P1 Research Methods - Questionnaires Flashcards
What are close ended questions?
Choose from a limited range of responses.
Yes/No
Multiple choice
What are the types of questionnaires?
- Self completion
- Mailed
- Direct
- Electronic
- Social surveys
What are practical advantages for questionnaires?
- Quick and cheap ways of gathering data from large amounts of people
- No need to recruit interviewers
- Data is easy to quantify
What are practical disadvantages for questionnaires?
- The data can be limited + superficial
- Answers are fairly brief, since respondents are unlikely to respond if questions are long
- Limits amount of data that can be gathered
How are questionnaires seen as reliable?
They’re seen as reliable if repeated by another researcher:
1. When the research is repeated, a questionnaire identical to the original is used so respondents are asked the exact same questions
2. With postal/online questionnaires, there is no researcher present to influence the respondents answers
How can low response rates affect questionnaires?
A very low response rate can be a major problem.
This is because few of those who receive questionnaires bother to complete and return it
A higher response rate can be obtained by follow up questionnaires being sent (but this is extra money and time)
The danger or low response rate is that those who return it may be different from those who don’t
What is hypothesis testing?
Practically used for testing hypothesis about cause and effect relationships between different variables.
Because questionnaires enables us to identify possible causes they are very attractive to positivists (scientific approach)
How are questionnaires inflexible?
The researcher is stuck with the questions they have decided to ask and cannot explore any new areas of interest.
Why do positivists prefer questionnaires?
They are a detached and objective method, where the sociologists involvement with their respondents is kept to a minimum e.g postal questionnaires
Why are questionnaires representative?
Questionnaires collect information from a large number of people (true representativeness of a wider population)
What are ethical issues to questionnaires?
- Although questionnaires may ask intrusive/sensitive questions, respondents are under no obligation to answer
- Even so, researchers should gain informed consent, guarantee their anonymity and make it clear they have right to withdraw
Why are questionnaires only a snapshot?
They give a picture of social reality at only one moment in time.
Therefore questions do not produce a valid picture of the way peoples attitudes and behaviours change
Why do interpretevists not like questionnaires?
- They argue that data from questionnaires lacks validity and does not view a true picture of what has been studied.
- They argue that we can only gain a valid picture by using methods that allow us to get close to the subjects
How can lying, forgetting and “right answerism” affect questionnaires?
Problems of validity are created when respondents give answers that are not full or frank.
For example, respondents may lie, forget not know, not understand or try and please or second guess the researcher
What are advantages of questionnaires?
- Quick and cheap
- Reliability
- Hypothesis testing
- Detachment and objectivity
- Representativeness
- Ethical Issues pose few ethical issues
