Questionnaires

• What is a questionnaire?

  Respondents record their own answers. They are produced in written form and there is no face-to-face contact with another person
• Strengths of Questionnaires


  • Allow us to see what people are feeling
  • Can be repeated easily
  • Respondents may be more willing to reveal personal information because of the anonymity
• Weaknesses of Questionnaires


  • People may not answer correctly as they may not know enough about a topic, or they may not want to be seen as unlikeable
  • The sample may be biased because it could be only people that like Questionnaires
• Closed Questions


  • Has a fixed number of possible answers
  • Provides Qualatitive answers
• Strengths of Closed Questions

  • Easy to analyse because data is in numbers
  • Answers are more objective because they’re more likely to be interpreted in the same way
• Weaknesses of Closed Questions

  • Limits the answers respondents can give
  • Oversimplifies the reality of a situation as only simple answers can be given
• Open Questions


  • Invites respondents to give their own answers
  • Provides Qualitative answers
• Strengths of Open Questions

  • Provides rich detail as not limited to simple answers
  • Can receive unexpected findings
• Weaknesses of Closed Questions

  • Harder to draw conclusions because it’s harder to find patterns
  • Results will be subjective - researchers will have different interpretations
• Ranked Scales


  Similar to closed questions, has to give an answer on a scale
• Strengths of Ranked Scale

  • An objective way to represent feelings
  • Produces Quantative Data
• Weaknesses of Ranked Scales

  • Participants may respond in the same way for each question, to avoid this switch the positive and negative sides of the scale
  • Social desirability can effect answers