Practical factors that affect research methods

Question 1

Time and money

Answer 1

Some methods take more time e.g participant observations take more time than social surveys.
Large scale surveys cost lots of money and affect the number of researchers, respondents and amount of research time

Question 2

What funding organisations want

Answer 2

May want results in a particular form e.g government fund research into pass rates for exams, but want qualitative data

Question 3

Personal factors

Answer 3

Researchers have careers, family commitments ect. =may not be able to do lengthy research
Researchers have characteristics that may make certain research methods harder e.g participant observations involve working well with others

Question 4

Circumstances of the research opportunity

Answer 4

if a research opportunity suddenly appears, the researcher might not have time to prepare length questionnaires or structured interviews