Topic 4 - Questionnaires and MIC

Question 1

Types of questionnaires.

Answer 1

• Closed ended questionnaires: pre determined questions and a range of pre set possible answeres offered
• Open ended questionnaires: no pre set answers so the respondent can express themselves however they choose

Question 2

What the advantages/disadvantages of administering questionnaires face to face?

Answer 2

ADVANTAGES
- Relatively high response rate
- Interviewer can clarify questions if necessary

DISADVANTAGES
- Interviewer may influence responses
- Time consuming
- Expensive

Question 3

What the advantages/disadvantages of administering questionnaires through telephone?

Answer 3

ADVANTAGES
- Relatively chea and easy to access geographically dispersed sample
- No interviewer bias

DISADVANTAGES
- Response rate may be low
- Limited to people who own telephones
- May be influenced by voice of interviewer

Question 4

What the advantages/disadvantages of administering questionnaires through the post?

Answer 4

ADVANTAGES
- Relatively cheap and easy to access a geographically dispersed sample

DISADVANTAGES
- Response rate tends to be very low

Question 5

What the advantages/disadvantages of administering questionnaires on the internet?

Answer 5

ADVANATAGES
- Very cheap and quick to send to a widely dispersed sample

DISADVANTAGES
- Response rate likely to be low
- Limited to those with internet access

Question 6

Practical issues

Answer 6

• Quick and cheap
• Gather large amounts of data from alrge numbers of people: Dawson - posted 4,000 questionnaires to students at 14 higher education institutions
• No need to recruit and train interviweres or observers
• Data can be limited and superficial due to being brief: limits amount of info that can be gathered
• Incentives may need to be offered
• Postal/online: respondents may not receive it, no guarentee it was completed by intended person

Question 7

Ethical issues

Answer 7

• Rose few ethical issues
• Respondents arent obliged to answer
• Researchers should take care not to cause harm
• Gain respondents informed consent
• Parental consent may be required
• Confidentiality may be required

Question 8

Theoretical issues

Answer 8

• Positivists favour it because it’s representative; allows generalisations to be made
• Reliable: can easily be replicated by other researchers
• Useful for hypothesis testing
• Interpretivists dislike it as it gives limited insight: finding real meanings behind answers from closed ended questions isnt possible
• Social desirability effect: untruthful answers, decreases validity
• Possibility of false info - respondents may lie or get someone to answer, reduces validity

Question 9

Reliability

Answer 9

• It is relaible
• Postal/online questionnaires: no researcher present to influence answers
• So long as similar sample is used, results should be replicated
• If there are differences it’s down to genuine differences between respondents
• Allows comparisons over time between societies

Question 10

Hypothesis testing

Answer 10

• Useful for hypothesis testing
• Can make statements about the possible causes of low achievement based on data and then predictions about which children are most likely to underachieve

Question 11

Detatchement and objectivity

Answer 11

• Questionnaires are detatched and objective
• Postal questionnaires are completed at a distance
• Cicourel - data from questionnaires lacks validity, can only get a valid pic by using methods that allow us to get close to the subjects of the study
• Can involve no direct contact between research and respondent
• No way to clarif what questions mean, no way of knwing if the respondent and researcher both interpret the questions or answers the same

Question 12

Representativeness

Answer 12

• Large sample = more representative
• Researchers who use this method tend to be better at obtaining and selecting a representative sample
• Allows us to make accurate generalisations

Question 13

Low response rate

Answer 13

• Few of those who receieve questionnaires complete them or if they do return them
• Hite: sent over 100,000 questionnaired to find out about ‘love, passion and emtional violence’ in America and only 4.5% returned
• Non response can be caused by faulty questionnaire designs; e.g. complex language
• If respondents are different from non respondents it will produce distorted and unrepresentative results and so no accurate generalisations can be made

Question 14

Inflexibility

Answer 14

• Questions chosen and finalied cannot be changed
• Cannot explore new areas of interest
• Unstructured interviews = more flexibility

Question 15

Snapshots

Answer 15

• Only a snapshot of one moment in time
• Fail to produce fully valid picture
• Don’t capture peoples attitudes or behaviour changes

Question 16

Lying, forgetting and ‘right answerism’

Answer 16

• Depends on respondents willingness and ability to provide full and accurate data
• Questions validity when respondents give asnwers that are not full or frank
• May lie, forget. not know or understand or try to please or second guess the researcher
• Give respectable asnwers they feel they ought to give rather than tell the truth

Question 17

Imposing the researcher’s meanings

Answer 17

• Interpretivists argue questionnaires are more likely to reveal the researchers own meanings
• Researcher decides what’s important by choosing the questions
• Close ended questions = respondents have to fit their answer into what is on offer; no opportunities for further explanations
• Open ended questions = when asnwers are coded for quantifiable data, similar answers may be lumped together into the same category

Question 18

Methods in context links

Answer 18

• Rutter (1979)

Question 19

Operationalism of concepts

Answer 19

• Involves turning abstract ideas into a measurable form
• Pupils grasp of abstract ideas is lower than adutls - may be hard to turn concepts such as cultural capital or deferred gratification into langauge pupils will understand
• Danger of oversimplification of questions

Question 20

Samples and sampling frame

Answer 20

• Routine lists that schools keep can provide accurate sampling frames
• Ready made sampling: classes, teaching departments, year groups etc
• May not keep lists that reflect researchers interests; e.g. ethnicity which may be denied access to due to confidentiality
• Need schools permission to handout questionnaires
• Peer group pressure when completing
• Formal document: students may find it off putting

Question 21

Access and response rate

Answer 21

• Low response rate
• Cause disruption to lessons
• When conducted in schools response rates are higher: produces more representative data from which to draw generalisations
• Pupils, parents and teachers are more used to completing questionnaires
• However, teachers may be too busy to complete

Question 22

Practical issues

Answer 22

• Rutter: collcted data from 12 secondary schools.
• Used it to correlate data on achievements, attendance and behaviour with variables such as school size, class size and a number of staff: wouldve been more difficult with labour intensive methods such as interviews/observations
• Data didnt provide explanations for the correlations
• Children have a shorter attention span so has to be kept brief - limts amount of info gathered
• Childrens experiences are narrow and recall is different to adults; children may not know the answer

Question 23

Anonymity and detatchment

Answer 23

• Anonymity can overcome fear of embarrassment: useful fo sensitive topics such as bullying
• Pupils may be more likely to divulge detials of experiences = possibly more valid data
• Teachers may be able to give more honest answers
• Interpretivists emphasise the importance of developing a rapport therefore reject questionnaires
• Formal, official looking documents = children may refuse to cooperate or take it seriously = invalid data.