Abstract:
This paper explores the practical difficulties of conducting an online
quantitative survey across the Maldives during the COVID‑19 pandemic response to
study people’s values in the midst of a crisis, and addresses crisis experience and perception,
value orientation, personality traits, social cohesion, and trust in relevant authorities.
This paper reports on the methodological component and not on the survey findings. A
stratified systematic random sampling approach was used, with stratification on urbanrural
clusters (cities and other islands), gender, and age of the population to recruit at least
400 from the urban and 600 participants from the rural communities. To overcome the
practical difficulty of accessing households due to restrictive measures across the Maldives
and lockdown status in the greater Male’ area, the latest voters’ registry was used to
select every nth participant as the sample frame. Participants were recruited through
phone calls, and survey instrument shared via social media, achieving a response rate
of 87%.The practical difficulties with the sampling approach were different in urbanrural
clusters, ranging from securing the phone numbers for prospective participants,
nonresponse to phone calls, discrepancies in internet access, and the lack of control on
whether the intended participant was in fact the person completing the survey. To overcome
these challenges, a mix of probability and non-probability sampling was utilised ensuring
not more than one participant was recruited from any household, while adhering to the
stratification of gender and age. The statistical findings on the validity and reliability of
the data show that the recruited sample is representative of the population. This outcome
highlights the adaptability and applicability of established quantitative research methods
to a geographically dispersed small island developing state, under nonconventional
situations.
