Questionnaires

Key terms

• Closed questions: questions that require a specific answer.
• Open questions: questions that allow the respondent to expand. 
• Prompts: possible answers to questions. 
• Response rate: the proportion of questionnaires that are returned. 
• Validity: the problem of ensuring that the questions measure what the researcher intends them to. 

General strengths

• They can reach a large number of people - easy to organise and distribute. 
• Cheap to produce/create. 
• Can be converted into statistical data through use of coding.
• Useful for topics that may embarrass the participant and interviewer presence may be inappropriate. 
• Highly standardised, meaning everyone receives the questions in the same format (reliable). 
• Generalisable to the whole population (if…