Methods in Context Using questionnaires to investigate education

Sociologists sometimes use questionnaires to study issues such as: Subject and university choice Bullying and the experience of schooling Achievement and school factors Parental attitudes to education

Operationlisation of concepts Pupils grasp of abstract concepts such as ‘deferred gratification’ is generally less than that of adults This may produce answers that are based on a misunderstanding of what the questions mean

Samples and Sampling frames Schools routinely keep lists of pupils, staff and parents. These can provide accurate sampling frames from which the sociologist can draw a representative sample However even where the relevant sampling frame does exist, gaining access to such confidential information may pose practical problems

Access and response rate Schools may be reluctant to allow researchers to distribute questionnaires because of the disruption to lessons or because they object to the chosen topic Response rates in school tend to be quite high because the head might authorise time out for the questionnaire to be completed and because pupils, teachers and parents are accustomed to completing questionnaires However teachers are often too busy to complete lengthy questionnaires

Practical issues Questionnaires are very useful for gathering large quantities of basic educational information quickly for example Michael Rutter (1979) used questionnaires to collect large quantities of data from 12 London secondary schools. From this, he was able to correlate achievement, attendance, and behaviour with variables such as school size, class size and number of staff Children generally have a shorter attention span than adults and so questionnaires need to be relatively brief

Anonymity and detachment Questionnaires can be useful when researching sensitive issues like bullying, response rates may be higher and pupils may be more likely to reveal details of their experience of being bullied Interpretivist sociologists would reject this because the lack of contact with respondents may make rapport more difficult to establish Questionnaires are official looking documents and young people might equate them with school and teacher authority. As a result some pupils may refuse to cooperate