questionannaires

• questionnaires

  • ask pre-set, written questions that can be :
  • closed-ended- respondents choose from a limited range of possible answers that researcher had selected in advance
  • open-ended: respondents free to answer in own words
• practical strengths for questionaires

  • quick and cheap way to gather quantitative data from range of people
  • no need to recruit and train interviewers
  • data is easy to quanitify and can be computer processed to reveal relationships between variables
• practical limitations for questionnaires

  • data is limited and superficial
  • offer incentives to persuade people to take part (added cost)
  • low response rates
  • inflexible as questions cannot be changed
• questionnaires and reliability

  • they can be replicated and are reliable
  • positivists regard reliability as important because it allows scientists findings to be checked and falsified by others
• questionnaires and represenativeness

  • positivists likely to favour as it yeilds represenative data as:
  • large scale: questionnaires can collect information from a large scale of people
  • representative samples: more sophisicated sampling techniques
• detachment and objectivity

  • questionnaires are detached and scientific form of research
  • favourable for positivists as scientists own subjective opinions and values must be kept seperate from research
• interpretivism and detachment

  • how valid are questionnaires really?
  • interpretivists seek to discover the meanings that underlie actions and social reality
  • to obtain valid data, methods must gain an subjective understanding which questionnaires do not offer (people may misunderstand the question, cultural and language barriers)
  • cost of detachment is invalid data that fails to give a true picture of repsondents meaning