Why questionnaires are useful

Examples of experimental research methods are laboratory, field and quasi experiments. Examples of non-experimental research methods are observations, interviews and questionnaires. Questioning is used to collect data for a self-report. It can vary in detail and depth; from surveying participants interviews to assessing participants individually through the evaluation of their questionnaires.

I wish to focus on the non-experimental research method of questioning, and in particular the effectiveness of questionnaires. In fact, most psychological scale measures do not ask questions but present statements to be agreed with or not to a certain degree. Questionnaires can be open-ended or closed a range of choices, such as multiple choices. The two types of questionnaires are; opinion surveys and psychological tests.

Questionnaires are useful at attempting to measure a psychological variable. A respondent participant taking the questionnaire responds to the set of statements in the questionnaire on a level of agreement or disagreement which is comprised on a psychological scale. Opinion surveys are questions which can be either closed or open-ended questions which should be made to be understandable, exact and easy to do.

Dweck used open-ended questions for his participants, such as; agree, strongly agree, mostly agree, strongly disagree, etc. However, these are very open-ended questions. People will more often than not respond to the questionnaire using the middle answers for example; agree, disagree, mostly agree, mostly disagree. Open-ended questions are making people take one side or the other. Rather than having a question which is direct and to the point, for example, are you vegetarian: Yes or No.

While questionnaires allow us to gather non-intrusive information about the participant they are ubiquitous. They are used by tutors, by shops, in food marketing, students, and many other organisations.

Questionnaires are useful when the right information is set out to collect and data is correctly interpreted. Questionnaires give the impression of being scientific when collecting data, but if it is not useful data then it is not necessarily scientific, as no information is being interpreted, hence, no behavioural observations are being carried out.

A disadvantage with questionnaires is people tend to categories. What would the 40 year old participant answer? This is known as categorical variable , when age, for example, is reduced to specific categories. Cost is another bonus and a significant reason why many researchers use questionnaires. Making questionnaires both quick and very cheap; the questionnaire can be printed out and distributed physically, or the questionnaire can be completed and submitted online.

There may be minimal costs, such as printing costs or hosting fees. Customization is an important part of gathering research. One can determine how the subjects receive the study, the length of the questionnaire and what sort of questions are on it.

Often, questionnaires are designed so that answers to questions are scored and scores summed to obtain an overall measure of the attitudes and opinions of the respondent. They may be mailed to respondents although this approach may lower the response rate. They permit anonymity. It is usually argued that anonymity increases the rate of response and may increase the likelihood that responses reflect genuinely held opinions.

Disadvantages of questionnaires It may be difficult to obtain a good response rate. Often there is no strong motivation for respondents to respond.

They are complex instruments and, if badly designed, can be misleading.