will depend on the design of the questions, since the questionnaire was designed based on classification and also the power of the questionnaire was driven from the power of those questions (Saunders et. al., 2012). From classified questions, and ranking and rating, a five-point Likert Scale (“strongly disagree, disagree, undecided, agree, strongly agree”) was used, and that helped participants to decide more easily by providing a variety of choices.

 Pilot study for the questionnaire

Following the stage of designing the questionnaire and before distributing it, the questionnaire was checked and forwarded to a group of 10 experts, arbitrators and engineers to ensure that it was clear and easy to understand by any readers. Following collecting their points, the questions were reviewed and corrections were implemented, and then the questionnaire was distributed.  Questionnaire sample

Sampling for questionnaires aims to select participants for the investigation and reduce the overall amount of people that are required to be interviewed or complete a questionnaire. Various sampling techniques are possible and were outlined, such as: probability, quota and snowballing (Oppenheim, 1992). In particular, snowball sampling is useful when none of the characteristics of a population are known, as it becomes impossible to devise a sampling frame in this scenario, as the target population dynamics fail to materialise. Therefore, there is only a partial or totally inaccurate representation of the population, even following the use of multiple methods.

56 Table 4-4: Questionnaire sample

Responses Responses received the questionnaire Responses in Public sector Responses in Private sector Responses who filled questionnaire No 900 213 114 327

Figure 4-5: Data collection method

The snowball strategy was used to collect samples, which involved backing others by means of personal connection. The data was collected by various methods, such as face-to-face interviews. and by social networking (twitter, WhatsApp and email), see figure 4-5 (Saunders et. al, 2012). The questionnaire was distributed between experts, arbitrators and engineers involved in Saudi construction projects. The number of sample size is 900 participants. The number of those who completed the questionnaire was 327, and from this figure, 213 of the participants worked in the public sector in Saudi Arabia, with the remaining the 114 participants from the private sector, see table 4-4. Survey Monkey was also used to collect data, and was distributed to the participants. Collecting the date from the questionnaires took eight weeks, and during this period, reminder letters were sent to participants three times. By using the Internet to complete the questionnaire, this technique enabled the researcher to reach out to most sectors of people in a short time frame, however, it should be noted that the rate of those who answered the questionnaire through this method was relatively low when compared to the other methods employed in the study (Saunders et. al, 2012).

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