Topic 3 - Questionnaires

• Questionnaires


  Written or self-completed questionnaires are the most common form of social survey. They can be distributed to people at home and returned by post, emailed or collected on the spot e.g. in a classroom. Questionnaires ask respondents to answer pre-set questions. Questions tend to be closed-ended, often with pre-coded answers.
• Positivists


  • Start from the assumption that there is a measurable, objective social reality 'out there'
  • Take a scientific approach, using standardised methods of research to obtain quantitative data
  • This allows them to produce generalisations and cause-and-effect statements
• Why positivists use questionnaires


  • Questionnaires deliver reliable data - e.g. by using the same set of questions, they can be repeated exactly, so that previous findings can be re-tested
  • Questionnaires generate quantitative data that can be used to test hypotheses and identify correlations between variables, e.g. between education and class
  • Questionnaires can also be used on a large scale to produce representative data
• Interpretivists claim that the data produced by questionnaires is low in validity
• Advantages of questionnaires


  • Practical advantages: Quick and cheap, gather large quantities of data from large numbers of people, widely spread geographically, pre-coded, closed-ended questions make the data easy to quantify
  • Reliability: Positivists see questionnaires as a reliable method of collecting data, easily replicated, no researcher present to influence the respondent's answers
  • Hypothesis testing: Questionnaires are useful for testing hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationships between different variables
  • Detachment and objectivity: Little or no personal contact between researchers and respondents, no bias caused by the presence of a researcher
  • Representativeness: Questionnaires can collect information from large numbers of people, increasing the chance of obtaining a representative sample
• Disadvantages of questionnaires


  • Practical problems: Need to be brief, don't know if respondent received or completed the questionnaire
  • Response rate: Very low response rates, especially with postal questionnaires, low response rate means results may be unrepresentative
  • Inflexibility: Once finalised, the researcher cannot explore any new areas of interest that might emerge
  • Detachment: Questionnaire data lacks validity, no way to clarify questions or misunderstandings
  • Lying, forgetting and 'right answerism': Respondents may lie, forget, not know, not understand, or try to please or annoy the researcher
  • Imposing the researcher's meanings: Questionnaires may impose the researcher's meanings rather than revealing those of the respondent