research method topic 2

Question 1

What is questionnaire?

Answer 1

list of written questions

Question 2

what two things questionnaires can be?

Answer 2

postal = sent through post and given back to researcher and can be done through email Aswell.

self competition

Question 3

what two types of questions in questionnaire

Answer 3

close ended = limited choices e.g multiple choice

open ended= free to write as much as they can.

Question 4

2 practical strengths

Answer 4

1. easy to analyse= uses close ended and quantitate data
2. useful to see social change over time = easy to replicate so you can use in future to see changes in social attitudes.

Question 5

2 ethical strengths of questionnaire

Answer 5

1. informed consent = them answering questions and filling it out means they are giving consent.
2. anonymity and confidentiality = questionnaires don’t ask them for their name and data gathered in quantitiave so it hidden.

Question 6

2 theoretical strengths

Answer 6

1. representative= you can gain a representative as you can send it out to 1000 people, and this can be a representative for population.
2. accurate = produce valid data as participants are not influenced by researchers’ presence and more likely to answer truthfully.

Question 7

2 practical limitations of using questionnaire.

Answer 7

1. money = to bring in people to complete it researchers have to sometime offer incentives such as prize draw
2. low response rate= postal tend to have low response rate as researcher is not present so they don’t feel obliged to answer it

Question 8

2 theoretical limitations of using a questionnaire?

Answer 8

1. lack of validity = respondents may not understand the question and might misinterpret, and these produces invalid answers.
2. unresponsive = as response rate is low people might not have the time to complete so you cant generalise the findings to whole population.

Question 9

ethical limitations of questionnaire

Answer 9

n/a

Question 10

what are 4 issues sociologist face when using questionnaires to research education

Answer 10

1. operationalisation concepts
2. samples and sampling frame
3. access and response rate
4. ethical issues

Question 11

education question part

1. what is operationalisation concepts
2. what is strength
3. what is a weakness

Answer 11

operationalisation concepts = turning key terms into measurable form

strength = operationalising can be easy if the respondents are teachers. teachers are highly educated so more likely to understand complex languages and words

weakness= if respondents are children so researcher has difficulty of making sure that children understand the concepts well because if they don’t children will misinterpret, and data will be invalid.

Question 12

education part

1. what is sample and sampling frame?
2. what is strength?
3. what is weakness

Answer 12

sample = refers to people taking part in questionnaire

sampling frame = is list from which researcher gets the sample.

strengths = schools keep a list of all their students and staff. if researchers are given access, then researchers have a ready-made sampling frame and select a sample from it.

weakness = however schools are under legal obligation to keep the students and staff data confidential so they might not be able to pass on this information.

Question 13

education part
access and response rate

what is access and what is response rate?

what is strength?

what is weakness?

Answer 13

access= whether they are allowed to carry out the research

response rate = is number of people who complete the questionnaire.

strength = response rate of questionnaires might be higher in schools as if the headteacher approves of the questionnaires the students may feel obliged to fill it out. they can also allocate time to do questionnaires such as PSHE.

weakness = schools may not allow researcher full accesses to students. for e.g year 7 students might be denied as the topic of questionnaire might be inappropriate.

Question 14

education part
ethical issues
strength
weakness

Answer 14

strength = anonymous = useful way of gathering data on sensitive topics as respondents are more likely going to tell the truth.

weakness = lack of consents = students are young and vulnerable can they really understand what it means to take part in a questionnaire.

Question 15

who is sociologist that used a questionnaire?
what did they want to find?
how where they criticised?

Answer 15

chubb and Moe

carried out questionnaire to gather information parents’ attitude on schooling and how schools should run.

chubb and Moe proposed education system should be marketized, the education system is failing because it run by the state, and they should run like a business so they can compete against each other to attract more students and more funding.

criticised: producing data that suited their perspective view on education by leading questions.