MT2- Strengths and Limitations of Questionnaires

Question 1

questionnaire

Answer 1

list of written questions

Question 2

postal questionnaires

Answer 2

posted to respondents who fill it in if they choose to and post it back to the researcher. Some can be done through email as well.

Question 3

self-completion questionnaires

Answer 3

given out to the respondents who fill in the answers themselves.
They tend to be left with the respondent to complete in their own time and then return to the researcher.

Question 4

close ended questions

Answer 4

Respondents must choose their answer from a limited range of possible answers that the researcher has decided upon in advance
e.g. multiple choice such as is your favourite food: a) pizza, b) curry, c) chips.

Question 5

open ended questions

Answer 5

The respondents are free to write / express the answer in their own words, e.g. what is your favourite food?

Question 6

pilot study

Answer 6

a small scale trial run of the first draft of the questionnaire.
It allows the researcher to spot any mistakes and correct them before carrying out the main survey.

Question 7

Practical strengths of using questionnaires in research

Answer 7

• quick and cheap method for gathering large amounts of data from many respondents
• No need to recruit interviewers as they’re completed by the respondents themselves–>This also saves money.
• Easy to analyse as they’re made up of pre-coded closed ended questions and gather quantitative data which is easy and quick to analyse
• Useful for studying social change over time as they’re easy to replicate which means they can be repeated in the future to discover changes in social attitudes over time or between different societies.

Question 8

Ethical strengths of using questionnaires in research

Answer 8

• Informed consent- easy to gain as simply by completing and returning the questionnaire, the respondents are agreeing to be part of the research.
• Anonymity and confidentiality -Questionnaires do not ask the respondents for their name and the gathered data is presented in statistical form so the identity of respondents is kept hidden

Question 9

Theoretical strengths of using questionnaires in research

Answer 9

• reliable method as they’re standardised- easy to replicate exactly the same way as the first time.
• Positivists argue that questionnaires produce valid data as the researcher is not present when the respondents complete the questionnaire so their answers are not influenced by the researcher’s presence and are more likely to answer truthfully.

Questionnaires allow for testing hypothesis about cause and effect relationships between different variables, e.g. We can make the hypothesis that children from large families (with many children) do less well at school because of overcrowding in their homes. We can then carry out a questionnaire to test this.

Objectivity
Positivists like the use of questionnaires because they enable researcher to stay objective (unbiased) as they are not personally involved with the respondents, e.g. In postal questionnaires there is no contact between them at all.

Representative- can be sent out to 1000s of respondents, they tend to be representative of the wider population. For example, if you wanted to find out how many parents were going to send their children back to primary schools in June, you cold easily email a questionnaire to 1000s of parents and get a sample that’s representative of people from different backgrounds – class, ethnicity, etc.