Primary Quantitative And Qualitative Research Methods

Question 1

What is a survey?

Answer 1

A survey is a large scale quantitative study in which data is usually collected through questionnaires and structured interviews.

Question 2

What are three examples of surveys?

Answer 2

• British Social Attitudes Survey
  Each year 3000 people are asked questions about their attitudes to a range of social issues
• Crime Survey for England and Wales
  50,000 people are questioned about their experiences of crime in the previous 12 months
• Census
  Every 10 years every household in the UK are surveyed to collected data for population trends

Question 3

What are social surveys?

Answer 3

Large-scale studies which collect standardised data about large groups, often using questionnaires

Question 4

What are the advantages of surveys?

Answer 4

• Can generate large amounts of quantitative data that can be used to identity patterns and trends
• Likely to provide a representative picture of society or a particular aspect of social behaviour as they include different possible variables such as gender
  (tldr; representative)
• Not correct to say they are cheap, instead they are cost effective. Its expensive to commission large-scale surveys but the fathering of response from thousands of people in order to identify trends means that they are cost effective
  (tldr; cost effective)

Question 5

What are the disadvantages of surveys?

Answer 5

• Large amounts of data can be difficult and time consuming to interpret
• Only useful if the researcher does not require in-depth qualitative data
• Risk of respondents lying and not being truthful

Question 6

What are questionnaires?

Answer 6

A form of primary research in which respondents are asked to provide answers to pre-set questions. They can be distributed by post, sent online, or distributed in person.

Question 7

What are the two types of questions that can be asked in questionnaires and what is the difference between the two?

Answer 7

Open-ended
- Respondents are free to give whatever answer they wish in their own words without any pre-selected choices being offered by the researcher

Close-ended
- Respondents must choose from a limited range of possible answers that the researcher has decided in advance (Yes, No, Don’t Know)

Question 8

Why might a researcher use closed-ended questions in a questionnaire as opposed to open-ended?

Answer 8

Each possible answer in a closed-ended question is given a code, enabling researchers to quantify the number of respondents choosing each available answer

Question 9

What are the practical advantages of questionnaires?

Answer 9

• Relatively quick and cheap to gather data from a large number of people across a wide geographical area
• No need to recruit and train interviewers or observers to collect the data
• As they require either very short answers or the selection of an answer from a number of options, they are easy to quantify and identify trends and patterns from

Question 10

Why are questionnaires seen as a reliable method?

Answer 10

If repeated again by another researcher the results should be similar because;
- The questionnaire will be identical to the original, so same questions are asked in the same order with the same choice of answers
- In postal or online questionnaires there is no interviewer present to influence answers, meaning if thee are differences in the answers, can be assumed this is result of real differences in the answers and not in the questions
- This allows for comparisons, both over time and between societies by asking same questions to different groups