Sociology- using surveys

Sociology- using surveys

1. The main means of collecting education data, and much of this is collected by the government, which has the resources and legal powers to carry out large-scale, national research into schools and colleges, either with large and representative samples, or complete coverage of schools like the School Census. Depending on whether the aim is to collect qualitative or quantitative, these surveys use various forms of questionnaire and interview, and a range of different ways of collecting the data- such as group discussions, structured, semi-structured and unstructured face-to-face or telephone interviews, and postal or internet based questionnaires.

2. There are always questions to be raised about the reliability, validity and representativeness of quantitative data derived from surveys. While data derived from from very large surveys like the School Census might provide comprehensive and representative data, smaller surveys may not.