questionnaires

• What is a questionnaire?

  Written questions designed to collect information from a large number of people
• Questionnaires are a type of self-report technique. What is a self-report?

  Any method in which a person is asked to state or explain their own feelings, opinions, behaviours and/or experiences related to a given topic
• Are questionnaires structure or unstructured? Justify your answer.


  They are always structured as they are written in advance
• What are open questions?

  Does not have a fixed set of answers and respondents are free to answer in any way.​
• What are closed questions?

  Fixed number of responses​
• Why are questionnaires cost effective?

  Cost effective because you can give a questionnaire to be completed simultaneously. Or you can send out a lot and ask for them to be sent out. No need for individual testing.
• Why is being cost effective a good thing?

  You can collect more data, more data means that your conclusions are more reliable
• Why are questionnaires easy to analyse?

  Questionnaires tend to collect quantitative data. This can be analysed numerically (averages etc.) which is fast.
• Why is being easy to analyse a good thing?

  Easy to analyse makes it quicker, which makes it cheaper. This means that more data can be analysed for the same cost - more data means that your conclusions are more reliable
• Questionnaires can produce social desirability bias. What is social desirability bias?

  Social desirability bias is when participants lie on their questionnaires to make themselves look better.
• Why would a questionnaire produce social desirability bias?

  This may happen if the questionnaire is asking about behaviours/opinions that may be undesirable
• Why is social desirability bias a bad thing?

  If participants lie, the results will be wrong and therefore less valid
• Questionnaires can produce a response bias. What is response bias?

  Response bias is when participants don't read the question, they just answer with the same response throughout
• Why would a questionnaire produce response bias?

  This may happen if the questionnaire is too long or if the participant isn't that interested in taking part
• Why is response bias a bad thing?

  If participants don't answer properly and truthfully, the results will be wrong and therefore less valid