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Pros and Cons of Questionnaires in Research

Advantages of questionnaires include being quick and cheap, not requiring trained interviewers, and allowing for easy quantification of results. Questionnaires can also reliably replicate results, test relationships, and objectively gather representative opinions. However, questionnaires have disadvantages such as potentially limiting data, requiring incentives, and not allowing researchers to expand questions. Questionnaires also only provide a snapshot of present attitudes and can be influenced by lying, forgetting details, or a desire to provide the 'right' answers.

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69 views2 pages

Pros and Cons of Questionnaires in Research

Advantages of questionnaires include being quick and cheap, not requiring trained interviewers, and allowing for easy quantification of results. Questionnaires can also reliably replicate results, test relationships, and objectively gather representative opinions. However, questionnaires have disadvantages such as potentially limiting data, requiring incentives, and not allowing researchers to expand questions. Questionnaires also only provide a snapshot of present attitudes and can be influenced by lying, forgetting details, or a desire to provide the 'right' answers.

Uploaded by

gdeityy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Advantages of questionnaires

Practical advantages
→ Quick and cheap
→ No need to recruit and train interviewers
→ Easy to quantify
Reliability
→ Easily replicated and repeated
→ Uninfluenced results
Hypothesis testing
→ Useful for testing cause and effect relationships
Detachment and objectivity
→ Objective (unbiased) method
Representativeness
→ Gathering results from a larger amount of people means that the results are more representative of
people’s varying opinions
Ethical issues
→ Less ethical issues regarding privacy and vulnerable groups

Disadvantages of questionnaires
Practical problems
→ Data can be limited
→ May need to offer incentives
→ Cannot be sure if recipient has actually received the survey/if a completed survey has been sent
back
Low response rate
→ Initially many may not respond, but the rate of surveys received can increase if a follow up email
is sent
Inflexibility
→ Researcher cannot expand or add any more questions if they want to broaden/narrow their research
Questionnaires as snapshots
→ Only give an idea of reality as it is in present time; therefore they fail to produce a fully valid
picture because they do not capture people’s attitudes and behavioural changes
Detachment
→ Cicourel: You can only gain a valid picture by using methods in order to get close to those being
monitored
Lying, forgetting and ‘right answerism’
→ May feel pressure to answer a certain way or say forget certain details under pressure
Imposing the researcher’s meanings
→ Researcher is choosing questions that they want to ask and has already chosen what isn’t important
→ Close ended questions force the interviewee to fit their opinions and views into the answers on
offer
Methods in context: Operationalising of concepts
→ Turning abstract ideas into measurable and quantifiable data.

Methods in context: Samples and sampling frames


→ Helps locate a certain demographic
- GDPR and general reluctance makes it hard to obtain data
Methods in context: Access and response rate
→ Schools may be reluctant to hand out questionnaires as it disrupts the timetabled classes and
schedules the students have to follow
Methods in context: Practical issues
→ The younger the demographic, the shorter the attention span, can make it hard to measure
→ Children’s life experience is more narrow, not much knowledge/awareness of the outside world
→ Teachers may alter the way they answer questions causing the data to become invalid
Methods in context: Anonymity and detachment
→ Sensitive topic such as: Bullying, mental health, etc, may be difficult to answer and so anonymity
serves as protection from retribution
- Creates more valid results as they are more likely to be honest

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