Advantages and Disadvantages of Questionaires

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  • Created by: Phil
  • Created on: 17-05-13 09:19

Advantages and Disadvantages of Questionaires

Advantages

  • Economically these are cheaper especially if the questionaire is online
  • Questionaires have set questions so they are easier to quantify, this makes it less time consuming than other methods
  • There is no face to face influence from the interviewer since no one else is present when the questionaire is filled out
  • The answers and questions are standardised making it easier to quantify, making it the same experience for each respondent and allowing the research to be repeated at a later date if needed

Disadvantages

  • The the questionaire isnt effective if the questions are unclear, unclear questions can lead to misinterpretation by the respondent so the data is invalid, also it can reduce the amount of respondents because people may not answer questions they dont understand
  • standardised questions can be off putting to respondents since it is a common form of research (especially online)
  • no chance to check the validity of the information since the researcher cannot check if the respondents are lying or not
  • postal questionaires end up being more expensive if the research is done across a wide area, and often result in low response rates

Evaluation

questionaires are convenient for the researcher and are more reliable but can sometimes result in low response rates and lack of validity in the data (especially in un-anonymous questionaires)

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