Questionaires Flashcards
What are ‘Questionaries?’
- List of pre-determined questions
- Administered by hand, post or online
What are the Two Types of Questions?
- Closed questions
- Open questions
What are ‘Practical Advantages’ of questionnaires?
- Quick + cheap
- No need to recruit + train interviewers
- Data is easy to quantify
- Sample is geographically dispersed
Why are questionnaires ‘Reliable?’
- Standardised questions
- Difference in answers can be assumed
- No researcher present
- Easily repeatable
Why are questionnaires good for ‘Hypothesis Testing?’
- Attract Positivists
- Enable possible causes to be identified as a scientific approach
- Discover laws of cause + effect
Why are questionnaires ‘Detached and Objective?’
- Sociologist’s personal involvement with other respondents is kept to a minimum
- Particularly the case with online + postal
Why are questionnaires ‘Representative?’
- Collect information from a larger sample
- Allowing findings to be generalised to wider target population
Why are questionnaires ‘Ethical?’
- Respondents are under no obligation to answer
- Anonymity is guaranteed
What are the ‘Practical Issues’ with questionnaires?
- Data from questionnaires tends to be limited + superficial
- Necessary to offer incentives
- Postal + online questionnaires can’t guarantee response
Why do questionnaires have a ‘Low Response Rate?’
- Shere Hite; 100,000 Questionnaires were sent in US on ‘Love, Passion and Emotional Violence’, 4.5% returned
- Those who don’t return questionnaires distort results
- Hand collected questionnaires adds cost + time
Why are questionnaires ‘Inflexible?’
New areas of interest that come up cannot be explored
Why do questionnaires only provide a ‘Snapshot Picture?’
- Picture of social reality at only one point in time
- Do not capture changing behaviours
Why is ‘Detachment’ bad for questionnaires?
- Interprevists argue questionnaires lack validity as they don’t allow contact
- Questions can’t be clarified for misunderstandings
Why do questionnaires cause ‘Lying, Forgetting and Right Answerism?’
- Respondents give limited answers
- Respondents may be dishonest or second-guess the researcher
Why do questionnaires ‘Impose Researcher’s Meanings?’
- Researchers choose which questions are important to ask
- Similar + non-identical answers may be lumped together in same category
