Questionnaires and Structured interviews

Hite - Questionnaires

Study of ‘love, passion and emotional violence’ in America sent out 100,000 anonymous questionnaires by only 4.5% of them were returned. As it was anonymous, there was no way of knowing if the people who responded were part of the target audience.

Dewson - Questionnaires

Posted nearly 4,000 questionnaires to students at 14 higher education institutions around the country in their study of factors influencing the decisions of working class students to go to university. 41% responded to a questionnaire and 20 came forward for a follow up interview.

Rutter - Questionnaires

Studied 12 London comprehensive schools and found that the better the school, the better the child’s level of attainment, irrespective of cultural and material factors, thus proving his hypothesis.

LaPiere - Questionnaires

Sent letters to the 250 hotels and restaurants that a young Chinese couple visited, asking whether they would accept Chinese guests. There was a strong anti-Chinese sentiment in the USA in 1934, so 92% said no. In reality, the Chinese couple was only refused once.

Loftus - Questionnaires

In a study of memory, 36% of adult Americans recalled a childhood meeting with Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. This couldn’t have been possible as he isn’t a Disney character.

Schofield - Questionnaires

In a research of sexual behaviour of teenagers, he asked a younger girl whether or not she was a virgin.

Sarah Cant - Questionnaires

Published research on A-level sociology teachers in England and their opinions on the sociology curriculum. She struggled as there was no national register of teachers. She emailed 1054 questionnaires and received 206 responses.

Young + Willmott - Interviews

Wanted to investigate symmetrical families in Bethnal Green. They requested 987 people to interview and had a 94% response rate. They came to the conclusion that families had become much more symmetrical.

Peter Willmott - Interviews

Friendship networks and social support

This is a small scale social survey which investigates the informal social supports available to people from different social classes and to males and females.