Advantages and Disadvantages of Questionnaires

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Questionnaires

Advantages

  • Representativeness - Quick and cheap research method - can collect large amounts of data from large groups of people - Connor and Dewson posted 4000 questionnaires to students at 14 higher education institutions  -so results more representative of population as a whole
  • Detachment and objectivity - positivists favour as they are unbaised method - personal involvement minimal especially postal questionnaires
  • Ethical Issues - fewer ethical issues than most - respondents under no obligation to answer questions seen as intrusive or sensitive. easier to gain informed consent to fill out questionnaire

Disadvantages

  • Low response rate - few of those who recieve questionnaires respond and return it (especially postal) e.g. Hites study of love, passion and emotional violence only 4.5% of 100,000 were returned - if respondents views different to non respondents produce invalid results
  • Questionnaires s snapshots - give a picture of social reality at one moment in time only - therefore fail to produce valid picture as don't capture behaviour or attitude changes
  • Lying, forgetting and right answerism - validity depends on respondents willingness to tll truth - may lie, forget, not know or answer how they think researcher wants them too not tell truth

Evaluation

Positivists favour questionnaires as they achieve main goal of reliability, genrealisability and representativeness. Interpretivists reject them for imposing researchers framework of ideas on respondent. Also fail to meet main goal of validity. Benfeild used questionnaires to look at peoples level of pay for first three years after graduation - handed out 25,000 and found that women got better results but ended up being paid less than men who are doing the same jobs. 

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