Research Methods Assignment 1
Research Methods Assignment 1
Examine the problems some sociologists find with using postal questionnaires in their research.
Questionnaire is a simple list of questions that are gathered and organised in advance to get needed answers. Questionnaires produce quantitative data as questionnaires don’t ask you to elaborate your answers and are more focuses on quantity rather than quality. Because of this positivists will be the ones who will like to use questionnaires as it produces accurate quantitative data. Questionnaires are also a primary type of research method as you have to go and gather all the information yourself including making the questionnaire to fit your research topic. This means that it will take more time for you to collect all the data rather than using secondary data that is already there.
The first problem with a postal questionnaire and why some sociologists don’t use them is due to their low response rate. People tend not to send postal questionnaires back and just don’t even bother filling them in due to lack of time or lack of motivation to do so. This results in the research having low numbers of samples meaning that the research won’t be as valid as it only comprises a small sample of views on the research topic. To add to that not all sociologists like using quantitative data in their research as they might value qualitative data much more due to its depth. Because of this only positivist sociologists would use a postal questionnaire as interpretivists would rather conduct a detailed interview than a questionnaire.
Another disadvantage of using a postal questionnaire is that it can be very time consuming as you don’t know when the responders will post the questionnaire back. This makes it hard to plan when you will finish your research. This can result in sociologists discontinuing the research if people don’t send the questionnaires back in a suitable amount of time. This makes postal questionnaires unreliable as you can’t
Examine the problems some sociologists find with using postal questionnaires in their research.
Questionnaire is a simple list of questions that are gathered and organised in advance to get needed answers. Questionnaires produce quantitative data as questionnaires don’t ask you to elaborate your answers and are more focuses on quantity rather than quality. Because of this positivists will be the ones who will like to use questionnaires as it produces accurate quantitative data. Questionnaires are also a primary type of research method as you have to go and gather all the information yourself including making the questionnaire to fit your research topic. This means that it will take more time for you to collect all the data rather than using secondary data that is already there.
The first problem with a postal questionnaire and why some sociologists don’t use them is due to their low response rate. People tend not to send postal questionnaires back and just don’t even bother filling them in due to lack of time or lack of motivation to do so. This results in the research having low numbers of samples meaning that the research won’t be as valid as it only comprises a small sample of views on the research topic. To add to that not all sociologists like using quantitative data in their research as they might value qualitative data much more due to its depth. Because of this only positivist sociologists would use a postal questionnaire as interpretivists would rather conduct a detailed interview than a questionnaire.
Another disadvantage of using a postal questionnaire is that it can be very time consuming as you don’t know when the responders will post the questionnaire back. This makes it hard to plan when you will finish your research. This can result in sociologists discontinuing the research if people don’t send the questionnaires back in a suitable amount of time. This makes postal questionnaires unreliable as you can’t