Strengths and limitation

Question 1

What is a questionnaire

Answer 1

List of written questions which can be postal or self completion

Postal-posted to respondents who fill it in if they choose to and post it back to the researcher. Some can be done through email as well.

Self-completion – given out to the respondents who fill in the answers themselves by, for example, ticking the boxes. They tend to be left with the respondent to complete in their own time and then return to the researcher.

Question 2

What types of questions do questionnaires ask

Answer 2

Closed ended questions:
Respondents must choose their answer from a limited range of possible answers that the researcher has decided upon in advance,
e.g. multiple choice

Open ended questions:
The respondents are free to write / express the answer in
their own words, e.g. what is your favourite food?

Question 3

Pilot study

Answer 3

To make sure the questionnaire is straightforward for the
participants to complete, many researchers will carry out a
pilot study.

A pilot study is a small scale trial run of the first draft of
the questionnaire. It allows the researcher to spot any
mistakes and correct them before carrying out the main
survey.

Question 4

Practical strengths of questionnaires

Answer 4

Time and money
No need to recruit interviewers
Easy to analyse
Useful for studying social change over time

Question 5

Time and money

Answer 5

Practical strength- Questionnaires are a quick and cheap method for gathering large amounts of data from many respondents, e.g. Connor and Dewson carried out research into the factors that affected w/c students’ decisions about going to uni by sending out 4000 questionnaires to students in 14 different universities around the UK.

Question 6

No need to recruit interviewers

Answer 6

Practical strength - Questionnaires are completed by the respondents themselves so there is no need to
recruit or train interviewers. This also save money.

Question 7

Easy to analyse

Answer 7

Practical strength- Questionnaires tend to be made up of closed ended questions and gather quantitative data which is easy and quick to analyse, often using computer software.

Question 8

Useful for studying social change over time

Answer 8

Questionnaires are easy to replicate which means they can be repeated in the future to discover changes in social attitudes over time or between different societies.

Question 9

Ethical strengths of using questionnaires in
research

Answer 9

Informed consent
Anonymity and confidentiality

Question 10

Informed consent

Answer 10

Ethical strength-Informed consent is easy to gain as simply by completing and returning the questionnaire, the respondents are agreeing to be part of the research.

Question 11

Anonymity and confidentiality

Answer 11

ethical strength- Questionnaires do no ask the respondents for their name and the gathered data is presented in statistical form so the identity of respondents is kept hidden,

Question 12

Theoretical strengths of using
questionnaires in research

Answer 12

Reliability
Validity
Hypothesis testing
Objectivity
Representativeness

Question 13

Reliability

Answer 13

theoretical strength - Questionnaires are seen as a reliable method because they are standardised (the same questions are used of
the research is repeated) so the respondents are asked the same questions in the same order with the same choice of responses. This means the method is easy to replicate exactly the same way as the first time.

Question 14

Validity

Answer 14

theoretical strength- Positivists argue that questionnaires produce valid data as the researcher is not present when the respondents complete the questionnaire so their answers are not influenced by the researcher’s presence and are more likely to answer truthfully.

Question 15

Hypothesis testing

Answer 15

theoretical strength-Questionnaires allow for testing hypothesis about cause and effect relationships between different variables, e.g. We can make the hypothesis that children from large families (with many children) do less well at school because of overcrowding in their homes. We can then carry out a questionnaire to test this.

Question 16

Objectivity

Answer 16

theoretical strength-Positivists favour the use of questionnaires because they enable to researcher to stay objective (unbiased)
as they are not personally involved with the respondents, e.g. In postal questionnaires there is no contact between them at all.

Question 17

Representativeness

Answer 17

theoretical strength-As questionnaires can be sent out to 1000s of respondents, they tend to be representative of the wider
population. For example, if you wanted to find out how many parents were going to send their children back to primary schools in June, you cold easily email a questionnaire to 1000s of parents and get a sample that’s representative of people from different backgrounds – class, ethnicity, etc.

Question 18

Practical limitations of using questionnaires
in research

Answer 18

Money
Low response rate
Inflexibility
Superficial data

Question 19

Money

Answer 19

practical limitation-In order to encourage respondents to take part in the research, sometimes researchers have to offer them an incentive, such as entry into a prize draw , but this adds to the cost of the research.

Question 20

Low response rate

Answer 20

Postal questionnaires, in particular, tend to have a very low response rate. As the researcher is not present, the
participants don’t feel obliged to complete it and simply treat it as ‘junk mail’

Question 21

Inflexibility

Answer 21

practical limitation- Questionnaires tend to use closed ended questions which makes them inflexible – the researchers do not get the opportunity to find out about any other areas of interest apart from what they’ve included in their questionnaire.

Question 22

Superficial data

Answer 22

practical limitation-The data gathered by questionnaires tends to be limited. This is because questionnaires can’t be very long otherwise
respondents will not complete them. The researchers can never be sure if the respondent is the person the questionnaire was aimed at,

Question 23

Theoretical limitations of using questionnaires in research

Answer 23

Lack of validity
Unrepresentative data

Question 24

Lack of validity

Answer 24

Questionnaires are a snapshot – they only tell us what something is like in the moment in which the respondents complete it.

Interpretivists argue that the objectivity and the lack of contact between the researcher and the participants means that the researcher can not gain a full understanding of the meanings people attach to their behaviour

The respondents may misunderstand the questions and, as the researcher is not there to explain, this produces invalid answers.
Respondents can lie in order to give a positive impression of themselves to the researcher.

Interpretivists argue that questionnaires are invalid because they impose the researcher’s meanings onto what is being studied rather than discovering the respondents’ meanings.

Question 25

Unrepresentative data

Answer 25

As the response rate is low, the data is likely to be unrepresentative, e.g. only people with time on their hands may sit down to complete the questionnaire as people who work full time and have families will not have the time to do so which means their opinions are not represented in the findings.