Psychology Research Methods (Questionnaires)

Questionnaires

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.

Designing a Questionnaire

Aims Length Pilot Study Question Order Terminology Presentation

Benefits of a Pilot Study

Check that respondents understand the terminology used in the questionnaire. Check that emotive questions have not been used as they make people defensive and could invalidate their answers. Check that leading questions have not been used as they could bias the respondent's answer. Ensure the questionnaire can be completed in an appropriate time frame (i.e., it's not too long).

Closed Questions

Closed questions structure the answer by only allowing responses which fit into pre-decided categories. It can be placed into Ordinal Data (which can be ranked) and Nominal Data.

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?"

Weaknesses of Questionnaires

However, a problem with questionnaire 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.

Strengths of Questionnaires

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.

Strengths of Open Questions

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.

Problems with Postal Questionnaires

The data might not be valid (i.e., truthful) as we can never be sure that the right person actually completed the postal questionnaire. Also, postal questionnaires may not be representative of the population they are studying? This is because some questionnaires may be lost in the post reducing the sample size. The questionnaire may be completed by someone who is not a member of the research population. Those with strong views on the questionnaire's subject are more likely to complete it than those with no interest in it.

Ethical Issues of Questionnaires

The researcher must ensure that the information provided by the respondent is kept confidential, e.g., name, address, etc. This means questionnaires are good for researching sensitive topics as respondents will be more honest when they cannot be identified. Keeping the questionnaire confidential should also reduce the likelihood of any psychological harm, such as embarrassment. Participants must provide informed consent prior to completing the questionnaire, and must be aware that they have the right to withdraw their information at any time during the survey/ study.

Strengths of Closed Questions

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

Weaknesses of Closed Questions

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.

Weaknesses of Open Questions

Time-consuming to collect the data. It takes longer for the respondent to complete open questions. This is a problem as a smaller sample size may be obtained. Time-consuming to analyze the data. It takes longer for the researcher to analyze qualitative data as they have to read the answers and try to put them into categories by coding, which is often subjective and difficult. However, Smith (1992) has devoted an entire book to the issues of thematic content analysis the includes 14 different scoring systems for open-ended questions. Not suitable for less educated respondents as open questions require superior writing skills and a better ability to express one's feelings verbally.