A questionnaire is a list of a research or survey questions asked to respondents, and designed to extract quantitative date. Questionnaires are easily distributed to the community and can be completed and collected on the spot or be emailed or posted back to the researcher. Self completed questionnaires are the most common survey as they are cheap and can be passed to a lot of people. Some sociologists tend not to use questionnaires because of their low response rate and lack of validity. Also, some people may give false information so some researchers like to stick to interviews and experiments for increased accuracy. I will explore why sociologists shy away from using questionnaires.
Positivists favour questionnaires because they
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A valid method is one that give a true picture of the peoples meaning and experiences, yet interpretivists argue that questionnaires are more likely to impose the researchers own meanings than to reveal those of the respondent. When a researcher chooses a question he automatically has decided that that is an important question and what is not. If researchers use close-ended questions, respondents cant include all the data they have to offer and have to fit their views into the question asked, if they use open ended questions the respondents have a chance to put all their meanings down, this could be more time consuming for collecting the date after. Shipman says when the researchers categories are not the respondents categories ‘pruning and bending’ is inevitable. He determines questionnaires as straitjackets and undermines the validity of the data. Another way of getting a true picture of the respondent is through triangulation- the use of 3 or more methods to achieve the same or similar results, it can be achieved through quantitative and qualitative data which makes it more reliable, questionnaires can be used adequately. In conclusion, it is clear that there are a lot of reasons as to why some sociologists choose not to use questionnaires when carrying out research. Some of the main
A questionnaire is research which involves a number of different questions to gather information from the people who are filling it in. Questionnaires are designed as a way to find out what people are thinking. An advantage of questionnaires is that it is very practical because it is quick to collect information from the people filling out the questionnaire. Another advantage of questionnaires is that the same questions is asked to everyone filling the questionnaire out so easy to sum up. The final advantage to questionnaires is that large information can be collected. There are also some disadvantages to questionnaires which is that there is no way of telling how much though someone who is filling the questionnaire out has put it. Another disadvantage is that the person filling it out may forget what has happened to fill it out so it won’t be reliable. The final disadvantage to questionnaires is that there is no way to tell how truthful a respondent is being.
Outline the sources of secondary data that sociologists use and assess their advantages and disadvantages. (33 marks)
• The quantitative procedures utilize excessively couple of variations and offers a mediocre approach, hence contextual considering of subject is absent. Henceforth, they tend to be less suited for sociology contrasted with objective learnings (Barr, 2004).
Sociologists are concerned with the different social behaviors in our society. To investigate the causes of such changes in behavior sociologists use two different methods to gather data and deeply understand the causes of change. The first method is Quantitative Research. Sociologist uses quantitative research because allows them to generalize their findings beyond the participant group. For example, in The Compassion Gap In American Poverty Policy by Fred Black, Anna Karteweg (2008) provided solid statistics on how farther and farther the American Dream has become for most Americans. According to their findings, in 1973, the “Dream Line” was under $10,000 and close to two-parent income with a minimum wage job and the “Poverty Line”. The year
Funny thing about sociology: Time, a lot of time goes into coming up with a sociological question. Sociologists rework their questions multiple times, and then reviews for structure and sociological imagination; no surprise the rewording starts again. Finally, with great relief the masterpiece is done, the question is asked. One will sit back and admire their question only to realize the real work is about to start.
Surveys and Experiments, Longitudinal studies, are two significant methods of research used in Sociology. First, the Survey method, a primary research method, studies a larger, broader population of sociology (Bryant, L. (2014), (Census). For this survey method, experimenter choose the subject and questions needed for the collection of data. The advantage of this method involves a faster evaluation period and is inexpensive. However, the disadvantage of this method is the interviewers inability to observe the participants emotions to the questions. Also, the participants may not answer the questions honestly, and they serve as a small group illustrating opinions for a larger population (Henry Tischler, (2011). Secondly, the experiment method, longitudinal studies, is a primary research method attaining results by an explicit control of the environment and observes the independent and dependent variables measured throughout the study. The undertaking this experiment method take, involves explaining how and why an independent variable affects a dependent variable. One advantage this method holds is the outcome. The limitation is localized to a small group related to the ability to control the surrounding variables. In summary, these sociological methods gather information on “human social behaviors during its origin, development, organization, functioning and institutions” (Henry Tischler, (2011), (Bryant, L. (2014), (Census).
The Advantages and Limitations of Social Surveys in Sociological Research To survey something, is to carry out a systematic overview so that a researcher can produce a comprehensive general report on it. Survey method is often used by positivist sociologists seeking to test their hypotheses, and to investigate causes and examine variables. As with every other sociological research, survey has its own advantages and limitations. Positivist research, which is in the scientific tradition, begins with a hypothesis that can be either confirmed or rejected according to the data collected. One of the significant advantages of survey method is that, it can be used to collect data that is a representative
In the realm of social science there are a variety of measurement tools that academics use to perform social research. One of the most important tools is survey research, a ?measurement procedure that involves asking questions of respondents.? 1 The importance of survey research cannot be understated, as it is estimated that in the 1980s and 1990s one out of every
In the realm of social science there are a variety of measurement tools that academics use to perform social research. One of the most important tools is survey research, a measurement procedure that involves asking questions of respondents (Trochim, 2006). The importance of survey research cannot be understated, as it is estimated that in the 1980s and 1990s one
Questionnaire is one of the most popular techniques for gathering data, where questions in a questionnaire are designed to be answered asynchronously, i.e. without the presence of the investigator. A goal must be set, before developing the questionnaire, as developer would like to have relevant reasons before starting working on something. Targeting the participants is another important element of collecting data through online questionnaire. In many ways questionnaire is similar to interviews as questions could be open or closed. Since interviewer is not present or in a word nobody is available to interpret the questions for the participant, making the
When social researchers are doing a survey in quantitative research they employ the structured interview. The structured interview is one of the two main ways of administering a survey research instrument; the main forms of it are face-to-face and telephone. Social researchers prefer using the structured interview, the reason being that it promotes standardization of both the asking of questions and the recording of answers. If the interview is done properly variation in people’s replies will be due to true variant and not due to the interview context. There are two different variables; they are called intra-interviewer and inter-interviewer. A closed type of question is used in quantitative research because it gives the respondent a limited choice of possible answers. One of the advantages when using a closed question is that it is easier to process the data. When processing the data with coding it introduces two errors which are: the coding frame can be flawed, and the possibility of variation of which the answers are categorized. Like interviewing, there can be two sources of coding: intra-coder variability, and inter-coder variability.
Survey design can raise issues that can traverse the cultural and linguistic boundaries and influence the survey questions selection and procedure. These issues can become more pressing and critical especially when surveys are conducted in support of vital entities such as government policies, program evaluations, human rights investigations and government policies. Survey accommodation to certain cultures and languages is an issue of importance and significance. There are logical reasons for these issues as survey participants can interpret things and respond differently according to the question order effects, cultural and language background. Also, the participants` understanding of the survey construction, intention, data usage and assurance of their information, can influence the designer`s approach of questions construction and organization (Blair & Piccinino, 2005). The previous literature reviews shed the light on several aspects such as the survey design implications. The importance of the survey context becomes apparent when the researchers consider the situations where cultural and linguistic factors are involved. These factors can influence the design due to several reasons, Some researchers design the surveys from scratch for the purpose of using it in cultures and language settings, which are not their own.
The research will use various materials for its data collection. It will incorporate the use of questioners to collect data. The questioners will be both open ended and closed questionnaires. The questionnaires will be beneficial for their and are a cost effective tool for data collection. They
Generally, surveys are standardized to ensure that they have reliability and validity. This is very important so that the results can be generalized to the entire population. However, this paper will discuss the following questions/concerns based on the survey questionnaire answered: my thought on the length of each survey instrument, my thought on the open minded questions, whether I preferred completing the surveys or open ended questions, which methodology I believe is most useful in the examination of each variable/construct, and how this experience might influence my research design.
One more aspect that we believe is critical for this research project is the fact that we would require a questionnaire that is designed in such a way so that the participant is not fully aware of the conclusions we wish to reach with this survey yet we are eventually able to collect the required data; ie