Questionnaires

Question 1

What are questionnaires?

Answer 1

Simply lists of questions. Are the main method for gathering data in social survey, may be handed in, online. Filled by the respondent on their own

Question 2

What are the 2 types of questions?

Answer 2

• Closed-ended (limited possible answers that researcher, e.g. ‘yes’ or ‘no’)
• Open-ended (free to give whatever answer they wish)

Question 3

What are practical advantages of questionnaires?

Answer 3

• They’re a quick and cheap means of gathering lots of data from large numbers of people, and can be spread geographically, especially if it’s online
• There’s no need to recruit and train interviewers to collect data, as respondent complete and return questionnaires by themselves
• Data is easy to quantify, mainly closed-ended, and can be processed quickly by a computer to reveal the relationships between different variables

Question 4

What is an ethical advantage of questionnaires?

Answer 4

They pose few ethical issues than other methods. Although they might ask sensitive questions, respondents are under no obligation to answer them

Question 5

How are questionnaires reliable?

Answer 5

• When research is repeated, a questionnaire identical to original is use, so new respondents are asked same question, in the same order and have the same choice of answers, as the original respondents
• With online questionnaires, there’s no researcher present to influence the respondent’s answer
• This means that there is a difference in answers, it is due to differences between respondents and not the result of different questions

Question 6

Why do positivist prefer questionnaires due to hypothesis testing and detachment?

Answer 6

• As they’re useful in testing hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationships and establishing correlations, this is attractive to positivists who take a scientific approach
• They’re detached and objective, where the researcher’s personal involvement is at a minimum

Question 7

How do interpretivist reject the positivist preferences for detachment and objectivity?

Answer 7

• Interpretivists, such as Cicourel, believe it fails to produce a valid picture of actors’ meanings.
• The lack of contact between research and respondent means there’s no way to clarify what the questions means or deal with misunderstandings.

Question 8

How are questionnaires representative?

Answer 8

• As questionnaires collect info from a large number of people, results are likely to be representative of the wider population.
• This is important to positivist as they aim to make generalisations about how the wider social structure shapes our behaviour

Question 9

Give an example of a questionnaire being representative

Answer 9

• Rutter used questionnaires to collect large quantities of data from 12 inner London secondary schools.
• He was able to correlate achievement, attendance and behaviour with school and class size and number of staff
• This would’ve been difficult to do with more with methods like interviewing or observation

Question 10

What are practical problems of questionnaires?

Answer 10

• Data tends to be limited as questionnaires need to be brief as respondents are unlikely to complete a long questionnaire
• Financial incentives may need to be offered to persuade respondents to complete forms

Question 11

What are problems with the validity of online questionnaires?

Answer 11

• With online questionnaires, you can’t be sure whether the respondent as received it and whether the returned questionnaire was actually completed by the addressed person
• Questionnaires are snapshots, giving a picture of reality at one moment in time, when respondents fills it out.

Question 12

How do interpretivists argue researchers impose their meanings onto questionnaires?

Answer 12

• By choosing the questions, they have decided what is important
• Using closed-ended questions means respondents have to fit views into ones on offer. If they have an answer the feel to be important, they can’t give it
• Using open-ended questions means when the researcher codes them to produce quantitative, similar answer may be lumped together

Question 13

Give an example of a questionnaire where question wasn’t understood

Answer 13

Schofield studied sexual behaviour of teens, where a young girl was asked ‘are you a virgin?’. She answered ‘no, not yet’. Resulting in data that lacked validity