Topic 4 Questionnaires

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  • Created by: Ali682
  • Created on: 09-03-19 17:11
Advantages of questionnaires
The popularity of questionnaires in undoubtedly due to the considerable range of advantages they offer to researchers.
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1. Practical advantages
They are a quick and cheap means of gathering large amounts of data from large numbers of people, widely spread geographically, especially if a postal code or online questionnaire is used.
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1. Practical advantages (2)
There is no need to recruit and train interviewers or observers to collect the data, because respondents complete and return the questionnaires themselves.
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1. Practical advantages (3)
The data is usually easy to quantify, particularly where pre-coded, closed-ended questions are used and can be processed quickly by computer to reveal the relationships between different variables.
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2. Reliability
Questionnaires are seen as a reliable method of collecting data. That is if repeated by another researcher the questionnaire should give similar results to those gained by the first researcher. There are 2 reasons for this:
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2. Reliability (2)
1. When the research is repeated, a questionnaire identical to the original one is used, so new respondents are asked exactly the same questions, in the same order with the same choice of answers as the original respondents.
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2. Reliability (3)
2. With postal or online questionnaires, unlike with interviews, there is no researcher present to influence the respondents answers.
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2. Reliability (4)
In other words the questionnaire is a fixed yardstick that can be used by any researcher to obtain the same results. This means one researcher's study can easily be repeated and checked by another.
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2. Reliability (5)
The reliability of questionnaires also means that if we do find differences in the answers that respondents give we can assume that these are the result of real differences between the respondents and not simply the result of different questions.
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2. Reliability (6)
A related advantage is that they allow comparisons, both over time and and between different societies. By asking the same questions, we can compare the results obtained in two different societies or at two different times.
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3. Hypothesis testing
Questionnaires are particularly useful for testing hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationships between different variables. For instance, using the example of educational achievement, analysis of respondents' answers could show whether there is a
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3. Hypothesis testing (2)
correlation between children's achievement levels and family size. From this analysis we can make statements about the possible causes of low achievement and predictions about which children are likely to underachieve.
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3. Hypothesis testing (3)
Because questionnaires enable us to identify possible causes, they are very attractive to positivist sociologists, who take a scientific approach and seek to discover laws of cause and effect.
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4. Detachment and objectivity
Positivists also favour questionnaires because they are a detached and objective method, where the sociologist's personal involvement with their respondents is kept to a minimum. For example, postal questionnaires are completed at a distance
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4. Detachment and objectivity (2)
and involve little or no personal contact with respondents. For this reason, positivists see them as a good way of maintaining detachment and objectivity.
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6. Representativeness
Because questionnaires can collect information from a large number of people, the results stand a better chance of being truly representative of the wider population than with other methods that study only very small numbers of people.
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6. Representativeness (2)
Researchers who use questionnaires pay more attention to the need to obtain a representative sample. For these reasons, the findings of questionnaires are more likely to allow us to make accurate generalisations about the wider population.
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6. Ethical issues
Questionnaires pose fewer ethical problems than most other research methods. Although questionnaires may ask intrusive or sensitive questions respondents are under no obligation to answer them.
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6. Ethical issues
Nevertheless researchers should gain respondents' informed consent, guarantee their anonymity and make it clear that they have a right not to answer any of the questions that they do not wish to.
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Disadvantages of questionnaires
Despite their advantages, questionnaires have been subject to some sharp criticisms, especially in relation to the validity of the data they produce.
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1. Practical problems
The data from questionnaires tends to be limited and superficial. This is because they need to be fairly brief since most respondents are unlikely to complete and return a long time-consuming questionnaire. This limits the amount of information that
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1. Practical problems (2)
can be gathered from each respondent. Although questionnaires are a relatively cheap means of gathering data, it may sometimes be necessary to offer incentives-such as entry into a prize draw- to persuade respondents to complete the from.
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1. Practical problems (3)
With postal and online questionnaires there are two additional problems. The researcher cannot be sure whether the potential respondent has actually received the questionnaire and whether a completed questionnaire was completed by the person.
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2. Low response rate
Although questionnaires have the potential to collect data from large, representative samples, very low response rates can be a major problem, especially with postal questionnaires. This is because few of those who receive a questionnaire bother to
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2. Low response rate (2)
complete and return it. For example, Shere Hite's (1991) study of 'love, passion and emotional violence' in America sent out 100,000 questionnaires but, only 4.5% of them were returned.
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2. Low response rate (3)
A higher response rate can be obtained if follow-up questionnaires are sent and if questionnaires are collected by hand, However this adds to the cost and time. The problem of non-response is sometimes caused by faulty questionnaire design.
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2. Low response rate (4)
The danger with a low response rate is that those who return their questionnaires may be different from those who don't. For example busy people in full-time work may fail to respond,whereas the unemployed or socially isolated with time on their hand
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2. Low response rate (5)
may be more likely to respond than those who have little knowledge or interest in it.
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3. Inflexibility
Questionnaires are a very inflexible method.Once the questionnaire has been finalised, the researcher is stuck with the questions they have decided to ask and cannot explore any new areas of interest should they come up during the research.
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3. Inflexibility (2)
This contrasts with more flexible methods such as unstructured interviews, where the researcher can simply ask new questions if they seem relevant.
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4. Questionnaires as snapshots
Questionnaires are snapshots. They give a picture of social reality at only one moment in time: the moment when the respondent answers the questions.Questionnaires therefore fail to produce a fully valid picture because they do not capture the way
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4. Questionnaires as snapshots (2)
people's attitudes and behavior change. This snapshot contrasts with the moving image of social life that participant observation can provide.
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5.Detachment
Interpretivists such as Cicourel (1968) argue that data from questionnaires lacks validity and does not give a true picture of what has been studied.They argue that we can only gain a valid picture by using methods that allow us to get close to the
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5.Detachment (2)
subjects of the study and share their meanings.Ideally,the method should enable us to put ourselves in the subject's place and see the world through their eyes.
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5.Detachment (3)
Questionnaires fail to do this because they are the most detached of all primary methods. This lack of contact means there is no way to clarify what the questions mean to the respondent or to deal with misunderstandings.
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6. Lying, forgetting and 'right answerism'
All methods that gather data by asking questions depend ultimately on their respondents' willingness and ability to provide full and accurate answers.Problems of validity are crated when respondents give answers that are not full or frank.
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6. Lying, forgetting and 'right answerism' (2)
For example respondents may lie, forget, not know, not understand or try to please or second-guess the researcher. Some may give 'respectable' answers they feel ought to give rather than the truth.
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6. Lying, forgetting and 'right answerism' (3)
These problems put questionnaires at a disadvantage when compared with observational methods since the observer can see for himself or herself what the subject actually do rather than what they say they do.
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7. Imposing the researcher's meanings
A valid method is one that gives a truthful picture of people's meaning and experiences. Yet interpretivists argue that questionnaires are more likely to impose the researcher's own meanings than to reveal those of the respondent.
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7. Imposing the researcher's meanings (2)
By choosing which questions to ask, the researcher, not the respondent has already decided what is important.If we use closed-ended questions respondents then have to try to fit their views into the ones on offer.
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7. Imposing the researcher's meanings (3)
If they feel some other answer to be important, they have no opportunity of giving it thus producing an invalid picture of their reality.On the other hand if we use open-ended questions respondents are free to answer as they please.
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1. Practical advantages

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They are a quick and cheap means of gathering large amounts of data from large numbers of people, widely spread geographically, especially if a postal code or online questionnaire is used.

Card 3

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1. Practical advantages (2)

Back

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Card 4

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1. Practical advantages (3)

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Card 5

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2. Reliability

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