Questionnaires (AQA GCSE Psychology)

What is a questionnaire?

• A questionnaire is a type of  self-report which involves participants answering a range of questions designed to collect their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, attributes and opinions

• Questionnaires may be used in the following ways:

  • To understand how people feel about issues such as immigration, social media, the cost of living etc.

  • To measure psychometric properties such as IQ, depression, empathy, decision-making etc.

  • Conducting a large-scale survey to assess the extent to which people are, for example, likely to vote, consult a doctor about a specific issue, use green energy etc.

• Questionnaires can consist of either closed questions or open questions

  • Open question: How could you change factors in your life to increase your happiness?

  • Closed question: Are you happy?

• When designing a questionnaire, the researcher must consider the following points: 

  • Aim: what is the questionnaire’s purpose, and how will it aid the research process?

  • Length: ensure that the questionnaire is not too short (lack of data) or too long (participants will become bored and may answer without care or attention) 

  • Question construction: questions should be clear, concise and unambiguous

Closed questions

• A closed question offers limited options for the participant’s response, for example:

  • ‘Do you agree that young people are more anxious than previous generations?’ - Yes/No

  • ‘Which of the following words best describes you?’ - 

    • a) Sociable    b)Shy    c) Reclusive    d) Hostile

• A closed question may use a scale (e.g. the Likert scale) to offer participants more of a range of possible responses, for example:

  • ‘On a scale of 1-7 (7 being ‘strongly disagree’), how far do you agree with the idea that national service should be re-introduced to the UK?

    • 1    2    3    4    5    6    7

• Closed questions generate quantitative data, for example:

  • the number of ‘yes’ responses are totalled

  • the number of times a participant ticked b) is totalled

  • the total score is calculated from the scaled questions e.g. 2 + 4 + 7

Open questions

• An open question is one which offers freedom of response for example:

  • ‘Tell me about one time when you felt anxious’

  • ‘How do you think other people would describe you?’  

• An open question may ask participants to expand on the answers they give, allowing both researcher and participant to clarify, explain and qualify their comments

• Open questions generate qualitative data, for example:

  • the transcript of an interview

  • the themes which have emerged during a conversation or interview

  • the thoughts, ideas and feelings of the participant which cannot be ‘boiled down’ into neat numerical data and which relate only to that individual

Evaluation of questionnaires

Strengths

• Closed questions generate quantitative data which is straightforward to analyse and can be presented graphically or converted into percentages for ease of comparison

• Questionnaires can be produced in large quantities and are easy to replicate thus they are high in reliability (particularly if they only include closed questions)

Weaknesses

• Questionnaires tend to under-use open questions (as they are difficult to analyse, particularly alongside closed questions) which means that they lack validity

• There is a tendency for people to under-report negative and over-report positive aspects of themselves which means that questionnaires give rise to social desirability bias