questionnaires Flashcards
whats the two types of questionnaires
- close ended - respondents must choose from a limited range of possible answers that the researcher has decided in advance such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
- open ended - respondents are free to give whatever answer they wish, in their own words, and without any pre selected choices being offered by the researcher.
advantages of questionnaires
the popularity of questionnaires is undoubtedly due to the considerable range of advantages they offer to researchers
the advantages: practical, reliability, hypothesis testing, detachment and objectivity, representativness, ethical issues.
- practical advantages
questionnaires offer several major practical advantages:
- quick and cheap means of gathering large amounts of data from large numbers of people, widely spread geographically, especially if postal or online.
- no need to recruit and train interviewers or observers to collect data, as respondents complete and returns themselves
- the data is usually easy to quantify, particulary where pre coded, closed ended questions are used, and can be processed quickly by computer to reveal the relationships between different variables
- reliability
questionnaires are seen as a reliable method of collecting data. that is, if repeated by another researcher, the questionnaire should give similar results to those gained by the first researcher.
- hypothesis testing
questionnaires are particularly useful for testing hypothesis about cause and effect relationships between different variables.
because questionnaires enable us to identify possible causes, they are very attractive to positivist sociologists, who take a scientific approach and seek to discover laws of cause and effect
- detachment and objectivity
positivists also favour questionnaires because they are a detached and objected (unbiased) method, where the sociologists personal involvement with the respondents is kept to a minimum. e.g postal questionnaires which are completed at a distance and involve little or no contact with researcher.
- representativness
because questionnaires can collect information from large number of people, the results stand better chance of being truly representative of the wider population than with other methods that study only very small numbers of people.
in addition, researchers who use questionnaires tend to pay more attention to the need to obtain a representative sample. for this reason, the findings of questionnaires are more likely to allow us to make accurate generalisations about the wider population from which the sample was draw.
- ethical issues
questionnaires pose fewer ethical problems than most other research methods. although questionnaires may ask intrusive or sensitive questions, respondents are generally under no obligation to answer them.
nethertheless, researchers should gain respondents informed consent, guarantee their anonymity and make it clear that they have a right not to answer any of the questions that they do not wish to.
disadvantages of questionnaires
questionnaires have been subject to some sharp criticisms, especially in relation to validity of the date they produce.
disadvantages: practical problems, low response rate, inflexibility, questionnaires as snapshots, detachement, lying forgetting and ‘right answerism’, imposing the researchers meanings
- practical disadvantages
the data from questionnaires tends to be limited and superficial. this is because they need to be fairly brief, since most respondents are unlikely to complete and return a long, time consuming questionnaires. the limits the amount of information that can be gathered from each respondents.
similarly, although questionnaires are a relatively cheap means of gathering data, it may sometimes be necessary to offer incentives - such as entry into a prize draw - to persuade respondents to complete the form. this will add to the cost
with postal and online questionnaires, there are two additional problems. the researcher cannot be sure:
- whether the potential respondent has actually received the questionnaire
- whether a returned questionnaire was actually completed by the person to whom it was addressed
- low response rate
although questionnaires have the potential to collect data from large, representative samples, very low response rate can be a major problem, especially with postal questionnaires. this is because few of those who receive a questionnaire bother to complete and return it.
a higher response rate can be obtained if follow up questionnaires are sent and if questionnaires are collected by hand. however this adds to the cost and time
the problem of no response is sometimes caused by faulty questionnaires. e.g, uses complex language may only be completed by the well educated.
- inflexiability
questionnaires are a very inflexiable method. once the questionnaire has been finalised, the researcher is stcuk with the questions they have to decided to ask and cannot explore any new areas of interest should they come up during the research.
this contrasts with more flexible methods such as unstructured interviews, where the researcher can simply ask new questions if they see relevant.
- questionnaires as snapshots
questionnaires are snapshots. they give a picture of social reality at only one moment in time: the moment when the respondent answers the questions.
questions therefore fail to produce a fully valid picture because they do not capture the way peoples attitudes and behaviour change. this snapshot contrasts with the moving image of social life that participant observation can provide.
- detachment
intervervists such as cicourel argue that data from questionnaires lacks validity and does not give a true picture of what has been studied. they argue that we can only gain a valid picture by using methods that allows us to get close to the subjects of the study and share their meanings. ideally, the method should enable us to put oursleves in the subjects place and see the world through their eyes.
questionnaires fail to do this because they are the most detached of all primary methods.
the lack of contact means there is no way to clarify what the questions mean to the respondent or to deal with misunderstanding.
- lying, forgetting and ‘right anserism’
all methods that gather data by asking questions depend ultimately on their respondents willingness and ability to provide full and accurate answers. problems of validity are created when respondents give answers that are not full or frank
e.g, respondents may lie, forget, not know, not understand, or try please or second guess the researcher. some might give ‘respectful’ answers they feel ought to give, rather than the truth
