Topic 2- Questionnaires

Question 1

What are questionnaires?

Answer 1

A form of social survey that can be distributed to people at home, email, school or completed on the spot.

Question 2

What are the two types of questions?

Answer 2

1. Closes questions- Respondents choose from preselected answers which were decided in advance by the by the researcher
2. Open ended questions- Respondents free to give what answers they wish

Question 3

Who prefers questionnaires and why?

Answer 3

Positivists because they are useful for testing hypotheses about cause and effect relationships

Question 4

What are practical, ethical and theoretical strengths of questionnaires?

Answer 4

P- Quick, cheap and efficient- Can gather large amounts of data from large numbers of people
E- Anonymity and confidentiality- Researchers can guarantee that their details are kept secret and make it clear they have a right not to answer certain questions
T- Reliability- Can be repeated over time to allow comparisons

Question 5

What are practical, ethical, and theoretical weaknesses of questionnaires?

Answer 5

P- Inflexibility- Questions can not be changed so no new areas of interest can be explored.
E- Sensitive data- The questions will be answered by participants by themselves so you can not ask about sensitive data
T- Right answerism- Respondents may lie, not know, forget, not understand etc.

Question 6

What is Schofield’s study?

Answer 6

Schofield did a study on the sexual behaviour of teenagers, he asked a girl if she was a virgin and she answered ‘Not yet’ showing not all respondents understand the questions

Question 7

What was Shere Hite’s 1991 study?

Answer 7

Sent out 100,000 questionnaires but only got a 4.5% response rate due to the sensitive information