Self report surveys and questionnaires

Question 1

What are the 5 key features of a survey or questionnaire?

Answer 1

1. Involve participants giving information to the researchers about their views, opinions or attitudes on a specific topic
2. Participants typically respond to questions on a questionnaire or during an interview
3. They can be structured or unstructured
4. Researcher needs to use a combination of open and closed questions to produce qualitative and quantitative data
5. Researcher tries to select a large and representative sample

Question 2

What are open questions?

Answer 2

Allows respondents to answer in their own words, producing qualitative data

Question 3

What are closed questions?

Answer 3

Respondents choose their response from a limited number of fixed responses predetermined by the researcher, producing quantitative data

Question 4

What is a strength of open questions?

Answer 4

Produces rich, detailed data

Question 5

What is a weakness of open questions?

Answer 5

Difficult to statistically analyse

Question 6

What is a strength of closed questions?

Answer 6

Easier to statistically analyse

Question 7

What is a weakness of closed questions?

Answer 7

Lose the richness of people’s answers

Question 8

What are the strengths of questionnaires?

Answer 8

1. Data can be collected in multiple forms, so it’s cost effective
2. They’re an efficient way of collecting reliable data

Question 9

What are the weaknesses of questionnaires?

Answer 9

1. Internal validity is compromised by social desirability
2. Population validity is often lowered by sampling biases

Question 10

What are the 3 types of interview?

Answer 10

1. Structured
2. Unstructured
3. Semi structured

Question 11

What is a structured interview?

Answer 11

• The interviewer will mostly ask questions that have been prewritten, but may sometimes add follow on questions to clarify a response
• Questions can be closed or open but follow a set format

Question 12

What is an unstructured interview?

Answer 12

• The interviewer will have very few predetermined questions
• Questions tend to be open

Question 13

What is a semi structured interview?

Answer 13

• Aims to explore themes and has some set questions
• The interviewer is allowed to explore some of these areas further based upon the interviewees initial responses

Question 14

What are the strengths of interviews?

Answer 14

1. Allow detailed information to be obtained as most interviews use a combination of open and closed questions
2. More useful than questionnaires as they also identify body language, allowing a skilled interviewer to gather even richer data
3. The combination of both structured and unstructured interviews encourages the participants to be honest and allows them to express themselves whilst at the same time allowing the researcher to analyse the responses using graphs, increasing the validity of the method

Question 15

What is a weakness of interviews?

Answer 15

More time consuming than questionnaires