Questionnaires and Interviews

Questionnaires and Interviews

1. Questionnaires give mainly quantitative data - they use open and closed questions, likert scale and multiple choice answers.

   • Closed questions - give quantitative data
   • Open questions - give qualitative data, will give insights into meanings and motives.
   • Questionnaires should
     • clear and simple questions, easy to understand
     • clear instructions, make it easy for respondent
     • nice, clear, unintimidating layout.
     • give a range of multiple choice options
     • measure what you intend to measure
   • questionnaires shouldn't
     • ask embarrassing, threatening or complex questions
     • ask 2 questions where one could be asked
     • be too long
     • use sociological terms that few understand
     • use leading questions
   • examples
     • crime survey for England and Wales - survey 38,000 a year
     • British Social Attitudes survey - carried out by national centre for social research, select 3000 at random and send them a questionnaire.
   • Pros and Cons
     • advantages
       • easy to administer, collect and analyse a lot of data in a short time
       • reliable
       • anonymous and doesn't require face to face communication; more suitable for sensitive topics.
       • large sample can be used, can be representative and therefore generalisable.
     • disadvantages
       • may not tell truth, or be mistaken
       • questions may be misleading or interpreted wrong; decreases validity
       • respondents can't give extra info even if helpful
       • no-one to explain questions if not understood
       • postal questionnaires have a low response rate, if it's too low it won't be representative

2. In an interview you have to select and train interviewers, ask the questions, record the answers; bias can get in the way at each stage.

   • Structured Interviews - like a questionnaire except face to face; same closed questions each time, multiple choice.
     • give quantitative data; reliable
     • used in large scale social surveys
     • interviewer can explain questions
     • higher response rate than questionnaires
     • more expensive as need to pay for interviewer
     • interviewer can't ask for more detail if respondent says something interesting.
   • Unstructured interviews - informal with no rigid structure, flexible as to find out facts or attitudes
     • good for sensitive issues where trust must be gained.
     • open ended questions, qualitative data; increased validity
     • interviewer needs to be skilled so they can probe
     • used with smaller samples so less representative
     • takes a long time as the whole conversation needs to be written up
   • Researcher effects make the data less valid.
     • respondents may give the answers they think the interviewer wants to hear (demand characteristics)
     • interviewers can give subtle direction towards certain responses often without realising
       • Becker (1970) - an aggressive interview style can uncover more honest responses.