Questionnaires in context

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  • Questionnaire in context
    • Practical issues
      • useful for gathering larger quantities of basic info quickly + cheaply from large numbers of pupils, teachers or educational establishment
      • Researchers use them to correlate factors such as achievement, attendance and behaviour with variables such as skl size
    • Sampling frames
      • Skls are a good source of ready-made sampling frames
        • they keep lists of pupils and staff, providing sampling frames from which to draw a representative sample
      • Skls also have a ready made opportunity samples of pupils and teachers (class lists)
    • Response rate
      • Response rates are often low but skls can be higher than in other areas
      • Teachers + pupils may be under pressure to coorperate by head teacher
    • Researching pupils
      • children generally have a shorter attention span than adults and so a short questionnaire can be more affective than lengthy interviews
      • However, this limits the amount of info that can be gathered.
        • children generally have a shorter attention span than adults and so a short questionnaire can be more affective than lengthy interviews
    • operationalising concepts
      • Turning abstract ideas into a measurable form is difficult when researching pupils
        • Deferred gratification
      • Young people have a poorer grasp of abstract ideas, so are less likely to understand some of the researcher's questions
    • Samples
      • Skls may not keep lists that reflect the researcher's interests
        • e.g. they may want to investigate ethnicity but the skl may not keep lists sorted by ethnic origin
    • Validity
      • Life experiences of children are narrow, and so may not actually know the answers to the questions, therefore questionnaires being of little value

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