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A validation Study of House of Quality key performance indicators
Chapter 3 – Methodology
Chapter two discussed the theoretical framework of this research study, followed by the explanation
of the conceptual model. This chapter will discuss the methodology used for the present research.
First, section 3.1 presents the research design followed by a brief discussion of the chosen research
approach and a description of the different data sources in section 3.2. To conclude this chapter,
section 3.3 discusses the development and quality of the survey instrument.
3.1 Research Design
The present research study is conducted at the Dutch labor union De Unie, and specifically focuses
on a new union concept; the online union. In order to test the conceptual model and indentify key
performance drivers of the online union, a single case study or survey instrument is not enough to
validate the model and find appropriate empirical evidence. Therefore different data sources and
approaches will have to be integrated in order to collect appropriate information. As a result, this
research will provide De Unie a deeper understanding about the needs of the members of the online
union and will offer objective knowledge about the key performance drivers. Hence, it will give
direction to the ongoing process of improvement for the online union.
As mentioned in previous chapters, the main purpose of this research is to identify expectations and
perceptions of the members of the online union about its performance and from this point attend to
the process of improvement of the online union. This means that this research study is not limited
merely to the identification and proposition of service performance driver enhancements for the
online union. It has to be noticed that in this case improvements ideally are part of the ongoing
process (‘s Gravendijk, 2007). In order to find empirical evidence for the process of improvement of
the online union, we will follow the three steps of measurement and analysis of Quality Function
Deployment defined by Griffin and Hauser (1993). The first step is to identify the needs of the
members by means of exploratory research. After this the needs of the members will have to be
structured in order to set priorities for these needs in the third step. The three different phases will
be briefly discussed in section 3.2.
3.2 Data description
This section discusses the chosen research approach of the current study. It also presents an
explanation of the different data collection techniques and the way they are preformed. The
research structure can be divided into three separate phases;
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