Chapter 3 Methodology Method of Research to be used This study will utilize a survey on the insurance company profiles and their offered insurance plans, and a case study of selected companies and their current insurance plans. The insurance plans will be divided into basic insurance plans, including liability insurance, health insurance, business continuation insurance and workers’ insurance policies; and other insurance plans, including e-commerce protection and terrorism insurance. The companies will be asked to describe and delineate the scopes of all their insurance plans and packages, specifically those with multiple coverages like Business Owner’s Policy and Umbrella insurance. This study will use the descriptive approach. This descriptive type of research will utilize questionnaires in the study. To illustrate the descriptive type of research, the researcher will be guided by Calmorin when he stated: “Descriptive method of research is to gather information about the present existing condition. The purpose of employing this method is to describe the nature of a situation as it exists at the time of the study and to explore the cause/s of a particular phenomena.” Sampling techniques Insurance companies catering to small businesses and with existing products relating to the protection of small businesses will be included in the survey. A list of all legitimate insurance companies in the USA will be made using resources such as the on-line directories, insurance advertisements and government-provided lists of registered insurance providers in the different states. The researcher will contact these insurance companies via mail, fax or telephone prior to the survey to assess their willingness to participate. The researcher will provide the insurance companies who will agree to be a part of the survey with the necessary legal documents that comprise strict guidelines on the usage of the information, confidential or otherwise, disclosed by the companies. The researcher will use a combination of cluster and random sampling. First, the researcher will cluster the 51 different states in the USA. From each cluster, the researcher will randomly pick a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 50 insurance companies. The companies will be notified by mail or e-mail and will be asked to answer a researcher-made survey questionnaire. Respondents will be qualified insurance personnel predetermined by each company, particularly those that have been handling policies for small businesses for a significant number of years. A case study will be conducted on several companies. The sample size for the case study depending mainly on their performance in the questionnaire survey and on their company profiles. The researcher’s criteria for the selection of insurance companies to be included in the case study include: significance of available policies and services to the needs of small businesses; accessibility; business track record and financial stability (according to the submitted profile); and extensiveness of insurance coverage. Instruments to be used The questionnaire survey will center on the different types of insurance offered by the company, their estimated premium prices and their specific coverage details for small businesses. The insurance company will also be asked to submit a detailed company profile that contains the company’s address and contact details and will reflect the company’s track record. In the questionnaires, attention will be given on the similarities between the insurance coverage offered by different companies, and more importantly, on the policies that stand out as unique to a particular insurance provider. Validation of the Instrument For validation purposes, the researcher will initially submit a survey questionnaire and after approval, the survey will be given initially to 10 randomly picked insurance companies from a previously obtained list. After this, the survey questionnaire will be answered, the researcher will ask the respondents for any suggestions or any necessary corrections to ensure further improvement and validity of the instrument. The researcher will again examine the content of the survey questionnaire to find out the reliability of the instrument. Administration of the Instrument The revised instrument will then be administered to the respondents of the study which will be chosen through a combination of cluster and random sampling. The researcher will exclude the ten respondents who will be initially used for the validation of the instrument. The researcher will also tally and tabulate all the relevant data in the survey questionnaire. Data Analysis The researcher will classify and tabulate the insurance companies that responded to the survey according to the number of years in the industry, the number of basic and other policies offered to small businesses, premium prices, their policies pertaining to the needs of small businesses. Statistical Treatment of Data When all the survey questionnaire will have been collected, the researcher will use statistics to analyze all the data. 1. Percentage distribution – to determine the magnitude of the responses to the questionnaire. n % = -------- x 100 ; n – number of responses N N – total number of respondents 2. Weighted Mean f1x1 + f2x2 + f3x3 + f4x4 + f5x5 x = --------------------------------------------- ; xt where: f – weight given to each response x – number of responses xt – total number of responses REFERENCE: Calmorin, Laurentina P. & Calmorin, Melchor (1995). Methods of Research and Thesis Writing 1st ed. Manila: Rex Bookstore.
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