Research Techniques

Questionnaires

(questionnaires.html)

 - A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. Questionnaires can be thought of as a kind of written interview. They can be carried out face to face, by telephone, computer or post.

- Questionnaires provide a relatively cheap, quick and efficient way of obtaining large amounts of information from a large sample of people.

- Data can be collected relatively quickly because the researcher would not need to be present when the questionnaires were completed. This is useful for large populations when interviews would be impractical.

- However, a problem with questionnaires is that respondents may lie due to social desirability. Most people want to present a positive image of themselves and so may lie or bend the truth to look good, e.g., pupils would exaggerate revision duration.

- Questionnaires can be an effective means of measuring the behaviour, attitudes, preferences, opinions and, intentions of relatively large numbers of subjects more cheaply and quickly than other methods.

- Often a questionnaire uses both open and closed questions to collect data. This is beneficial as it means both quantitative and qualitative data can be obtained.

Closed Questions

- Closed questions structure the answer by only allowing responses that fit into pre-decided categories.

- Data that can be placed into a category is called nominal data. The category can be restricted to as few as two options, i.e., dichotomous (e.g., 'yes' or 'no,' 'male' or 'female'), or include quite complex lists of alternatives from which the respondent can choose (e.g., polytomous).

- Closed questions can also provide ordinal data (which can be ranked). This often involves using a continuous rating scale to measure the strength of attitudes or emotions.

- For example, strongly agree / agree / neutral / disagree / strongly disagree / unable to answer.

- Closed questions have been used to research type A personality

Strengths

- They can be economical. This means they can provide large amounts of research data for relatively low costs. Therefore, large sample size can be obtained which should be representative of the population, which a researcher can then generalize from.

- The respondent provides information that can be easily converted into quantitative data (e.g., count the number of 'yes' or 'no' answers), allowing statistical analysis of the responses.

- The questions are standardized. All respondents are asked exactly the same questions in the same order. This means a questionnaire can be replicated easily to check for reliability. Therefore, a second researcher can use the questionnaire to check that the results are consistent.

Limitations

They lack detail. Because the responses are fixed, there is less scope for respondents to supply answers which reflect their true feelings on a topic.

Open Questions

- Open questions allow people to express what they think in their own words. Open-ended questions enable the respondent to answer in as much detail as they like in their own words. For example: “can you tell me how happy you feel right now?”

- If you want to gather more in-depth answers from your respondents, then open questions will work better. These give no pre-set answer options and instead allow the respondents to put down exactly what they like in their own words.

- Open questions are often used for complex questions that cannot be answered in a few simple categories but require more detail and discussion.

- Lawrence Kohlberg presented his participants with moral dilemmas. One of the most famous concerns is a character called Heinz who is faced with the choice between watching his wife die of cancer or stealing the only drug that could help her.

- Participants were asked whether Heinz should steal the drug or not and, more importantly, for their reasons why upholding or breaking the law is right.

Strengths

Rich qualitative data is obtained as open questions allow the respondent to elaborate on their answer. This means the research can find out why a person holds a certain attitude.

Limitations

They are time-consuming to collect the analytics and data and they take longer for interviewers to complete.

Bibliography

Saul Mcleod (2018) Questionnaires: Definition, Examples, Design and Types. simplyphsychology.org https://www.simplypsychology.org/questionnaires.html