Assess the Strengths and Weaknesses of Using Questionnaires for Investigating the Role of Parents in Pupils' Achievements

289 Words2 Pages
Questionnaires are a good way to investigate the role of parents in pupils’ achievement as they are cheap to make and send around, as stated in Item B the children can distribute them to their parents. Using questionnaires means that there is no need to recruit and train professional interviewers to collect and assess the data because the parents complete and return the questionnaires themselves. Questionnaires use mainly closed ended questions which help to give an uncomplicated answer which is easy to quantify. Positivists prefer questionnaires because they are often to a larger scale which makes them more representative and standardised questions and answers produce reliable data as other researchers can replicate the questionnaire. Positivists believe that questionnaires are very reliable and that is the main positive goal. However, interpretivists reject the view of questionnaires as they claim it isn’t valid as the respondent on has ‘yes and no’ answer questions and they don’t go into depth with the answer. In Item B it says that ‘parents are accustomed to supplying information to the school’ therefore questionnaires would be the best way to conduct this as they can be given out on a regular basis and don’t need a formal meeting making the parents feel intimidated and not giving completely true answers. Because questionnaires collect information from a large number of people, the results stand a better chance of being truly representative. However, some parents might feel that the questions being asked are too personal and might feel like they are being judged by the school, but although questionnaires may ask personal or sensitive questions; parents are generally under no obligation to answer them. Researchers should always ask for informed consent before they start any form of
Open Document