Freelance Writing and Research

Why We Use Questionnaires

Many people get confronted with a person or a company wanting them to fill out a questionnaire. It is a common mistake to think that just by asking any questions you can obtain reliable information. We use questionnaires to measure things like income and also less tangible concepts such as attitudes to work or social class.. This paper will explain what questionnaires actually do and how those who use them obtain reasonably correct information.

Researchers may use what are known as indicators to measure a concept such as attitudes to work or social class - more than one indicator may be necessary to gain an accurate picture of a person's attitude to something. When it comes to variations in attitudes to work and social class these cannot be measured directly in the same way that you might measure gaps in income. This means that the indicators for attitudes have a less direct relationship to the concept that is being measure than might be the case for income gaps. The researcher than has to give the indicators a code or number in order to measure something for example many researchers will use what is known as the Likert scale, named after the man who developed the method.

Likert Scales

A likert scale is a multi-indicator method for measuring attitudes. Most commonly Likert scales contain a set of statements about a certain issue e.g. attitudes to class or work. Those responding to the questionnaire are then asked to rate their level of agreement on a five point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree - there are variations very good to very poor for example.

It is always a statement e.g. Britain is a class bound society, each statement should relate to the same theme e.g. class is important in Britain (strangely enough a good number of people who agree that Britain is a class bound society, may not agree so strongly that class is important) another reason why it is important to use multi indicators - if people's responses are constantly inconsistent then the researcher may need to rethink the indicators. While it may seem that the same thing is being repeated variations in the form of a question are important. Pilot studies are used most often to identify weaknesses in a questionnaire.

Other questions contained in questionnaires are multi-choice questions and open questions as well as closed questions

e.g. multi-choice= several answers to a question choose one

open questions = Please state your reasons or please comment further

closed questions= yes/no male/female married/not married

Many researchers will develop their questionnaires with a variety of such questions there are also those questions where the respondent chooses a range e.g age 21-30 31-40 etc. These and other such questions as gender will allow the researcher to discover whether men and women, younger and older people have different attitudes towards a subject.

Questions as to whether the findings from the study are valid often hinge on the way that a questionnaire is developed and the indicators the researcher uses for measurement.

I have sometimes found as a study progresses that there were questions that I should have asked and which were omitted - this happens to many researchers, some will just acknowledge the fact in their writing up of the study while others may undertake further research to correct this.

Developing a questionnaire that provides useful data takes a lot of thought and attention on the part of the researcher. For a complete explanation of questionnaires and their use see Bryman, (2004) Social Research Methods, Oxford University Press.