Questionnaires

What are the questionnaire?

Questionaires ask respondents to provide answers to pre-set questions. There are two types of questionnaires.

• Close ended- Respondents must choose from a limited range of possible answer that the researcher has decided in advance.

• Open ended-respondents are free to give what ever answer they want .

What are the practical advantages?

• They are quick and cheap means of gathering large amounts of data from large numbers of people, widely spread geographically, especially if a postal or online questionnaire is used. Connor and Dawson posted nearly 4000, questionnaires to student at 14 higher education institutions around the country in their study of the factors influencing the descions of working-class students to go to university.

• There is no need to recruit and train interviews or observers to collect data, because respondents complete and return and questionnaires themeselves

• Easy to quantify for close ended

Reliability and questionnaires

Q’s are seen as reliable as if they are repeated by another researcher than they should obtain similar results to the first researchers.

also with postal or online questionnaires there is no researcher present to influence the respondents answers.

Hypothesis testing and questionnaires

They are very useful for testing hypothesis about cause and effect relationship between different variables.

This is because they are easy to analyse so we are able to discover patterns and causes.

Due to them being able to identify causes they are used often about positivists.

Detachment and objectivity

Postivits also favour questionnaires because they are a detached and objective method where the sociologist involvement with their respondents is kept minimal.

Representativeness

Questionnaires can collect info from a large number of people it means there is a greater chance of the results being truly representitve of the wider society.

In addition researchers using questionnaires tend to pay attention to obtain a representative sample. Meaning will we be able to generalise the results when using questionnaires.

Ethical issues

Eventhough questionnaires do typically pose fewer ethical problems than most other research methods. Some questions may be quite sensitive or personal to the respondent. Researchers should make sure they have gained informed consent and guarantee anonymity and make it clear they do no need to answer if they don’t want to.

Disadvantages of questionnaires- pratical problems

The data from questionnaires tend to be limited and superficial. This is because they need to be fairly brief as respondents are not likely to reply or complete a long, time consuming questionnaires- this limits amount of info that can be gathered.

Questionnaires are typically cheap but sometimes the researcher may add an additional prize such as prize draw for a cash reward which may add additional costs.

With postal and online questionnaires the researcher cannot be sure whether the respondent got the questionnaire or wether the questionnaire was answered by who it was addressed to.

Low response rate

many people who receive questionnaires dont bother to complete and return them.For example Hite’s study of love, passion and emotional violence in America sent out 100,000 Q’s but only 4.5% were answered and sent back.

H: higher response rates can be obtained if there are followed up questionnaires are sent out or if the questionnaires are coolected by hand, this does cost more money and time.

Inflexibility

Questionnaires are a very inflexible method. Once the questionnaire has been finalised, the researcher is stuck with they questions they have decided to ask and cannot be explore any new topic of interests should they come up during the research.

Questionnaires as a snapshot

They give social reality at only one moment in time. Therefore questionnaires fails to provide a completely valid picture as they do not capture peoples beliefs and behaviour changing

Detachment

Interprevists such a Cicourel argue that data from questionnaires lack validity and does not give a true picture of what has been studied . They argue that we can only gain a valid picture if we interact with the pps and understand why they think and behave the way they do.

Lying, forgetting and ‘right answerism’

All methods that gather data by asking questions depend ultimately on their respondents willingness and ability to provide full and accurate answers. Problems of validity are created when respondents give answers that are not full or frank.

For example respondents may lie, forgot, not know, not understand or wish to appear desirable so may not answer truthfully or just answer how they think they should answer.

Imposing the researcher’s meanings

A valid method is one that gives a truthful picture of peoples meanings and experience. Yet interpretivists argue that questionnaires are more likely to impose the researchers own meaning the to reveal those of respondants.

• by choosing which questions to ask, the researcher, not the respondent, has already decided what is important

• if we use close-ended Q’s respondents then have to try to fit their views into the ones on offer. if they feel some other answer to be important, they have no opportunity of giving it, thus producing an invalid picture of their reality.

• If we use open ended questions respondants are free to answer as they please, but when the researcher comes to code them to produce quantitative data, similar but non identical answers may get lumped together into the same category.