Questionnaire design

The questionnaire was designed following the recommendations of Dillman (2000); Bower (1999); Frazer and Lawley (2000); Kinnear et al. (1994); Copper and Emory (1995) and included the following substantive processes:

Internet-Based Questionnaire

PART 1

Section A

Strategic Motives and Regional Port Strategies Introduction to the Survey Section B Identification of Market Opportunities PART 2 Section C Evaluation of Market Opportunities Section D Choice of Market Opportunities Section E Implementation of Market Opportunities Section F Demographics

the determination of required information and from whom it should be sought; the determination of the interview method and the length of the questionnaire; preparation of the draft questionnaire;

pre-testing and revision of the questionnaire; and the assessment of validity and reliability.

• Determination of required information and sources

The required information was defined by the research questions and was sought from managers of both port authorities and port service providers as the key decision-makers involved in the process of exploiting market opportunities.

• Determination of the interview method and length of the questionnaire

In the present study, a self-administrated Internet questionnaire was chosen as the method through which effective communication with respondents could be achieved. Internet surveys are very new; but with the widespread availability and the growing use of the Internet they are becoming popular (Kotler 1998; Forrest 1999; Frazer and Lawley 2000; Dillman 2000; Nicholas and Sedivi 1998). Internet surveys made it possible to reach virtually all port managers dispersed across Australia in the most cost- effective manner. Consideration was also given to the fact that port managers had access to the Internet and preferred a survey that was simple and easy to complete. There are no general agreed rules about the length of Internet questionnaires. The survey was within the 4-12 pages suggested by some authors as long enough to cover the investigative questions without causing respondent fatigue (Frazer and Lawley 2000).

• Preparation of the draft questionnaire

The draft questionnaire was prepared taking into account question content, question wording, response format and a structure and layout to ensure that the questionnaire was valid, reliable and practical (Cooper and Emory 1995; Forrest 1999; Dillman et al. 1998).

Question content: The content of the questionnaire was consistent with the objectives of

the study and was specific to each research question. Overall, the questions asked regional port managers to evaluate the significance and relative importance of the factors that were gathered in the interviews reported in Chapter 4 and the literature review and which were considered by port experts as critical to the process of regional port growth strategy definition and implementation. For completeness one section asked demographics with the aim of determining the profile of a regional port manager involved in opportunity capture.

Question wording: The questions represented the link between the data and the

information needs of the study. Asking the wrong question has the potential of increasing the measurement error and reducing the response rate. While it is impossible to say which wording of a question is best, there is a substantial literature on principles and guidelines that should be followed to ensure that the question being asked is correct, effective and suitable for the context. In designing the Internet questionnaire we followed these recommendations (Gendall 1998; Schuman and Presser 1981).

Response format: In the questionnaire design we also considered the degree and form of

structure imposed on responses. The literature suggests at least three types of response format – free-response or free-answers; close-ended or structured responses in the sense that responses are categorized as single (where one response is required), dichotomous (were two response items are provided), or multichotomous (where several alternatives are listed); and scaled-responses which are generally used to measure the attributes or factor of a construct (Bruner II and Hensel 1994; Rockwood et al. 1997; Kinnear et al. 1994). In the Internet survey we used only a two-response format – close-ended and scaled-responses – depending on the issue being investigated.

Structure and layout: A self-administrated Internet survey needs to be attractive and

clear and should motivate the respondent to complete the questionnaire. To achieve this, effort was made to ensure that questions proceeded from the general to the more specific with questions on demographics appearing last. This approach is often referred to in the literature as the funnel approach and is highly recommended (Cooper and Emory 1995).

The questions were written in readable size fonts and we used limited colours to lend the questionnaire a professional appearance without distracting the respondents. Each question had instructions printed in colour to attract the attention of the respondents. There was also a provision of radio buttons to allow the recording of respondent's responses with a simple click of the radio button number that indicated the respondent's best answer to the question being asked. The questionnaire was designed in such a way that no respondent could submit the survey without having completed all questions. If the respondent had missed an answer to some questions at the time of the submission a prompt message appeared indicating which questions were left unanswered and needed to be answered before the submission could be successful. This strategy is effective and ensures that no missing data type of problems exists.

Before submitting the questionnaire the respondents were required to provide their identification. This was intended to ensure that the questionnaire had been completed by the right respondent. Once the responses were submitted they were automatically recorded and sent via email to the researcher in a pre-coded format that facilitated their recording into an Excel spreadsheet for later analysis. It is possible to design an Internet questionnaire which allows automatic recording of all responses directly into a spreadsheet; but in any case the success of the Internet survey is dependent on the fact that all respondents can open the questionnaire and have access to the Internet. To ensure this, the questionnaire was designed in Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and adjusted to fit the smallest computer standard size screen and one continuous page format was used. Respondents did not have to go to the next page; instead they were offered a continuous access to all questions through the page-scrolling button. When a questionnaire uses separate pages it raises the possibility that the respondent has to use the forward and back and reload buttons to get to the right question. This increases the complexity of the survey and the time required to fill-in the questionnaire.

• Pre-testing and revision of the questionnaire

Once the questionnaire was complete it was then pretested on 15 individuals with the objective of ensuring that potential problems were detected and eliminated and the questionnaire would be able to accomplish the survey objectives. Of these 15 individuals, 10 were port managers, 5 of which where chosen from those who had

participated in the early interviews. The other 5 were chosen from potential respondents to the Internet survey. The remaining 5 individuals were port consultants (3) and academics (2). All individuals asked to pretest the questionnaire responded positively to the invitation and returned the questionnaires within a week with comments that were later incorporated in the final questionnaire. Most comments were related to question wording, although a few observations were made on question content.

After modifications were made to the questionnaire it was loaded to the Internet and sent again to the same individuals. This time, however, the respondents were asked not only to re-assess the questionnaire content but also to make some comments on the ease of completion of the survey. Additionally, it allowed us to verify that the information was collected in the way in which it was conceptualised. Deficiencies detected in this process were eliminated before the questionnaire was ready to be administrated to a broad sample of regional port managers.

• Assessment of validity and reliability

The content and construct validity were assessed with the assistance of port experts and by recourse to the literature. All constructs used in the questionnaire were derived either from the interviews or from the literature or from general management practice. All constructs had been previously presented to a selected sample of port specialists to check for their consistency and conformity with the theory. Equally, the items under each construct were extracted from the results of the analysis presented in the previous chapter. The feedback from pretesting was also important in providing for content and construct validity. Port managers in the pretest stage felt that the questionnaire was robust. No specific measures of reliability such as correlations were developed but experts suggested that the way in which the questions, constructs and items were constructed was consistent with the theoretical underpinnings of questionnaire reliability and the results a test of reliability would produce (Frazer and Lawley 2000). The scales used were objective and appropriate, thus making the questionnaire reliable.

5.2.2 The sampling frame

The respondents to the Internet survey were chosen from port service providers and port authorities in major regional ports. Seventy-five potential respondents were assembled. The potential respondents were drawn from databases of 11 regional ports in Australia and covered New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania. In selecting the respondents a key consideration was that they would hold senior management positions within their organisations. Seniority was regarded as a critical selection criterion because generally it is related to strategic decisions and choices which are the subject of interest of the study (Khatri and Ng 2000).

Given that there are not many regional ports in Australia that qualify for the study, a strategy to maximize the sample was to target at least 5 senior managers in each port authority and port service provider. This approach is accepted in the literature not only as a means of maximizing the number of respondents but also of checking the consistency of responses within an organisation (Khatri and Ng 2000). One would expect to find less variability in responses if the strategy is shared equally by the management team within the organisation.

The number of managers surveyed was 57. The ports surveyed were Bunbury, Burnie, Devonport, Flinders Ports, Geelong, Gladstone, Launceston, Geraldton, Newcastle, Port Kembla and Portland and most managers in these ports held one of the following senior positions: CEO, managing director, general manager, business development manager, marketing manager, operations manager, logistics manager or financial manager. Each individual in the sample was approached, firstly via telephone and later through a personalised letter attached to an email and directed to each individual (Appendix 5). In both cases the objective was to secure the respondents' commitment to complete the Internet questionnaire.