Question

Directions: This assignment requires a 2-3 page written paper. Investigate various methods of performing survey research. Include personal and phone interviews, self-administered questionnaires, and computerized questionnaires in this assignment. State the advantages and disadvantages of each of these three types of survey research. Give an example survey research topic and specify which method you would use in that instance. State your reasons.

Answer 1

Strength of Interview

Personalised
– Any ambiguous questions can be clarified
– Interviews can go far more in depth than a questionnaire ever could.
– The researcher does not limit the respondant to fixed answers.
– Interviewers provide access to many different groups of people and different types of information.
– Practical
– Flexible

Weakness of Interview

– Restricted sample range
– Expensive
– Unreliable information – the responses may not reflect real behaviour/attitudes, and may not be accurate.
– Respondants may lie, forget, or may lack the information required.
– Interviewees may be influenced by the presence of the researcher.
– ‘Interview bias’ is a problem with interviews. Either consciously, or sub-sciously, respondants might give the sort of answers that they believe the interviewer wants to hear, rather than saying what they truely believe.

Strength of questionnaire

– Large Sample Range
– Cheap
– Quick method of research
– No danger of interview bias (the person doesn’t feel pressurised with responses. For example, someone may not like admitting to a crime they have committed, or feel they should say something just to impress the interviewer).
– Large amounts of data can be processed and analyised quickly.
– Quantatitive data (eg. statistics) is often seen to be far more reliable than qualitatitive (eg. interview summaries) data, as all respondants are responding to the same stimuli – they are not interviewed by different people, effected by different reactions, etc.

Weakness of Questionnaire

– Impersonal
– Respondants can interpret the data differently, no matter how carefully worded the questions may be. People who choose the response, may not mean the same thing.
– Respondants may not understand a question, and so leave the answer blank (making it invalid), or just fill in any answer.
– Questionnaires have a very low reply rate (normally less than 50%, sometimes less than 25%). This could seriously bias the results, as there could be systematic differences between those who do and don’t reply. For example… people with marriage problems are far less likely to respond to a questionnaire that deals with marriage, as they may not want to discuss the problems, making the data inaccurate/not a very good representative.
– People can fill them in as a joke with their friends.
– People can lie.
– You don’t know how people are doing the questionnaire… if they are answering it with somebody watching, their answers could be influenced.
– Respondants can’t provide extra information which may be an important factor that the designer of the questionnaire has not considered ‘important’/has not considered at all.