Questionnaires

Question 1

what are questionnaires?

Answer 1

Questionnaires are a type of ‘self‐report’ technique, where participants provide information relating to
their thoughts, feelings and behaviours. They can be designed in different ways, and can comprise of open
questions, closed questions or a mixture of both.

Question 2

what are open questions

Answer 2

open questions allow participants to answer how they wish and thus generate qualitative data since there is no fixed number of responses

Question 3

Name strengths of open questionnaires

Answer 3

• they provide rich qualitative data as open questions enable the respondent to elaborate on their answer
• there is less of a chance of researcher bias especially if the questionnaire is anonymous

Question 4

Name limitations of open questionnaires

Answer 4

• Time consuming to analyse the data as it takes longer for researchers to analyse qualitative data as they have to read answers and put them into categories, this can be difficult as answers are subjective
• participants may answer data in a social desirable way which means that the data lacks validity as it is not the respondents natural response

Question 5

what are closed questions

Answer 5

restrict participants to a predetermined set of responses and generate quantitative data i.e
- checklists: where participants tick answers that apply to them
- Lickert scale: where participants rate on a scale their views or opinions on a question
- Ranking scale: where participants place a list of items on their preferred order

Question 6

strengths of closed questions

Answer 6

They can be economical in the sense that they can provide large amounts of research for relatively low costs
Research can be easily converted into quantitative data allowing easy statistical analysis of data
Questions are standardised which means that all respondents are exact the same questions. This means that the test can be replicated easily which means that it has good reliability

Question 7

Limitations of closed questions

Answer 7

• they don’t allow participants to express their opinions freely as the researchers sticks to a predetermined list of questions

Question 8

How should questionnaires be designed?

Answer 8

• clear and simple
• be sensitive and avoid personal questions
• don’t use questions that make assumptions or sweeping statements