Quantitative research in the form of a cross-sectional survey is being employed for this research and represents the second and prime stage of the research design. Survey research employs ‘a fi xed questionnaire with pre-specifi ed questions’ (Sudman and Blair, 1998: 154). The focus group analysis is being used to inform the formulation of the survey.
The survey enables a large amount of data to be collected relating to Facebook users’ perceptions of online privacy in a social networking site. It is important for this study to obtain views and opinions from a large number of Facebook users so that meaningful comparisons and conclusions can be drawn. The survey research enables standardized questions to be asked across a large sample and facilitates ease of comparison (Saunders et al., 2009), and is therefore considered an appropriate research method for this study. Quantitative analysis in the form of statistical analysis is being used to examine the data gathered through the survey.