Questionnaires Flashcards
Practical advantages
- Quick and cheap → able to gather large sets of data ( postal / online)
- No need to recruit and train interviewers
- Data easy to quantify → processed by computer to provide relationships between variables
Ethical advantages
- less of chance for psychological harm
- relatively not intrusive – not threatening to break privacy
- respondents tend to be more honest
Theoretical - reliability
Reliability
- Has standard procedure → replicable / researchers obtain same answers
- No researcher present to influence answers
- Allows comparisons over time and between different societies
Theoretical - representativeness
Representativeness
- Collects from large sample so → reflects wider society efficiently
- tend to pay more attention to the need to represent a sample
- researcher not present so little influence – lack of methodological perspective
Practical disadvantages
- Data limits and superficial → as they are brief and limit amount of info from each ppt
- Incentive sometimes have to be used to gather info – increases cost
- Cannot be certain if people actually receive questionnaires in post
- Can be difficult to measure if the person it was sent to was who returned it
- Once the questionnaire is finalised → stuck with questions so are unable to explore any new areas of interest
- ambiguous / leading questions
Ethical disadvantages
- sensitive questions could trigger a person / distress
- need consent without consent questionnaire cannot take place can be difficult
- guarantee anonymity – people may not want to take part/ feel exposed
- right not to answer- may not get as much data than other parts making in unequal
- may disclose immoral responses that have to be passed on
Theoretical disadvantaged
With postal questionnaires many don’t bother to complete them
HITE’s study 100,000 studies sent out only 4.5% returned
- Higher response rate if follow up calls sent out → increases cost
- Complex language - can limit those who are able to answer- lowers representative
HITES study
With postal questionnaires many don’t bother to complete them
HITE’s study 100,000 studies sent out only 4.5% returned
Theoretical disadvantage - validity
- lacks validity as unable to what ppt do as could lie or not understand
- Interpretivists argue bias or researcher comes through as they chose questions showing what is important
- Lack of contact means no way of knowing if they both interpret the questions the same way
- Fail to produce a fully valid picture → as do not capture how behaviours change
- not always representative as low response rate
- close end questions - respondent has to fit their views – options aren’t flexible / fixed answers not valid
Positivists viewpoint
Favours as
* Achieves reliability/ generalisability and representativeness
* Standardised questions → produces reliable data because others can replicate
* Pre coded responses allow us to produce quantitative data
identity and measure behaviour patterns
* Establish a cause and effect relationship
* Often large scale thus more representative