Before I gave the questionnaire to my candidates I first of all asked them if they
would not mind taking part in my questionnaire for my sociology research. If they
agreed to take part in it I then briefly told them what it was about and the sort of
questions that it would be asking them. So if they decided to proceed with the
questionnaire I handed it to them however if they felt that after all they did not want
to take part I respected their wishes and found another candidate. To make certain that
the candidates are notified that the information that they give to me is confidential and
will not be used for any other purpose other than my research I attached a statement at
the top of the questionnaire expressing my intentions with the data that I gather.
I have chosen a questionnaire as I feel that I will be able to retrieve the necessary
information that I need in this way. Also using a questionnaire is a quick way to
obtain information and can cover a wide area of matters with just a few questions,
whereas if I had used an interview as my method it would of taken a much longer
amount of time and I might of not been able to get the answers that I needed out of
my candidates. Another bonus of using a questionnaire, would be that once I have
received all of the information I will be able to put my findings into the relevant
tables, and then I will be able to compare my findings to the secondary data that I
have gathered with and will be able to do this with ease.
Because I am establishing the role of women within working class households and the
effect that their roles have had on their families way of life. I need to be able to define
what I class as a working class household; which in my view is a family with either a
mum or a dad or both that goes out to work and then comes home to look after that
home and the family. Therefore I have asked questions to determine who in the
household goes out to work and the sort of jobs that they do around the home. By
asking these questions I feel that I will be able to differentiate between upper, lower
and middle class households and therefore gather the information that I need.
I chose to hand out my questionnaire to 16 to 20 year olds living in the South of
England. They are all attendees of a college and I picked them because the majority
either belong to a working or middle class family. The students are more than likely
still living at home or have only recently left, which means that they do or still do
have reasonable knowledge of their family life and how their family operates. I chose
to hand out my questionnaire first to a small representative sample of students to see
if it was sufficient enough. Once I was pleased with the outcome I then handed out the
questionnaire to 30 female students and 30 male students so that the gender was fair,
however I did pick my candidates at random, this is because I feel that this way I can
obtain a wider spread group of people and hopefully receive a range of answers for
my questions.
A problem that I may have come across was that it is hard to decide who to class as
living in a working class family and who to class as living in a middle class family.
So, to overcome this problem I will either be very clear and precise with no leniency
as to what I class as working class household or I widen my research and include the
family structure of a middle class family and the mother’s role within it.