What are questionnaires?

• Questionnaires are a list of questions that are distributed by sociologists to people taking part in research

• Look to measure opinions, attitudes and tastes

• Distributed in a number of ways:

  • Mailed- Post or email

  • Face-to-face with the researcher present

  • Handed out to be returned

Types of questions:

• Closed questions

  • Fixed number of responses- Yes/no, Likert scales, multiple choice

  • Pre-coded to provide quantitative data

  • Attitudes and intentions

• Open questions

  • Allows respondents to provide their own unique

  • Produces more qualitative data

  • Explains meanings and motivations

The usefulness of questionnaires:

• A relatively cheap and quick method to distribute

• Less intrusive than methods such as observations

• A broad range of respondents- Increasing representativeness

• Respondents familiar with questionnaires

Practical issues with questionnaires:

• Response rates- Too low to give a representative sample

• Leading questions or ambiguous questions

• Closed questions have an imposition problem

• Open questions can be time-consuming to analyse

Ethical issues with questionnaires:

• Potentially sensitive topics cause distress

• Recording of information must be kept in accordance with GDPR guidelines

• Respondents may only give information if anonymity is maintained

• May disclose responses that are immoral or require reporting to other bodies

Theoretical issues with questionnaires:

• Closed questions lack validity due to fixed responses

• Open questionnaires may lack reliability as responses will be less likely to be repeated

• Are we really measuring true opinions and behaviours?

• Positivists prefer closed, pre-coded questions, whilst interpretivists prefer open questions

Examples of questionnaires:

• Census- Distributed every ten years to measure household information

• Sulivan- Researching cultural capital of parents

• Crime Survey of England and Wales- 20,00 respondents each year on whether they have been victims of a crime in the previous 12 months