Description of Research Methods

The readability issues of terms and conditions are one of the significant areas related to privacy and security breaches among the customers all users. The use of information technology has various policies regarding the privacy and protection of user’s information but due to the process of unreadable terms and conditions breaches are increasing every day. Most of the online organisations have the policies to collect personal information about the customers which are being stored and process and sometimes also analysed for gaining knowledge about the customer for adding up more value for the services or products. Collection of this information is counted within the organisational business model. This information has specific terms and conditions which are documented and all online service providers provide these terms and conditions to their customers (Abdulkadiro?lu et al. 2017). However, these terms and conditions generally time consuming for reading which is the main reason behind most of the customer avoid to read out. The purpose of this research review is to understand the specific research methods which have used for reviewing the knowledge about this topic area.

For this research, on the privacy and security breaches due to the visibility of terms and conditions, a survey on the Peer-reviewed scholarly articles has done. The peer review scholarly article refers to the academic or professional piece of writing written by the scholars with the relevant source of information. For the complete research, the secondary data is used for understanding the research area (Carter et al. 2014). Mainly, the secondary data is used for this research review. The secondary data refers to directly the information which is collected by other than the user of the data currently. The secondary data is commonly sourced from the various recorded documentation. This recorded documentation might include from the organisational records, books, journals, government department data, etc. However, most of the secondary data are authorised, and therefore the authenticity of the work related to secondary data information provide the best quality of research. There is also the advantage of using secondary data because the information is collected from legally documented areas like the government department, tax records, social security, etc. (De Coninck and Helsen, 2016). In addition to that, the progress of the data is continuously gained from this secondary data because of its necessity in the society and national level. In addition to that most of the libraries and internet resources of data are counted among the secondary data. However, within the secondary data, both the quantitative and qualitative data can we find out which is more valid and reliable than any other type of data.

Comparison of methods

For research on this topic, the survey method is used as part of the secondary data. This survey is done in the peer-reviewed scholarly journals which contain both statistical data and descriptive data (Hair et al. 2015). However, surveying the secondary data collection increases the authenticity of the data by providing proper cost-effectiveness.

The research methods refer to the scientific and systematic procedure of data gathering, completion, analysis of the data, interpretation and also using them for different purpose of solving the problem. The general classification of research method and mainly two different types doors are qualitative research and quantitative research (Kratochwill, 2015). The qualitative research refers to gathering the information which did not contain mathematical techniques but includes the descriptive type of data which is not at all numerical. However, the quantitative data is different from the qualitative data and mainly focuses on solving problems describing it by using the proper use of numbers. The quantitative research refers to the statistical data collection for drawing the proper conclusion from the data.

Depending on the nature of study the research method can also be selected by the researcher. There are two different type of research method according to the study of nature. One is known as the analytical research, and the other type is descriptive research. The analytical research refers to the different data or facts collected by the researcher who is already available and using those data for mainly critically evaluating it. The descriptive research method is different from the analytical research because the descriptive research includes various service studies which mainly aiming at the identification of various facts (Levine et al. 2018). Another most essential nature of detailed research is evaluating especially the present facts no control within the variables is identified.

Depending on the purpose of the study research Method can also be distinguished. There is two type of purpose for a research one is the fundamental research, and the other one is applied research. However, the fundamental research is known as the pure research or basic research, but the applied research mainly depends on the action of the research. The differences between the applied researches have specified the purpose of the study. The fundamental research is primarily aiming at solving problems by using the field of application. However, the applied study refers to illuminating all theories related to the research and developing a new one within the discipline (Lewis, 2015). In addition to that, the fundamental research can work by accounting several controls together for solving the problem, but the focus of applied research mainly analyse the problem under one discipline. In the applied research the process of generalisation are primary preferred but in the process of fundamental research generalisation is not the central concept but researching on individual cases is also involved. The focus of fundamental research is on describing the ways various things are changing, but for Applied research, the forecasting approach of change implicated as part of the research. The fundamental research is associated with acknowledging the variables which are mainly constant in the process of changing but the applied research mainly assume that other variables are not associated with change (Lin et al. 2017). Finally most of the significant reports written or compiled in the simple language all common language. As for the applied research, the reports are written on the technical language of the research discipline.

Finally, there is another type of differences within the Research Design which are exploratory Research and conclusive research. The conclusive research is based on the contrary, and the purpose of this research is to provide the conclusive answer for final answers to the specified research questions. However, the exploratory study aims to explore the research area without attempting on giving answers to the research questions. The Research Design is the main purpose of this type of research methods. As the main differences between these two type of research characterised by the structure, methodology, hypothesis and findings of the research. The conclusive research is mainly systematic in design and well structure research. The exploratory research mainly has a loose structure design (Maeder et al. 2018). The methodology of the exploratory research is the investigation as well as flexible. However, the conclusive research methodology is mainly defensive and formal which has developed for the process of testing and following needs. The hypothesis of conclusive research mainly done for the process of testing of formulated hypothesis and the exploratory research hypothesis did not involve with testing of hypothesis. Lastly, the findings of the exploratory research are topic specific and did not have specific outside relevance from the domain of the researcher. But the findings of conclusive research based on the theoretical and applied implication.

Strengths and limitations- However, there are some strengths and limitations of the quantitative and qualitative research methodology. Using the quantitative method is associated with providing numeric details of the research topic on the security and privacy breaches because of the readability of terms and conditions (McCord et al. 2017). The use of numeric data related to the online service user customers helps in understanding the proper numbers of online service using customers and their perception of this readability concept. But the proper understanding or concept of the service users did not be gathered from this quantitative data. The statistical understanding can we build up with this quantitative data about this breaching of privacy and security policy but how the online service using customers is explaining their breaching of policy and security issues cannot be understood.

In case of using the qualitative method, the perceptions about the customers understanding related to the readability concept can be understood with the various process of qualitative data collection (Nuttin, 2014). The articles introduce various case studies which contain the customer’s concept of this topic. But what is the specific number of customers who are agreed with this same statement or who did not properly agree with the statement cannot be understood with the use of the qualitative method. Therefore for appropriate data collection on this topic area, both are quantitative and qualitative research has been done on the secondary data collected from the peer-reviewed scholarly articles (Sekaran & Bougie, 2016).

For this specific research area, a specific process of the research area is identified and used for this research. In the initial step, the identification of the problem is done. Depending on the problem of privacy and security breaching issues related to the readability of terms and condition policies in the online service providing organisation, a literature review is developed. In the next step, the clarification of the problem is developed on the topic for specifying the research areas. After that terms and conditions are developed for the description of the data (Wohlin and Aurum, 2015). After that, the specific area of Data Collection in the procedure of Data Collection is selected depending on the literature review outcome and problem statement. In this study, the secondary data is by doing a survey on the on the selected Peer-reviewed journal on the selected topic. Finally, the data is analysed by using both quantitative and qualitative process. The data collected from the secondary research include both the quantitative and qualitative authentic data from various authentic sources. Those data are critically analysed for limiting the number of bias for this research.

Conclusion

In light of the above discussion, it can be established at the use of secondary data from the Peer-reviewed journals has helped in developing understanding about the policy and security breaches related to the readability of terms and conditions used by the online service providing organisation. The process is time-consuming for most of the customers, and the length of the term and conditions are increasing with every legal intervention. Therefore understanding or properly reading them is not always possible for the service users. This methodological use of data collection and data analysis process help in understanding the various aspects related to the specific topic. It also broadens up the areas which need more focus for future research on this topic area. Finally, it can be recommended that for the better understanding of this topic primary research can be introduced based on this topic to understand the grassroots level information from the service users itself.

References

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