Defining and Measuring Social Class; Questionnaire

Outline of Research or Measurement

Used to gather information from large groups of people as they can be posted out, completed online or the researche could ask personally.

Closed Questionnaires = categories with tick boxes.

Open Questionnaires = more space allowed for answere, people are able to express their opinions.

Strenghts

+ They can be easily distributed to a large group of people.

+ They are high in reliability because they can easily be repeated.

+ They are anonymous which means that people are more likely to answer the questions truthfully , rather than answering them face-to-face in an interview.

Weaknesses

- The respondents may not complete the questionnaires truthfully, therefore it would be low in validity.

- There could be a low response rate which means that the replies may not be representative of all who were sent the questionnaire.

- The questions could be interepted differently and could give a different response.

- People may not even be bothered to complete the questionnaire.