Quantitative Methods Assignment April 18, 2021 postadmin Post in Uncategorized Quantitative Methods Assignment Institution Name Investigate the relationship between the film budget and the film gross takings Introduction The film industry is a significant revenue contributor to the global economy. The box office revenue for all films from around the world was estimated at $31.8 billion, with the industry accounting for over 2.2 million jobs and $137 billion in wages in the United States in 2009. The global movie industry generates hundreds of billions in revenue every year and this is expected to reach $50 billion in 2020. A number of factors have been found to contribute to the gross revenues of the films and this includes the cast, genre, month of release, length of movie and director (Chen, 2018). As a result, more and more money is being poured every year into the production of larger and grander films based on the hope that the bigger the film production budget the higher the number of movie ticket sales (Pangakar Smit, 2013). Owing to the economic significance of this industry, a lot of research has been conducted aiming to understand the variables that contribute to the commercial success of the films. It has since been established that the amount of budget allocated for a film is a key determinant of revenue because higher production budget is synonymous with high film quality. However, Kaplan (2012) cautions that this is not always the case as there have been large and small budget film successes.2. Consider the Variables and Confounding Variables What are the variables in your study? Dependent variables The dependent variable in this case is the gross takings earned from a film expressed in dollars. Independent variables Production cost This includes the expenses incurred in the film production from pre-production, production, post production to distribution. These costs include production design, crew wages, studio costs, live set costs, food accommodation, travel costumes among others. Genre This includes drama, science fiction, comedy, action-adventure and musical Binary for ratings Production cost of each film Release company The general assumption is that films released by a major company tend to perform better in terms of revenue Briefly explain what is meant by a ‘confounding variable’. Confounding variables are any other variables that have an impact on the dependent variable. They often lead to erroneous results and conclusions regarding the relationship between dependent and independent variables (Gandhi, et al., 2013). Discuss the potential confounding variables in your study. Describe the potential effect of the confounding variables on your important variables. In examining the relationship between film budget and film gross takings, it is assumed that the higher the film budget, the higher the volume of gross taking. However, it is also possible that factors such as film quality, star power, production house, cast could also influence a film’s gross takings. These variables can affect the relationship between independent and dependent variables and lead to bias or false correlation and hence trigger change in research outcome (Skelly, Dettori & Brodt, 2012).3. Plan for the analysis of your key variables The summary statistics you plan to use. The data for this study will collected from Box Office Mojo. The data will consist of movies released between 1999 and 2009 and each movie should contain information on budget, release date, studio, distributor, audience, critic scores and box earnings. To prepare data for the analysis, movies containing variables that are not important to the study’s analysis will be removed. Then the unwanted variables will also be extracted from the list. Since the study will be looking at the relationship between budget and gross takings, descriptive and predictive analytics will be used. Under descriptive, categorical variables will be sued to identify whether film budget exhibits a correlation with gross takings. For predictive analytics, a model on whether film budget predicts the gross takings will be used. The graphs you plan to use. This study will be investigating the correlation between film budget and film gross takings. Before investigating this relationship, it is important to create a graphical representation f the two variables. Therefore, the most appropriate graph that will be used to show correlation between these study’s variables is the scatterplot How you are intending to use the graphs (their purpose in your analysis) The graph will be used to identify overall pattern and any striking departures from the pattern. The researcher will be focusing on outliers or values that fall outside the overall pattern to establish the relationship. The graph will be important in revealing the positive and negative association between the variables. Any comparisons you are planning to make e.g. between years, countries, genres etc. The comparison that will be made in this case is identifying the linear relationship between the variables where the strongest relationship will be one with a slope of 1, which means an increase in one variable lead to a corresponding increase in another variable.4. Write a sample method Explain in detail how you will collect data from the website (your sampling strategy). Why is this the most appropriate method for this data? What are the advantages and disadvantages of your chosen sample method? Survey sampling is a categorized as either probability sampling or non-probability sampling. In probability sampling, the respondents are selected using probabilistic mechanism based on the probability with which each respondent is selected to a study. In non-probability sampling, the respondents are left to decide whether to take part in the study or not. The surveyor selects or handpicks the respondents who are to be included in a study. Probability sampling use random selection approach which gives each individual in the study population an equal chance of taking part in the study. This approach is beneficial in that it allows the surveyor to draw conclusions regarding the study population based on statistics (Fricker, 2008). For online or website-based surveys, the most appropriate sampling method is probability sampling in the form of systematic sampling. This method is applied in areas where there are sequential visitors to a particular website, which does not require a sampling frame to be assembled beforehand. The method entails sequential selection of potential respondents. The primary advantages of this method is that it is less time consuming, cost effective and the selected sample is representative of the larger population. The primary disadvantage is that the method is that is associated with a higher risk of data manipulation (Fricker, 2008).5. Planning how to deal with potential problems Identify two things that could go wrong with your research and outline what you would do to overcome them. Poor planning is one of the things that could go wrong in a research this can occur as a result of not sending adequate rime planning and making sure all the research goals and objectives are clear and attainable. To avoid such occurrence in this research, it is important to properly plan and design the research parameters, including the research question and objectives and engage the right stakeholders to help in making the right decision and approach to the research project. Measurement errors are the other common issues that can occur in a research. This refers to the difference between the information generated from the study and what the researcher wanted. This can be due to using small sample sizes, massaging data or figures or recording erros.it is important to use the right sample size and outer check all the figures obtain for accuracy (Hewson, Yule, Laurent & Vogel, 2003). . 6. References Chen, A. (2018). A Statistical Analysis of Gross Revenue in Movie Industry. International Journal of Business Management and Economic Research(IJBMER), Vol 9(3), 1276-1280. Fricker, R. (2008). Sampling methods for web and e-mail surveys. In Fielding, N., Lee, R. M., & Blank, G. The SAGE handbook of online research methods (pp. 195-216). : SAGE Publications, Ltd doi: 10.4135/9780857020055 Gandhi, P. K., Ried, L. D., Kimberlin, C. L., Kauf, T. L., & Huang, I. (2013). Influence of explanatory and confounding variables on HRQoL after controlling for measurement bias and response shift in measurement. Expert Review of Pharmacoeconomics & Outcomes Research, 13(6), 841-51. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1586/14737167.2013.852959 Hewson, C., Yule, P., Laurent, D. & Vogel, C. (2003). What can go wrong?. In Hewson, C., Yule, P., Laurent, D., & Vogel, C. New Technologies for Social Research: Internet research methods(pp. 106-124). London: SAGE Publications, Ltd doi: 10.4135/9781849209298 Kaplan, Joshua J. (2012) “Turning Followers into Dollars: The Impact of Social Media on a Movie’s Financial Performance,” Undergraduate Economic Review: Vol. 9: Iss. 1, Article 10. Available at: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol9/iss1/10 Pangakar, Nn.& Smit, M. (2013).The determinants of box office performance in the film industry revisited. S.Afr.J.Bus.Manage.2013,44(3).