Methods Of Educational Research - Essay Example

Questionnaire Questionnaires are defined as formulated questions that are structured for collecting primary data. These questions are written down for the respondent to provide answers. Questionnaires are also defined as techniques in which different people are supposed to answer the same questions (Beiske, 2007). Researchers should be extremely careful before creating questioners. This is because, questionnaires can be written in understandable English but they are not sufficient for providing the needed data.

When a questionnaire is well premeditated, it induces the respondents to give correct and accurate information. Questioners are used for inducting the respondent, thus they come up with new theories. Questionnaires use open-ended questions that explore substantive areas. Some researchers use questionnaires as methods of obtaining reliable information. This is accomplished through deductive approach for testing other theories. Questionnaires help researchers to use deductive or inductive approach or even a combination of the two approaches.

Three types of questions are available to the researcher when using questionnaires (Boyce, & Neale, 2006). There are the open-ended questions, which have a wide scope of response and they help to capture the interests of peoples answer. This type of questions does not influence the outcome of questions by deciding the possible responses. The other type of questions is the close-ended type, which are used for questions that require two different answers. The responses required are ‘yes’ or ‘no’ with the intention of making the questionnaire process easy.

Strengths of Questionnaires Questionnaires allow a researcher to contact many people easily and quickly. The researcher has a chance to post questions to the group he has targeted. They are easy to create and interpret especially if close-ended questions are used (Boyce, & Neale, 2006). The respondent is left with the time consuming part of answering the questions but the researcher does not have this burden. Questionnaires are easily standardized because all respondents are asked the same questions.

As every respondent answers the same questions, this makes the questionnaire process extremely reliable. Researchers are able to tackle embarrassing areas like sex and criminal matters more than any other method. The questionnaires can be completed in privacy, and they are anonymous. Respondents are able to answer questions honestly without being intimidated by the researcher’s presence. Limitations of Questionnaires It is difficult for the researcher to identify complex issues because of the questionnaire’s design.

Even if, the researcher uses open-ended questions, the respondent will not answer the questions extensively like in other research methods (Ross, 2005). This usually limits a researcher to get detailed information. When a researcher sends postal questions, he is not sure whether the respondent will fill in the questionnaire. For instance, when a researcher wants to gather information on women opinions, the questionnaire is not useful if answered by men. It is extremely difficult to determine whether the respondent has understood the questions when the researcher is not around.

A researcher has to hope that the questions he has presented to the respondents mean the same to all respondents as they mean to him. The numbers