Questionnaires

Questionnaires

1. -Positivists -Quantitative -primary data

   • E.g. Census UK
     • 1. face-to-face 2.postal 3.email/online 4.telephone

2. Practical

   • Quick and cheap way of gathering information from large numbers of people, postal can be distributed geographically, recruitment of interviewers isn't needed
   • Easy to quantify and be processed into graphics/tables and test a hypothesis
     • Hypothesis testing; are useful for testing hypothesis about cause and effect relationships, e.g. Sue Sharpe - questionnaire on what is more important careers or marriage done in the 70's and then 90's found before was marriage but now careers(longitudinal)
     • often an incentive is needed to be given such as a prize draw in order to get a response which adds cost
   • Limited quality of info and superficial, they need to be fairly brief as people are unlikely to fill out pages of a questionnaire

3. Reliability

   • These are repeatable as new respondents will answer thee same questions, same order and same choice of answers
   • No researcher influence
   • Very low response rate especially with postal. People cannot be bothered or they have too much time on their hands therefore it makes it unrepresentative as a cross-section of the population. e.g. busy people in employment won't reply but all people who do, such as UNI students will produce distorted results

4. Ethnocentric?

   • Value free and objective, quite scientific positivists favour this
   • postal - no personal contact between researcher

5. Representativeness

   • As they collect info from large numbers of people it is very representative which allows the researcher to make generalisations

6. Ethics

   • Neither intrusive or ask sensitive questions
   • generally under no obligations to answer
   • Informed consent is needed and anonymity is needed
   • results should be stored on a password-protected computer (BSA favour)

7. Theoretical

   • Snapshots; interpretivists argue they only provide a snap shot of reality. They lack validity as the researcher cannot gain verstehen like you can with interviews and observations
   • Inflexibility; questions have to be decided before which makes it difficult to adapt the method which interpretivists dislike as they prefer more flexible interviews
     • Detachment between researcher and respondents which means there is no chance to elaborate and get detailed answers

8. Validity

   • Lying, forgetting; researcher relies on their willingness to answer truthfully as people may lie or not know the answer and try and give the 'right' answer or mislead the researcher which reduces validity
   • pigeon holing; respondents are sometimes forced to 'pigeon hole' their views, such as picking any answer because they don't know the answer and forcing them to fit their views into categories they don't fit in