Questionnaires

Questionnaires

1. Questions

   • Closed-ended (also known as 'forced choice' quesitons)
   • Open-ended

2. Practical issues

   • Strengths
     • Quick
     • Cheap
     • No need to recruit/train interviewees
     • Easily quantifiable
   • Limitations
     • Data = limited and superficial
     • It may be necessary to offer incentives to persuade respondents to compete the quesitionnaire. This adds to the cost.
     • Very low response rate.
     • Questionnaires are inflexible.
     • Questionnaires are only snapshots.

3. Theoretical issues

   • Positivism
     • Hypothesis testing
     • Reliability
     • Representativeness
       • Large-scale
       • They use representative samples
     • Detachment and objectivity
   • Interpretivism
     • Detachment
     • Lying, forgetting and trying to impress
     • Imposing the researcher's meanings