Research methods

QUESTION ONE (COMPULSORY) It could be argued that governments of developing countries may be irrelevant without the provision of public goods and services. Even though contracting has become a sure way of providing most government services, Ghana is falling short of proper contract management practices hence the prospects of contracting is becoming unpleasant in the country. The result is contract damages on the part of the state agencies. The government of Ghana spends millions of dollars each year on contract damages, popularly known as judgement debts. Unfortunately, breach of contracts constitutes majority of such payments. A question that comes to mind is whether state agencies adhere to contract management principles when entering into these contracts? The Minister of Local Government wants to know whether adherence to contract management principles can help reduce contract damages in local assemblies of the country. The Minister also wants to know if the sex and education of the Municipal/Metropolitan/District Chief Executives can also influence the contract damages. The Minister contracted the Third Eye Consult Ltd. for this project. Assuming you are the director of the Third Eye Consult, answer the following questions noting that Ghana has 216 local assemblies made up of 6 metropolitan assemblies 49 municipal assemblies, and 161 district assemblies: a. Formulate a research topic and state the dependent and three independent variables. [4 marks] b. State the general objective and two specific objectives for this study. [5 marks] c. State both the null and alternative hypotheses for each specific objective [4 marks] d. Identify the population of your proposed study and the sampling technique(s) to be adopted in selecting a sample of 100 . Justify the sampling technique(s) chosen. [5 marks] e. Identify the type of research approach to be adopted and justify it [4 marks] f. Indicate source of data you will use for this study. [3 marks] g. Assuming you will have to collect data from the respondents directly, state the data collection instrument you will use and justify why you will use that instrument. [5 marks] 30 MARKS