The advantages of using questionnaires is that they are cheap and quick to produce and don’t even require the researcher to train an interviewer or observer. If questionnaires are posted or emailed to the population then large quantities can be targeted. Questionnaires, being reliable as everyone is asked the same questions, can be used to check the work of another sociologist and as they are easy to repeat, should give similar results to them. Questionnaires are also useful as the researcher is detached from the research making it very objective and exempt from bias. Even though the researcher may be detached from the actual questionnaire, they may still impose their values on the research i.e. what questions are asked, how they are phrased and what answers the respondents are limited to.
The disadvantages of questionnaires in general are that the data from them tend to be limited and superficial; one practical reason for this is that they need to be fairly brief to try to encourage completion by the respondents and usually there is a low response rate. For example, Shere Hite was a feminist who sent out 100,000 questionnaires of which only 4.5% were returned. Usually the ones that return the questionnaires back share similar personalities and they are the ones that are unemployed and/or are retired i.e. individuals that have a lot of free time, therefore making it difficult to gain a fair representation of the population and come about generalisations. If the questionnaires were collected back by the researcher themselves, then they could increase the response rate. Another way to increase the response rate of questionnaires could be to offer incentives such as a pen but then again that would add to the cost of conducting the research as well. Interpretivists would not think that questionnaires are useful as they argue that data from questionnaires lack validity and do not give a true picture of what is studied. People may lie, misinterpret the questions, not know the answers to the question, exaggeration could occur or even the wrong person could fill in the questionnaire making the research to be far less reliable. This is what Schofield experienced when he conducted his research in 1985. One of his questions asked: “Are you a virgin?” and the response were ‘no not yet’, demonstrating how people could easily misinterpret a simple question. There is also the problem of time lags i.e. the time it takes for the respondent to receive, complete and send back the questionnaire. All these factors question the usefulness of questionnaires and consequently social surveys.
The other types of social surveys most used are interviews. Interviews can be conducted face to face, over the internet or over the telephone. They can also consist of both open and closed questions and that is why they are seen as very similar to questionnaires especially structured interviews. The difference between them is that interviews involve social interactions meaning that the researcher is attached to the interview whereas in questionnaires there is so social interaction between the respondent and researcher. Straight away the usefulness of interviews is limited as social interaction could cause the Hawthorne effect to occur and or interviewer bias.
There are three types of interviews and they are structured/formal interviews, unstructured/informal interviews and finally arguably semi-structured interviews. We will be looking at structured interviews as it is done on a large scale and produces quantitative, reliable data making it a social survey. For this reason, positivists like this method of research as well. Structured Interviews consist of a set of question like questionnaires do and it is the job of the interviewer to ask the questions. This is called an “interview schedule”. With structured interviews all variables must be kept the same to ensure that the respondent does not interpret the question differently to how someone else might. Unstructured are quite the opposite as they produce in depth data that is valid and can involve the researcher building a rapport with the respondent. This sort of interview is like a guided conversation and therefore involves no interview schedule and the researcher has the choice of asking follow up questions so does not fit into the category of social surveys. In semi-structured interviews, each interview has the same set of questions in common but the researcher could ask follow up questions. For example Cicourel and Kituse who followed up their question with “how do you mean?”
Structured interviews are useful because they are very reliable as they can easily be replicated, everyone is asked the same questions as well so it makes the interview formal and standardised. They can be conducted on a large scale meaning that the research will be representative of the population and since they are cheap and quick to complete it means people would be more willing to complete them. A high response rate is accumulated through structured interviews unless conducted over the phone which helps to produce a more representative result and therefore a better basis for making generalisations. The fixed response categories produce quantitative data that is not only quick and easy to answer for the respondent but it’s quick and easy for the researcher to notice patterns, trends and statistical correlations from the data. Young and Willmott used structured interviews in their research into the extended family in east London and found that the 933 people interviewed took only between 10 to 35 minutes to complete demonstrating the speed that interviews can be completed and the large response rate.
The problems of using structured interviews are that they can still have some interviewer bias/effect on the response from the interviewee and therefore an answer could be exaggerated or adapted to likings of the researcher. There are usually a limited range of alternative answers which affects the validity of the research and these limited responses can be limited, overlap or they can be open to interpretation as well. Different interviewers could mean that some variables aren’t kept the same and therefore again could have an affect how the response of the responder. As a rapport is not built in structured interviews it means that it is harder to uncover sensitive information as the respondent may not feel comfortable to talk about something to a stranger.
In conclusion social surveys usually consist of structured interviews and questionnaires both of which have similar usefulness’s and even similar disadvantages. Positivists nevertheless love to use social surveys as they produce hard reliable, quantitative data and they can easily be conducted cheaply again to test the reliability of your first results. Interpretivists disagree with positivists and would say that social surveys are not useful at all as they do not produce valid data that can be used to produce an accurate picture of society.
