QUESTIONNAIRES

Question 1

Definition: Questionnaires

Answer 1

A list of written questions that can be self-completed:

• by hand in person/at home
• online
• by postal

Question 2

Definition: open-ended questions

interpretivists

Answer 2

respondents are free to give whatever answer they wish, without any pre-selected choices being offered

(qualitative)

Question 3

Definition: closed-ended questions

positivists

Answer 3

respondents must choose from a limited range of possible answers

(quantitative)

Question 4

PRATICAL ADVANTAGES

Answer 4

• quick and cheap way of gathering large amounts of data and spread geographically (esp. online/postal questionnaires; census)
• no need to recruit/train interviewers as it is self-completed
• usually easily quantifiable - easy to find correlations

Question 5

PRACTICAL DISADVANTAGES

Answer 5

• usually limited in information/content to encourage people to answer (straight-froward)
• may need to offer incentives (e.g. a prize draw) to encourage/persuade people to answer - expensive
• don’t know if person has received or even filled out postal/online questionnaires themselves

Question 6

THEORETICAL ADVANTAGES

Answer 6

• Reliable: can be repeated to see if results are the same; can be done by a large population; no researcher present for postal/online to influence answers
• good for hypothesis testing about cause-and-effect relationship (quantitative data)
• Researchers are detected and objective
• representative: can reach a large population cheaply

Question 7

THEORETICAL DISADVANTAGES

Answer 7

• limited to quantitative data/inflexible - cannot gain true opinions, especially if their answer is not an option, seen as a ‘snapshot’
• low response rate (esp. postal) - better in person; unreliable and lacks validity
• if a researcher is not present, the respondent may interpret questions wrongly, and therefore distort the data - lack validity
• the detachment of this method disallows researchers to understand respondents true feelings
• respondents may feel pressured to give the ‘‘right answer’ and therefore lie in their responses
• imposing the researcher’s meanings: researcher choosing what questions are important

Question 8

ETHICAL DIS/ADVANTAGES

Answer 8

• (adv.) no one is forced to answer every question; anonymity should be guaranteed
• (disadv.) questions may be intrusive and sensitive