chapter 3 Essay

Questionnaire is set of questions which could be written or multiple choice question given to the individuals or groups to find the factual information.

1. Why does the Indian classical tradition dominate the musical image of South Asia in the west?

This questionnaire will utilize close-ended questions for several reasons. The close-ended questions enable pre-set answers which allows for greater ease of coding and analyzation of answers while simultaneously taking away any opportunity for unnecessary or undesired answers to questions. It also adds to higher incidences of participation in the study because the respondent will not have to take vast amounts of time to respond to short-answer questions which can be daunting for those who have difficulty reading or writing which is important in regards to seniors who may have difficulty reading due to poor eyesight or may have problems holding a pen or pencil due to arthritis.

Questionnaires are “a series of questions asked to individuals to obtain statistically useful information about a given topic” (Bryant, L, 2014). There are different types of questionnaires that include face to face, phone, post and online.

According to Yilmaz (2013) there exist two significant approaches to research with respect to studying the social and individual world. According to Creswell (2014) three types of design quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods should remain in consideration when choosing a research designs at the start of the process. The two methods exist a quantitative and

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.

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.

“Research in health and social care usually relies on obtaining information from individuals using social research methodologies”. (Whitehouse, M, 2010:428). Questionnaires are suitable for obtaining important information from many individuals in a survey who are answering the questions this is known as ‘respondents’. Questionnaires gives us the opportunity to ask questions of participants but also allows answers to be given according to the options constructed by the researcher using a response frame. A response frame allows a limited choice of different responses. Also there are self-completion questions this allows respondents to fill in the answers themselves. The questionnaire may be delivered to individuals directly by hand or by post or even online the researcher may contact through an email address. They may be asked to complete a customer satisfaction questionnaire. For example at college we are sent online questionnaires through are student email, questionnaires

Although the class has not had input into the methodology used to collect the data for this report it is still important for us to know why these methods were used. Questionnaires can be useful in order to get opinions and views from a large groups of people (McLeod 2014), such like conditions for the research for this reports. This can be useful as this can be an easier way of targeting a larger audience other than in interview purposes. This will also be more time consuming as everyone is answering the same questions.

According to O’Sullivan, Rassel, and Berner (2008), “Questionnaire writing involves deciding what variables to measure; writing questions that accurately and adequately measure the variables; assembling the questions in a logical order on a

The questions/statements on the questionnaire were tested for validity, reliability, and readability and comprehension. Validity was examined by a panel of experts, reliability was tested by providing the questionnaires to a subsample and providing the questionnaire again to the same group after a 1 week period. Readability and comprehension were tested with other students representative of the sample used for the study.

At the same , I found a lot of advantages of doing a questionnaire survey.For example, practical and large amounts of information can be collected from a large number of people in a short period of time and in a relatively cost effective way, ant it can be carried out by the researcher or by any number of people with limited effect to its validity and reliability.

According to www.uc.ie/resources (025/02/08) ‘‘argued that questionnaires give the researcher feedback from the point of view of the user’’.

The strength of questionnaires is it can give an insight into respondent’s thoughts and opinions and also cost efficient as it is inexpensive.

Open-ended questions allow for a greater variety of responses from participants but are difficult to analyze statistically because the data must be coded or reduced in some manner. Closed-ended questions are easy to analyze statistically, but they seriously limit the responses that participants can give. Many researchers prefer to use a Likert-type scale because it’s very easy to analyze statistically. (Jackson, 2009, p. 89)