Oxford City Council Research Proposal Essay

Oxford City Council (OCC) provides a range of recycling services, including kerbside collection services and recycling sites where residents can deposit items for recycling. Such schemes enable OCC to recycle approaching 40% of Oxford household waste currently. However, the UK government want to establish a recycling culture and continue to set increasing targets for household recycling, with an aim of reaching 50% by 2020. Following a recent (DEFRA) Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs initiative to allow the use of financial incentives for household waste minimisation and recycling, OCC is considering the introduction of a pilot scheme in selected postcodes areas. This would involve the introduction of bins fitted with microchips to monitor how much recycling and other waste a household produces, leading to refunds from local taxation bills for a good recycling performance or additional charges for a poor recycling performance. OCC is keen to understand likely reactions of residents to such a scheme and the overall impact that this might have on household recycling rates. OCC has invited the marketing research agency, Research Solutions to provide a proposal for marketing research to inform decision making. What is the research objective? A research objective is basically the main objective of the research i. e. the purpose of carrying out the research forms the research objective. The research objective is basically formed on the basis of the background of the research that is being conducted. (Creswell 2008). In this case, the main issue is recycling. This is due to the increasing population in the UK due to which the wastes have been increasing with a higher percentage. However, it is not a wise idea to leave the wastes just like that and it would be a very good option to recycle the waste so that it can be utilized again as the resources we own in the world today are limited but the demands of the people are unlimited. Therefore, it is always a good idea to save as much as possible so that we can save our future generations from suffering. The research objective of this research is that the UK government wants to establish a recycling culture and continue to set increasing targets for household recycling, with an aim of reaching 50% by 2020 in order to improve the previous targets. Previously, Oxford City Council provided a range of recycling services, including kerbside collection services and recycling sites where residents could deposit items for recycling and this enabled Oxford City Council to reduce the household waste by 40%. The idea now is to increase this percentage by 10% and to make it 50%. Problem Statement Before the research team assigned to solve the problem starts their job, a problem statement needs to be defined and to be presented to them and the problem statement should answer three main questions i. e. to define the problem and the reason why the team is required to solve this problem, the client who needs a solution to the problem and the scope as well as the limitations of the problem in terms of various issues such as time, money and other resources. Moreover, it is also important for the problem statement to address all the W’s i. e. to answer what, how, where, when, why, and who. (Denzin & Lincoln 2005). Referring to this case, due to the increasing need of recycling, the government of UK plans to increase recycling of the household wastes to 50% by 2020 i. e. an increase by 10% from today. This aim has been defined basically to serve the households and to meet their demand of recycling household wastes; however there are certain limitations that are coming in the way to meet this requirement of the government of UK. In order to solve this problem, we, a research team from a marketing research agency, Research Solutions has been assigned to work out and to know the likely reactions of residents to such a scheme and the overall impact that this might have on household recycling rates. For this purpose, What methods will be used? Following a recent (DEFRA) Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs initiative to allow the use of financial incentives for household waste minimisation and recycling, OCC is considering the introduction of a pilot scheme in selected postcodes areas. This would involve the introduction of bins fitted with microchips to monitor how much recycling and other waste a household produces, however this will involve a certain cost as Oxford City Council will have to make refunds from local taxation bills for a good recycling performance or to pay additional charges for a poor recycling performance. (Patton 2002). We will use both primary as well as secondary data to conduct our research as well as both qualitative and quantitative data. Once we have gathered the secondary data, we will then seek for primary data for which we will prepare a set of 200 questionnaires. The questionnaire, we have planed will consist of around 20 open and close ended questions. We will get these questionnaires filled and will also interview people in Oxford from different age groups especially the women as the issue is basically related to household recycling so the housewives would be the best option to interview. Data analysis The process of gathering, modeling and transforming data aiming to make the important information prominent, to suggest conclusions as well as to support the decision making is called data analysis. There are various approaches and techniques that can be used for this purpose under different domains. (Spatz & Kardas 2007). As Oxford City Council has been asked to increase recycling of household wastes by 10%, they now have to plan everything to achieve this goal but for this it is essential for the Oxford City Council to collect all the important information and to transform it. Therefore, to understand the likely reactions of residents to such a scheme and the overall impact that this might have on household recycling rates. A time schedule The government of UK wants the goal of an increase in the recycling of household wastes to be achieved by an increase of 10% by 2020 and this gives Oxford City Council more than a decade to achieve this aim. The Oxford City Council should plan out seriously and work on the aim that is to be met but before finally starting the work, it is always essential to conduct research in order to know whether the plans they have made will be successful of not and also to know the reaction of the people in the UK after the introduction of the pilot scheme in selected postcodes areas and before the plan can be executed, marketing research will be conducted whose timing is mentioned below. (Pan 2004). The time schedule will not just provide a timeframe but it will also help us meet the deadlines. As we have been assigned one month to conduct this research, we have accordingly divided the time to meet our goals in an efficient manner. In the first week, we plan to conduct desk research followed by qualitative fieldwork in the second week as well as to prepare a qualitative desk research report. On the first day of the third week, we aim to prepare questionnaires that will follow the quantitative stage, coding and data preparation. In the fourth week, that is also the last week, we will do the analysis, prepare a presentation and on the last day we will present a final report. Bibliography: Creswell, J. W. (2008). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. 3rd edn. Sage Publications. Denzin, N. K. , & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). The Sage handbook of qualitative research. 3rd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Pan, M. L. (2004). Preparing literature reviews: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. 2nd edn. Los Angeles: Pyrezak. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Spatz,C. & Kardas,E. P. (2007). Research Methods in Psychology: Ideas, Techniques, and Reports. McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, Hardcover.