Toolkit 3 Flashcards
What are the influences on your approach?
- what do you intend to achieve
- sample size
- when and where
- how you intend to process
- time and resources
Aims of a good questionnaire
- valid
- reliable
- unbiased
What are the 5 types of questionnaire
- face to face
- street survey
- telephone survey
- postal survey
- depth, or semi structured
Face to face interview?
- direct encounter
- interviewer asks questions from a schedule
- records responses
Street survey
- face to face
- brief encounter
- interviewer asks questions and records responses
Telephone survey
- contact by phone
- pre determined schedule
- few simple questions
Postal surveys
- no interviewers
- questionnaires sent by post
- cover letter explains completion and return details
What are benefits of postal survey?
- large specific groupings to be targeted
- the cheaper method of gathering data
- feel less pressurised
- eliminates interviewer bias
- enables supporting documentary evidence to be consulted
What are limitations of postal survey?
- slow response times
- ambiguous
- poor responses rates
Email survey
- medium of electronic mail
- care required in selecting target group
- response rates can be poor
Characteristics of good questionnaire
- must be understood
- clear instruction for use
- show consideration for respondent
- provide desired data
- in a form that can be effectively and quickly analysed
What are the three types of questions and describe them?
- factual: eg age, education, occupation. Relatively easy to design
- opinion: difficult to design, subjective, attitudes, emotions
- closed: limited to a simple response, eg tick box
What are open questions?
- much more freedom to express his/her own thoughts
- much more difficult to code and analyse
DO’s of a questionnaire
- explain purpose
- simple and to the point
- no jargon or slang words
What must you do if you include sensitive questions?
- place towards end of survey
- tick box categories
How to improve response rates
- format and appearance
- pre-notification
- postage (you pay for return)
- advertising (local paper)
- incentives (copy of results)
Importance of a covering letter
- should be designed to maximise response rates
- not patronising
- brief explanation of research
- emphasise the value of their input, apologise for burden on their time
What is random sampling advantages?
- chances of everyone being included
- guaranteed to be representative so unbiased sample
Random sampling disadvantages
- other methods have control
- big distances to respondents- travel time
What is systematic sampling?
- systematically through a sampling frame (eg every 100th person or 10th household)
What is stratified sampling advantages
- same as simple random sampling
- easy to use in the field
What is multistage sampling?
- involves dividing population into groups or clusters
What is stratified sampling?
- STRATA- internally homogenous groups, similar within but different between. Stratify according to characteristics.
- METHOD- determine the strata and then sample from the strata in proportion to its size
Snowball sampling
Find one respondent and ask for more names. Eg. Drug users
Quota sampling
Sample made representative by imposing quota controls linked to the topic (age, gender, marital status)
Spatial sampling
- sample locations from a map/field/lake
- 3 basic methods
; point samples
; line samples (traverses)
; area sample (quadrats)
What must a strategy be?
- fit with aims and objectives
- is it piratical, achievable, measurable
- have I got the resources
