Questionnaires

• What are questionnaires?

  -Set of questions that are asked in the same way -Usually self completion that can be done face to face or through the phone
• What do questionnaires consist of?

  -Closed questions that create quantitative data
• What are the disadvantages of questionnaires?

  -No way of stopping research is someone is upset

  -Questions may be misunderstood -Obtain quantitative data which lacks details

  -Response rate can be low
• How can you solve the problem of a low response rate?

  -By offering incentives e.g. change to win a trip to paris
• Would this really make the answers more representives by offering incentives?

  -Not really as the trip to paris might attract more pro-european respondants and the quesstionnaire may be related to brexit
• Questionnaires mainly give quantitative data?

  1. Mainly use closed questions and multiple-choice questions answers
  2. some questionnaires use open-ended questions e.g. what's your favourite fish
  3. Reliability & validity of questionnaire depends on how it's designed

  • Closed questions give u quantitative data, which positivists like
  • Open-ended questions can give u some insight into meanings and motives. They give you qualitative data, which interpretivists prefer
• Questionnaires should...

  1. use clear, simple questions which are easy to understand
  2. Gives clear instructions and make it easy for the respondent
  3. Have a nice clear layout that doesn't intimidate ppl
  4. give a range of options on multiple-choice questions
  5. Measure what you want to measure
• Questionnaires shouldn't...

  1. Ask embarassing, threatening or complex questions
  2. Ask two questions instead of one
  3. Be too long
  4. Use sociological terms that few ppl understand
  5. lead the respondent to answer a question in a particular way
• 1. Questionnaires can be used to investigate topics such as TV viewing habits, purchasing habits, voting behaviour and experience of crime
  2. The crime survey for england and wales (CSEW) is a questionnaire that is carried out continually by british government. The survey about 38 000 ppl a year and publish new results anually
  3. The british social attitudes survey is carried out annually by the national centre for social research. Each year they select aroun 3000 british adults at random and send them a questionnaire
• Questionnaires have several advantages? (1)

  1. Easy to administer, they can collect alot of data in a short time. Closed questions provide quantitative data which can be quickly analysed too
  2. Questionnaires are reliable
• Questionnaires have several advantages? (2)

  3.Questionnaires are annoymous & don't require respondent to sit face-to-face with an interviewer makes them suitable for sensitive topics e.g. national survey of sexual attitudes and lifestyle was a postal questionnaire rather than face-to-face structured interview

  4.large sample can given a questionnaire, if the sample is representative the questionnaires should produce representative data so it can be used to make generalisations
• Questionnaires have limitations- They aren't very valid?

  1. Respondents may not tell the truth, they may lie or be mistaken
  2. Questions may be misleading or mean different things to different people meaning they may not accurately measure what you want to measure
  3. respondents can't give extra information, even if it's helpful to researcher
  4. Bc respondents fill it in themselves, no one to explain a question if they can't understand
  5. postal questionnaires have low response rate. too low to be a representative sample