methods in context practice question

Page 7 - Using material from Item B and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of using self-completion questionnaires for investigating pupil’s literacy

1. the source identifies that pupils with poor reading and writing skills may be embarrassed by their literacy problems, and have low self-esteem, and thus research methods that involves face to face interaction with a researcher may result in the Hawthorne effect - when participants behave differently because they know they are being watched. This may be because of the dynamic of age patriarchy in researching this particular group - with children as the participants, and adults as the researchers, the participants may see the researcher as a figure of authority and intellect, and so would want to impress them, or be embarrassed so change their answers

   1. the use of questionnaires is a very positivist approach in that emotional distance is maintained through a sense of anonymity between the researcher and the participant, meaning that they are less likely to conform to the Hawthorne effect and change their answers in an act of adaptation, as the social characteristics of the researcher are likely to have very little impact on the outcome of the research

2. however, there is still scope for the adaptation of answers - firstly in that the questionnaires are ‘self-completion’ - a teacher, or participant observation may be able to offer a more objective viewpoint, perhaps by focussing on grades - and in the suggestion made by the source that ‘questionnaires can also be distributed to parents to ask about how much support they give to their children’. By directly suggesting that responsibility for poor attainment in reading and writing lies with the parents, the carrying-out of the questionnaire can present itself like an interrogation or an accusation, and so parents are likely to change their answers, affecting the validity of the data

3. it could be argued that in being a positivist approach, questionnaires don’t see validity as as much of a priority as reliability, and these self-completion questionnaires will still have an advantage in that they will produce reliable results. This refers to the idea that the study can be repeated and still produce the same results. This is because there is only limited scope for adaptation of answers, due to the fact that, as the source states, ‘respondents can complete questionnaires quickly by choosing from a fixed set of answers’, and so numerical, quantitative data is collected, reliability is ensured, and trends are identified. Thus, questionnaires are beneficial in establishing that there is a correlation between poor reading and writing skills and educational achievement

4. However, interpretivism would argue against this positivist approach of generating social facts, by suggesting that individuals all have unique experiences of education, and that there is no universal explanation for low educational achievement, or poor literacy skills. Interpretivism would argue that, as questionnaires fail to achieve verstehen, they fail to produce explanations for the trends and ‘social facts’ they identity, and as such, fail to provide solutions

   1. a better research method for achieving this would then involve face to face contact, such as unstructured interviews, or participant observation, however this would present problems regarding accessibility

5. the source suggests that ‘sociologists may face certain problems in seeking to gain access to schools to administer their questionnaires’, as schools are closed environments, but this could be easily overcome by distributing the questionnaires to the students indirectly, through teachers. An interpretivist method such as interviews or participant observation would face much greater issues with access, particularly if covert. This is because an adult researcher would look out of place in a school. Even if overt, these research methods would have a negative impact on the data through the risk presented by the Hawthorne effect.

conclusion: in conclusion, while self-completion questionnaires present many advantages in terms of practical factors, such as increasing accessibility, and decreasing the impact that the social characteristics of the researcher could potentially have, there is still scope for the adaptation of answers, despite collecting quantitative data - participants can still attempt to choose the most socially acceptable answer - and in failing to identify reasons for poor literacy and solutions to overcome it, the validity of the research is negatively affected.