Design and Procedure

The study entitled â€Å"The level of Knowledge of Cigarette Smoker tricycle drivers of STOD (Pembo-Blueboz route) on sintax law and its relation to their Attitude towards Smoking† will use a quantitative approach. In which, according to Hammersley (1992), quantitative approach is taken when people are trying to analyze information, collect survey data and perform analyses and many other functions and since the researchers will use survey questionnaires as instrument. It is mainly helpful for strategic planning and implementation. This design was adapted by the researchers to find out the level of knowledge of cigarette smokers on Sin tax Law and its relation to their attitude towards smoking, as stated on Hopkin’s article, quantitative research aims to determine the relationship between one thing and another. The principle of quantitative research will be applied in this study for it will help them in studying the abstract things such as level of knowledge and attitude of the smoking tricycle drivers. Hence, the researchers will be able to identify the variables: age, monthly income and education to be utilized for the purpose of the study and analysis and also to know the relationship of their attitude towards smoking and their knowledge on Sintax Law. The researchers will also use Descriptive type of research. Descriptive research is used when the purpose of the research is to determine the characteristics of certain groups or a subject and it is much applicable in their goal in the study to present the details and social setting of the selected smoking tricycle drivers on their level of knowledge on Sintax Law and their attitude on smoking. This study will describe the real situation of the researcher’s study and will further explain the data that will be gathered. Research Method The researchers will use the survey methodology for it is considered as the faster and cheapest way among others. Hence, survey is effective in producing information on opinions, attitudes, belief, presumption, and or socio-economic characteristics. Also, data will be reliable and could avoid or lessen its inconsistency. In addition to that, survey is simpler to analyze and easier to associate the gathered data. The survey will serve as their medium to gather data by asking questions. The researchers will use the survey method for they believed that it will be suitable on their study. Since a population can be quite large of a number, researchers will question only a sample. The sample respondents will be asked questions on their demographic profile along with the respective set of questionnaires regarding the data needed. By this survey, the respondents may give just to their freedom by voicing out their opinion or ideas prior to the research conducted. Through survey, the reliability of information collected from cigarette smoker respondents will maintain. Also, surveying will enable to help the researchers to gain a great deal of information at one time and will provide quantitative data. The researchers believed that this method remains as the most widely used method in gaining quantifiable data. Instrumentation The self-executed questionnaires by the researchers are the instrument they will use for their survey. It will serve as the medium to garner the necessary information for the research. This device aims to distinguish the level of knowledge of the cigarette smokers on the newly passed Sintax law and its relation to the smokers’ attitude towards smoking. The researchers will use closed questions, multiple-choice format, checklist format and the likert scale. The set of questions will be categorized based on the problem and objectives of this study. Closed question is considered as the simplest way whereas it is being nswerable by a yes or a no. By close ended questions, the researchers can avoid the unessential responses from the chosen respondents. To review the validity, the researchers made 2 page survey questionnaires. As a process, validation involves gathering and analyzing data to figure the accuracy of the instrument used. This survey is divided into 4 se ctions: profile, awareness, knowledge, and attitude. First part is where the respondents are being asked about their demographic profile. Second part of the instrument will measure the awareness of the respondents. Third is where the cigarette smokers’ knowledge unto the law will be measured. And last, the attitude of the respondents towards smoking will be asked. The purpose of this questionnaire is to fully determine if the tricycle drivers are aware or knowledgeable about the sintax law. By this instrument, the researchers will identify the cigarette smokers’ attitude on the said law. As a clarification, this study is only a fulfillment of requirement, for academic purposes only. Sample and Sampling Technique Usually, researchers aren’t capable of observing directly in every individual in a population they are studying. Rather, they gather information from a subset of individuals, called sample. Sample is a group of people that can be described as the sub-collection drawn from the population. In order for the sample to truly reflect the population, you need to have a sample that will represent the population. So in this study, the researchers selected tricycle drivers of STOD (Pembo-Blueboz route) who smoke to be the respondents. They will be selected through Simple Random sampling or SRS which is the one of the most commonly used probability method. Each respondent will be chosen randomly and entirely by chance. A simple random sample is an unbiased surveying technique. With the help of fishbowl draw, all the corresponding numbers of each correspondent will be place in it and will mixed thoroughly. In that case, all of them will have the chance to be the respondents. By this sample, the research study will be carried out. Sample random sampling is common and just simple. Its simplicity makes it relatively easy to interpret data collected via SRS. And for this reason, simple random sampling best suits situations where not much information is available about the population and data collection can be efficiently conducted on randomly distributed items. Data Collection Procedure The researchers will conduct survey for five days. The questionnaires will personally administer to the selected cigarette smokers according to the number of sample that will be computed. The researchers decided to survey 50% only of the total population of tricycle drivers, for not all the drivers smoke cigars. The respondents will participate in the study. Thus, ethical issues will be considered to make sure that everything will be confidential, especially the responses and will remain private as well as the safety of the respondents. All important details of the study, including its aim and purpose will relay by the researchers. And through this, the respondents will be able to understand the importance of their role in the completion of the research study. The respondents will not be forced to participate in the said research. The confidentiality of the participants will be ensured also by not disclosing their names or personal information in the research. Those significant details that can help in answering the research questions will be included. The completely filled-up questionnaires will be returned to the researchers for the evaluation and analysis of data. Statistical Formula The researchers will choose Likert survey for the questionnaire type as this will enable the respondents to answer the survey without difficulty. It will measure the extinct to which a person finds a question effective or ineffective. A Likert item is simply a statement which the respondent is asked to evaluate according to any kind of subjective or objective criteria; generally the level of agreement or disagreement is measured. It usually has four choices: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree, but there are cases that it will go up to ten and sometimes, more than ten. And some times, instead of using the level of agreement, likert can also consists of options with assigned values (excellent, very good, average, below average poor; always, seldom, frequently, sometimes and never). A numerical value will be assigned to each potential choice and a mean figure for all the responses will be computed at the end of the evaluation. The final average score will represent the overall level of accomplishment or attitude of the respondents toward the subject matter. The researcher will then exclude irrelevant questions and will change difficult or unclear terminologies into simpler ones in order to ensure understanding. The researcher used the 4-point likert in order to have a concrete answers from the respondents because likert scale implied that the number of alternatives are open for manipulation, and this study will employ a manipulated likert scale by allowing only four choices and in so doing, will eliminate a default median response. Many techniques can be involved in statistics that treat data in required manner. Statistical treatment is one, and the result is dependent on the experiment used and the desired output. Describing the data is also involved in statistical treatment. And the best way is to undergo the measure of central tendencies- the mean. Through these, the researchers could easily explain how the data are concentrated. To fulfill the process of Statistical Treatment, the gathered data will be processed by the use of the software program called SPSS/PC+. Same principles will be followed in this program to compute for frequency distribution, percentage and weighted mean. To identify the awareness and to describe the profile of the respondents, the frequency distribution and percentage will be applied. And to describe the attitude of the selected smoking tricycle drivers of STOD (Pembo-Blueboz route) by each selected attitudinal area, the weighted mean will be utilized. The weighted mean which describe the attitude of the respondents will verbally interpret as follows: