Welcome to week 5 of your course. This discussion question will help you prepare for your CLA2 paper and final CLA2 PowerPoint and as such, will have a fair amount of detail. Read the CLA2 assignment

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Research Process

Student’s Name(s)

Institutional Affiliation(s)

Course Title

Professor’s Name(s)

Date

Research Process

Introduction

Highways and toll roads usage have significantly increased, and necessarily they are so busy mostly (Popoola, Popoola, Oluwaranti, Badejo, & Atayero, 2017). Thus, the manual traditional toll collection systems have been rendered inefficient since they cause more traffic congestion on the roads. It is costly to operate a staffed system due to the high level of labor requirements. In the 1990s, the New York and New Jersey area's regional transport agencies were prospected to investigate the practicability of electronic toll collection (ETC) system implementation in the interregional roadways as posited in the case study. For the effective functioning of the ETC system, the commuters are provided with the tags that produce radio signals. The central receivers at the toll establish the commuter associated with a particular signal. The tags are connected with the commuter's toll account, which is debited every time he/she uses a toll facility. Thus, the electronic toll collection (ETC) system taskforce has evaluated the system's need for the interregional roadways of New York-New Jersey areas. Evaluation of Problem Definition Process

Defining a problem ignites problem solutions and concrete decision making. By problem definition, a researcher can establish a viable need to conduct the research (Moriarty, 2018). Thus, in this case, the task force must evaluate why ETC is required for the interregional roads and the effectiveness of implementing ETC. The interregional taskforce has adequately established in the case study that the ETC system's need is based on the need to reduce congestion at the toll plazas and eliminate the need for cash payment.

Vision Description 

Before the problem description, one must explain how the case would be if the problem is solved does not exist (Lane, 2018). Taskforce establishes the aim to minimize congestion in the toll highways and raise revenue for the regional roads maintenance. There are inefficiencies in the toll collection system since it cannot achieve maximum revenue collection for toll road maintenance (Popoola, Popoola, Oluwaranti, Badejo, & Atayero, 2017). Thus the vision concern should be prospected to achieve an efficient electronic toll collection system for the smart and connected communities. From the case study, the task force establishes a general vision of establishing the ETC program's feasibility in the interregional roadways area. Therefore, this paper aims to establish ETC's efficiency in toll collection compared to the traditional toll collection system.

Problem description

At this stage, the task force in charge specifies the main problem he/she wants to solve (Rwegoshora, 2016). For instance, inefficiency in check-in protocols in the airport. While describing a problem helps in identifying the hindrances for the goal or vision achievement. The traditional system's ineffectiveness significantly affects the transport sector in the region since it is costly to employ laborers for the toll collection compared to the automated system. Additionally, the task force establishes that the traditional system caused congestion at the region's toll plaza. It affects the commuters' planning schedule since much time is utilized compared to ETC. From the case study, Texas and Louisiana had successfully implemented the ETC system; thus, there was a need for the interregional ETC system to cut on cost, duration of service delivery, and increase revenue.

Consequences description 

Once the problem has been described, and a description of why it is a problem has been established, the consequences of solving the problem must be addressed (Wongpinunwatana, Jantadej, & Jantachoto, 2018). Notably, the task force depicts that electronic toll collection system implementation would foster costless revenue collection for the road maintenance in the transport sector, minimize the rate of congestion in the regional toll plazas, and achieve a commuter-friendly system. However, if the ETC system is not implemented in the region, it would lead to adverse effects on the transport sector and the commuters (Popoola, Popoola, Oluwaranti, Badejo, & Atayero, 2017). The toll plazas would be more congested, and the much time would be used for toll collection. Also, the revenue collection for toll road maintenance would be costly compared to the ETC.

From the E-ZPass, in case 6.1, the problem has been adequately identified because the authorities have first established their vision, which is the adoption of Electronic toll collection (ETC). Still, the task force has described the problem adequately they aim to solve. Additionally, the authorities have described consequences or ramifications of implementing the ETC, such as jam's reduction at the toll plazas and cash or token payment elimination for the tolls or facilities. From case 6.1, the task force is majorly concerned with the ETC's implementation.

Research Design Implementation

Research design in this particular study aims to identify an effective strategy that fully integrates its various components effectively in addressing the research problem in this study (Patel, Elena, & Summers, 2019). Thus, in this study, the task force or a researcher can use an experimental research design whereby one can maintain control of the factors that would affect the experiment's results. Additionally, an experimental research design enables a researcher to examine possible future outcomes through predictions while addressing the research problem. An experimental design is useful in this study since there is consistency in the ETC implementation causal relationship used in other states like Texas and Louisiana. Additionally, the correlation between ETC and the research problem in this study is strong, and therefore, the experimental design would exhaustively elaborate much on the relationship. Also, in this study, it possible to subdivide the study groups into the experimental group and control group measuring with one dependent variable. The taskforce has control and power to manipulate the study population, an easy tool for experimental design implementation.

Research Questions Formulation

The development of the research question is based explicitly on the researcher's interest in the study (Cronje, 2020). It should be clear in a way that the audience can understand the research's purpose without a more in-depth explanation. From Case 6.1 a researcher can adopt the following research questions;

1. How does ETC adoption affect the level of revenue collected?

2. How does ETC adoption affect traffic and congestion in the roads and plazas?

3. What is the commuters' preferred method of payment for ETC between prepaid and post-paid?

Contents of a Dummy Table

Dummy tables represent the tables and figures useful in presenting the results of a research or a study. Dummy tables depict what the researcher is doing and how they intend to show or display results (Kondrat & Jaggers, 2016). In this research proposal, a dummy table can include; the commuter's payment method preference either post-paid or prepaid, number of vehicles in a toll facility in one hour, toll per journey, number of trips per day, total toll amount per day per vehicle, number of vehicles on the fleet, total toll amount daily, total toll amount monthly.

In conclusion, I have established in this paper the vision of the task force is to entirely implement the electronic toll collection system to mitigate inefficiencies associated with the traditional collection system. The ETC system would enable the transport sector to raise adequate revenue for roads maintenance, and reduce congestion in toll plazas among others. The appropriate research design for this study is the experimental design to collect the first information. Notably, the dummy table in this research would postulate the number of vehicles in a toll facility in one hour, toll per journey, number of trips per day, total toll amount per day per vehicle, number of cars on the fleet, total toll amount daily, total toll amount monthly to show the efficiency of the system in revenue collection.

References

Cronje, J. C. (2020). Designing Questions for Research Design and Design Research in e-Learning. Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 18(1), 13-24.

Kondrat, D. C., & Jaggers, J. W. (2016). Research at work: Understanding regression tables in research studies. Families in Society, 97(2), 142-148.

Lane, S. (2018). A good study starts with a clearly defined question. BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 125(9), 1057-1057.

Moriarty, B. (2018). Research skills for teachers: From research question to research design. Allen & Unwin.

Patel, A., Elena, M., & Summers, J. (2019). A systematic approach to evaluating design prompts in supporting experimental design research. Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design, 1(1), 2755-2764.

Popoola, S. I., Popoola, O. A., Oluwaranti, A. I., Badejo, J. A., & Atayero, A. A. (2017). A Framework for Electronic Toll Collection in Smart and Connected Communities. WCECS, 2(1), 2-5. http://eprints.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/12641/1/WCECS2017_pp723-726.pdf

Rwegoshora, H. M. (2016). A guide to social science research. Mkuki na Nyota publishers.

Wongpinunwatana, N., Jantadej, K., & Jantachoto, J. (2018). Creating creative thinking in students: A business research perspective. International Business Research, 11(4), 47.