Questionaires

Question 1

Two types of questions

Answer 1

Close questions yes or no
Open questions any answer

Question 2

Advantages of Questionnaires

Answer 2

Practical:
-Quick and easy means of gathering information and Widely spread geographically
-Don’t need to recruit or train interviewers because respondents complete and return them themselves
-Close ended questions can be processed quickly by computers to reveal relationship between the variables.

Question 3

Advantage Reliability

Answer 3

Questionnaires can be easily repeated this is because:
The questionnaire is identical too the original repeating the same questions and order of questions.

There is no interviewer effect as present within interviews.

Repeated questionnaires also allow for the comparison of different societies and societies over time.

Question 4

Advantage-Hypothesis testing

Answer 4

They are useful for testing hypothesises about he cause and effect of different variables E.g the relationship between children’s achievement and family size

Question 5

Advantages-Theoretical Representiveness

Answer 5

Because the information can be collected from a large number of people the results stand a better chance of being representative
than other research methods allowing them to be more generalizsed.

Question 6

Advantage-Ethics

Answer 6

Even through they ask personal or sensitive information respondents are under no obligation to answer them therefore they have informed consent.

Question 7

Disadvantages

Answer 7

Practical-
Data is limited as most respondents are unlikely to to complete an return a time consuming questionnaire limiting information gathered
Even though there cheap means it’s sometimes necessary to offer incentives
Postal and online:
Whether potential respondents has received the questionnaire
If the returned questionnaire was completed by the intended person

Low response rate
Few who receive a questionnaire complete then (Hites) only 4.5% returned questionnaire.
Further problems higher response rate if handed in by hand or follow ups but this adds to time and cost
Non response can be due to complex language as only completed by the well educated or those will les time like full time work may respond less or those with strong opinions respond more creating less representiveness

Right Answerism lying and forgetting
Respondents may lie forget or not know or either not understand or give answer they believe are right this creates problems with validity

Inflexibility
Once they are finalised they cannot explore any new areas of interest in contrast with unstructured interview where they can ask new questions as they come up