Intro to primary research and questionnaires

Question 1

What is primary data?

Answer 1

Info collected by the sociologists themselves for their own purpose

Question 2

What are different primary methods?

Answer 2

• Social surveys
• Participant observations
• Experiment

Question 3

What is an advantage of primary data?

Answer 3

Sociologists can collect the data they specifically need

Question 4

What is the definition of a questionnaire?

Answer 4

Popular research method that consists of a list of questions
> can use closed or open/ both
> dependent on the sort of data desired, how the researcher intends to analyze it and sampling strategy

Question 5

What is a verbal questionnaire?

Answer 5

Unstructured Interview

Question 6

What are practical advantages to questionnaires?

Answer 6

• Quick to analyse once collected
• Quick and cheap to get large amounts of data from large numbers of people
• Self completion questionnaires: reduces cost - no interviews recruited or trained

Question 7

Who used questionnaires as an example?

Answer 7

Connor and Dewson

Question 8

What was Connor and Dewsons study?

Answer 8

Posted nearly 4000 questionnaires to students at 14 higher education institutions in their study of the factors which influenced working class decisions to attend uni

Question 9

What’s a criticism of C&D’s study?

Answer 9

May not be representative as it doesn’t study what it was meant to
- Posted to HE Institutions which don’t consider the working class who didn’t go to uni

Question 10

What are ethical advantages to questionnaires?

Answer 10

• Informed consent isn’t an issue as long as researchers are honest about the purpose
• Relatively unobtrusive method
• Detachment of the researcher
• Easy for respondents to ignore questionnaires if they don’t want to complete it

Question 11

Why do positivists favour questionnaires?

Answer 11

Detached and objective (minimum sociologist personal involvement)
- Useful for testing hypotheses about causal relationships between variables
- Quantifiable = finding correlation

Question 12

What do questionnaires allow researchers to do?

Answer 12

Collect info from a large number of people = more representative of the wider population
- all depends on appropriate sampling techniques used and knowledge of how it completed the questionnaire

Question 13

How are questionnaires super reliable?

Answer 13

Can use the same exact questions and order, same choice of answers
- Self completion questionnaires (esp sent by post) no researcher present to influence the results

Question 14

How is the imposition problem a disadvantage to questionnaires?

Answer 14

Influence of values on the questions written
- Based on the researchers biased views
- Researchers may choose questions that align with what they want to hear
- Decide what’s important instead of the respondent when choosing

Question 15

Why do interpretivists dislike questionnaires?

Answer 15

Detached nature
- Lack of close contact between researcher and respondents
- No way to guarantee that the respondents are interpreting the questions in the same way as the researcher

Question 16

Why is the detached nature of questionnaires a disadvantage?

Answer 16

May not be present to check whether respondents are giving socially desirable answers or lying
- can’t check who is completing the questions

Question 17

What are closed questions?

Answer 17

Questions that structure the answer by only allowing responses which fit into pre decided categories

Question 18

What are the 2 types of closed questions?

Answer 18

Nominal and Ordinal

Question 19

What are nominal questions?

Answer 19

dichotomous - restricted category
- 2 options that oppose each other

Question 20

What are ordinal questions?

Answer 20

Can be ranked
- Often involves using a continuous rating scale to measure the strength of attitudes or emotions

Question 21

What do closed questions link to?

Answer 21

positivism

Question 22

What are strengths of closed questions?

Answer 22

• Economical: large amounts of data for low costs
• Ability for large sample size (should be representative) = generalization
• Quantifiable info for statistical analysis
• Standardized questions: same questions, same order
• Can be replicated
• Can use questionnaires to check for consistent results

Question 23

What is a limitation of closed questions?

Answer 23

Lack detail
> responses are fixed
> less scope for respondents to supply answers that reflect their true feelings on a topic

Question 24

What do open questions do?

Answer 24

• Allow people to express what they think in their own words
• Enable the respondents to answer in as much detail and in their own words
• No present answer options and allow respondents to put down exactly what they want to say

Question 25

What are open questions used for?

Answer 25

Complex questions that cannot be answered in a few simple categories but require more detail and discussion

Question 26

Who used open questions?

Answer 26

Kohlberg

Question 27

What was KohlBerg’s study?

Answer 27

Presented participants with moral dilemmas
- Concerned a character called Heinz whose faced with the choice to either watch his wife die of cancer or steal the only drug that could help her
- Participants asked which they would choose and their reasoning for upholding/breaking the law

Question 28

What are the limitation of open questions?

Answer 28

• Time consuming to collect data
  > long to complete open questions = may use a small sample size
• Time consuming to analyse data
  > have to read answers and put them into categories by coding (subjective and difficult)
• Not suitable for less educated respondents as it require superior writing skills and a better ability to express ones feelings verbally

Question 29

What are strengths of open questions?

Answer 29

• Rich qualitative data obtained as open questions allow the response to elaborate on their answer
• Means the research can find out why a person holds a certain attitude

Question 30

What’s a practical disadvantage to questionnaires?

Answer 30

Low response rate