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