RESEARCH METHODS- QUESTIONNAIRES Flashcards
What is a questionnaire?
A questionnaire is a list of written questions designed to collect data from respondents.
What are the two main types of questionnaires?
Postal: Sent to respondents, who can fill them out and return via post or email.
Self-completion: Given directly to respondents, who fill them out in their own time and return them to the researcher.
What are closed-ended questions in a questionnaire?
Questions that provide a limited range of possible answers predetermined by the researcher, such as multiple-choice options (e.g., “Is your favorite food a) pizza, b) curry, c) chips”).
What are open-ended questions in a questionnaire?
Questions that allow respondents to express their answers freely in their own words (e.g., “What is your favorite food?”).
What is the purpose of a pilot study in constructing a questionnaire?
A pilot study is a small-scale trial run of a questionnaire to ensure questions are clear and easy to understand, allowing researchers to identify and correct any issues before the main survey.
What are the practical strengths of using questionnaires in research?
Time and money: They are quick and cheap, allowing researchers to gather large amounts of data. For example, Connor and Dewson sent 4,000 questionnaires to students across 14 UK universities.
No need to recruit interviewers: Respondents fill in questionnaires themselves, saving money and resources.
Easy to analyze: Pre-coded closed-ended questions provide quantitative data that can be quickly analyzed using software.
Useful for studying social change: Questionnaires can be repeated over time to track changes in attitudes or behaviors across societies.
What are the ethical strengths of questionnaires?
Informed consent: Gained easily, as completing and returning the questionnaire implies agreement to participate.
Anonymity and confidentiality: Respondents’ identities are protected, as names are not collected and data is presented in statistical form.
What are the theoretical strengths of using questionnaires in research?
Reliability (Repeatability): Questionnaires are standard and can be replicated easily with the same questions and order.
Validity (Accuracy): Positivists argue they produce valid data, as respondents are not influenced by the researcher’s presence.
Hypothesis testing: Allows testing of cause-and-effect relationships between variables (e.g., the effect of family size on educational achievement).
Objectivity: Researchers remain unbiased due to minimal or no contact with respondents.
Representativeness: Large samples can reflect a diverse population (e.g., emailing questionnaires to thousands of parents for a study).
What are the practical limitations of using questionnaires?
Cost: Offering incentives (e.g., prize draws) to encourage participation increases expenses.
Low response rates: Postal questionnaires are often ignored and treated as junk mail. For example, a school survey sent to parents had a 3% response rate.
Inflexibility: Pre-set closed-ended questions limit the ability to explore new topics outside the questionnaire’s scope.
Superficial data: Short questionnaires often result in limited depth of information, and there’s no guarantee the intended respondent completes it (e.g., children may fill in a questionnaire meant for parents).
What are the theoretical limitations of using questionnaires?
Lack of validity:
They capture a snapshot of behavior at one moment in time and miss deeper meanings.
Misunderstandings of questions can lead to invalid answers, especially as the researcher is not present to clarify.
Respondents may give dishonest answers to present themselves positively.
Imposing researcher’s meanings: The design of the questionnaire may reflect the researcher’s assumptions rather than the respondents’ true preferences (e.g., limited food options in a survey may not reflect actual preferences).
Unrepresentative data: Low response rates may mean only certain groups, like those with free time, participate, making the data less reflective of the wider population.
Why is reliability considered a strength of questionnaires?
Questionnaires are standardized, ensuring the same questions are asked in the same way each time, making the method easy to replicate.
How do positivists argue that questionnaires support validity?
They claim that the absence of a researcher during completion reduces the risk of respondents being influenced, leading to more truthful answers.
What makes questionnaires cost-effective?
They allow researchers to gather data from large groups without hiring interviewers, saving both time and money.
Why might a questionnaire be unrepresentative?
Low response rates, especially for postal surveys, mean that only certain groups participate, excluding others like busy full-time workers.
How can questionnaires impose the researcher’s meanings?
By providing limited options for responses, questionnaires may fail to reflect the true preferences or opinions of respondents.
