Questionnaires in Sociology: Strengths and Weaknesses

Last Updated on October 21, 2025 by Karl Thompson

Questionnaires in sociology are one of the most common methods of collecting quantitative data. They’re especially popular with Positivist sociologists because they allow for reliable, large-scale, and objective research. This post examines the strengths and weaknesses of questionnaires. It covers the use of closed questions. It also discusses the theoretical, practical, and ethical factors that influence the method’s effectiveness in social research.

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Questionnaires in Sociology – Summary

Definition:
A questionnaire is a written list of questions used to collect data from large groups of people in a standardised way. Questionnaires often use closed questions (such as Yes/No or Likert scales) but may also include open questions for more detailed responses.

Who Uses Questionnaires?
Questionnaires are mainly used by Positivist sociologists, who prefer quantitative, reliable, and objective methods of data collection.
They are commonly used in large-scale social research projects such as government and academic surveys.

Examples:

• The England and Wales Census – a national questionnaire carried out every ten years to collect demographic data.
• The British Social Attitudes Survey – explores public attitudes on issues such as gender, class and politics.

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Theoretical Strengths

✔ Representativeness – suitable for large, generalisable samples
✔ Reliability – easy to replicate and compare
✔ Objectivity – researcher remains detached and value-free
✔ Cause and Effect – variables can be isolated and measured
✔ Trends and Comparability – data easily converted into numerical form

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Theoretical Weaknesses

✖ Low validity – lacks depth, empathy and Verstehen
✖ Limited insight – produces surface-level data only
✖ Artificial – not naturalistic or contextual
✖ Weak rapport – little relationship with respondents
✖ Researcher-led – may impose meanings (imposition problem)
✖ Inflexible – little space for respondent input
✖ Low response rates – especially with postal surveys
✖ Self-selection bias – only certain types of people respond

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Practical Strengths

✔ Quick, cheap and efficient for large samples
✔ Easy to distribute across wide areas (postal/online)
✔ People are familiar with completing questionnaires
✔ Easier to obtain funding because data is generalisable
✔ Minimal researcher training required; data easy to quantify

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Practical Weaknesses

✖ May require incentives for completion
✖ Excludes illiterate or digitally excluded people
✖ Structured interviews are more costly than self-completion

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Ethical Strengths

✔ Informed consent – participants know research is taking place
✔ Non-invasive – quick and low effort for respondents
✔ Anonymity and confidentiality easily maintained
✔ Can collect data on sensitive or illegal behaviour if anonymous

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Ethical Weaknesses

✖ Possible deception about the research purpose
✖ Not appropriate for sensitive or emotional topics
✖ May exclude vulnerable groups, e.g. illiterate or homeless respondents

The rest of this post now covers the above summary in more depth…..

Questionnaires in Sociology – In More Depth

Questionnaires are one of the most widely used methods in sociological research, especially among Positivist sociologists who prefer quantitative, reliable, and objective methods.

A questionnaire is a pre-set list of written or verbal questions used to collect data about people’s attitudes, experiences, or behaviours.
They may contain closed questions (e.g. Yes/No or Likert scales) or open questions allowing respondents to answer freely.

This post outlines the theoretical, practical, and ethical strengths and weaknesses of questionnaires, focusing mainly on self-completion surveys such as postal and online forms.

Theoretical strengths of Questionnaires

Detachment, Objectivity and Validity

Positivists favour questionnaires because they are a detached and objective (unbiased) method, where the sociologist’s personal involvement with respondents is kept to a minimum.

Hypothesis Testing

Questionnaires are particularly useful for testing hypotheses about cause and effect relationships between different variables, because the fact that they are quantifiable allows us to find correlations.

For example, based on government statistics on educational achievement we know that white boys on Free School Meals achieve at a significantly lower level than Chinese girls on Free School Meals. We reasonably hypothesise that this is because differences in parental attitudes – Chinese parents may value education more highly, and they may be stricter with their children when it comes to homework compared to white parents. Good questionnaire design and appropriate sampling would enable us to test out this hypothesis. Good sampling would further allow us to see if those white working class boys who do well have parents with similar attitudes to those Chinese girls who do well.

Representativeness

Questionnaires allow the researcher to collect information from a large number of people, so the results should be more representative of the wider population than with more qualitative methods. However, this all depends on appropriate sampling techniques being used and the researchers having knowledge of how actually completes the questionnaire.

Reliability

Questionnaires are generally seen as one of the more reliable methods of data collection – if repeated by another researcher, then they should give similar results. There are two main reasons for this:

When the research is repeated, it is easy to use the exact same questionnaire meaning the respondents are asked the exact same questions in the same order and they have the same choice of answers.

With self-completion questions, especially those sent by post, there is no researcher present to influence the results.

The reliability of questionnaires means that if we do find differences in answers, then we can be reasonably certain that this is because the opinions of the respondents have changed over time. For this reason, questionnaires are a good method for conducting longitudinal research where change over time is measured.

Theoretical Weaknesses of Questionnaires

Issues affecting validity – Interpretivists make a number of criticisms of questionnaires.

The Imposition Problem

The imposition problem is when the researcher chooses the questions, they are deciding what is important rather than the respondent, and with closed ended questions the respondent has to fit their answers into what’s on offer. The result is that the respondent may not be able to express themselves in the way that want to. The structure of the questionnaire thus distorts the respondents’ meanings and undermines the validity of the data.

Misinterpetation of questions

Interpretivists argue that the detached nature of questionnaires and the lack of close contact between researcher and respondent means that there is no way to guarantee that the respondents are interpreting the questions in the same way as the researcher. This is especially true where very complex topics are involved – If I tick ‘yes’ that I am Christian’ – this could mean a range of things – from my being baptised but not practising or really believing to being a devout Fundamentalist. For this reason Interpretivists typically prefer qualitative methods where researchers are present to clarify meanings and probe deeper.

Researchers may not be present to check whether respondents are giving socially desirable answers, or simply lying, or even to check who is actually completing the questionnaire. At least with interviews researchers are present to check up on these problems (by observing body language or probing further for example).

Issues affecting representativeness

Postal questionnaires in particular can suffer from a low response rate. For example, Shere Hite’s (1991) study of ‘love, passion, and emotional violence’ in America sent out 100, 000 questionnaires but only 4.5% of them were returned.

All self-completion questionnaires also suffer from the problem of a self-selecting sample which makes the research unrepresentative – certain types of people are more likely to complete questionnaires – literate people for example, people with plenty of time, or people who get a positive sense of self-esteem when completing questionnaires.

The Covid 19 Pandemic reduced representativeness of many government surveys

Several government departments carry out annual surveys of the population using random postcode sampling. With this sampling method, addresses are generated to represent the whole country and advance letters sent out. It is then up to interviewers to convince those selected to take part. With these surveys Interviewers are not allowed to go next door if one address refuses to take part.

For example the department of transport carries out the National Travel Survey every year. This has a sample of over 10 000 surveys. During the Pandemic interviewers door knocked and tried to book video or phone interviews with respondents. In 2020, then main lockdown year the response rate dropped to just 16%. By 2022 it was back up to 31%, but this was a long way down from 54% in 2019.

The same trend has happened with a number of other government surveys such as the Health and Housing surveys. It seems the Pandemic has made people reluctant to take part in these government surveys.

Practical Strengths of Questionnaires

Questionnaires are a quick and cheap means of gathering large amounts of data from large numbers of people, even if they are widely dispersed geographically if the questionnaire is sent by post or conducted online. It is difficult to see how any other research method could provide 10s of millions of responses as is the case with the UK national census.

In the context of education, Connor and Dewson (2001) posted nearly 4000 questionnaires to students at 14 higher education institutions in their study of the factors which influenced working class decisions to attend university.

With self-completion questionnaires there is no need to recruit and train interviewers, which reduces cost.

The data is quick to analyse once it has been collected. With online questionnaires, pre-coded questions can be updated live.

Practical Weaknesses of Questionnaires

The fact that questionnaires need to be brief means you can only ever get relatively superficial data from them, thus for many topics, they will need to be combined with more qualitative methods to achieve more insight.

Although questionnaires are a relatively cheap form of gathering data, it might be necessary to offer incentives for people to return them.

Structured Interviews are also considerably more expensive than self-completion questionnaires.

Ethical strengths of questionnaires

When a respondent is presented with a questionnaire, it is fairly obvious that research is taken place, so informed consent isn’t normally an issue as long as researchers are honest about the purpose of the research.

It is also a relatively unobtrusive method, given the detachment of the researcher, and it is quite an easy matter for respondents to just ignore questionnaires if they don’t want to complete them.

Ethical weaknesses of questionnaires

Social Surveys are best avoided when researching sensitive topics. For example a closed questionnaire about the impacts of domestic violence on victims may be a little cold!

Exam Practice: Surveys and Questionnaires

Try this AQA-style exam questionsto test your understanding of the practical advantages and disadvantages of surveys.

This is a possible 10 mark question which could come up on A level sociology papers 1 or 3. You could be asked to answer a ‘pure’ research methods question on either of these papers.

Possible Question:

Outline and Explain Two Practical Advantages of Using Social Surveys in Social Research (10)

Example answer (may need expanding)

Firstly, surveys are a quick and cheap means of gathering data from large numbers of people, across wide areas, because, once sent out, millions of people could potentially fill them at the same time.

They are especially quick/ efficient if put online because computers can analyse pre-coded answers and quantify/ compare the data instantaneously.

They also make it easier to gain government funding because you can generalise from large data sets and thus use to inform social policy—the census, for example, allows the government to plan for school places in the future.

However, Interpretivists would argue you never get in-depth/ valid data with this method, and so predictions can be flawed—the polls on Brexit didn’t tell us what people really thought about this issue!

Secondly, you don’t need ‘people skills’ to use social surveys, thus anyone can use them to do research.

This is because they can be written in advance, and put on-line or sent by post, and thus sociologist’s personal involvement with respondents can be kept to a minimum.

This also means that busy people with family commitments can easily use social surveys.

However, Interpretivists and Feminist argue this wouldn’t be an advantage for all topics—some areas are so sensitive they require personal contact, such as domestic abuse.

For further examples of Theory and Methods question and answers please see my exams page.

Related Posts 

An Introduction to Social Surveys – Definition and Basic Types of Survey

Positivism, Sociology and Social Research – Positivists like the survey method.

Please click here for more posts on research methods.

📚 References and Further Reading

Trochim, W. M. (2020) Research Methods Knowledge Base. Atomic Dog Publishing.

Bryman, A. (2016) Social Research Methods (5th Edition). Oxford University Press.

Cohen, L., Manion, L. and Morrison, K. (2018) Research Methods in Education (8th Edition). Routledge.

Haralambos, M. and Holborn, M. (2013) Sociology: Themes and Perspectives (8th Edition). Collins.

McNeill, P. and Chapman, S. (2005) Research Methods (2nd Edition). Routledge.

Sapsford, R. and Jupp, V. (2006) Data Collection and Analysis (2nd Edition). Sage.

Schofield, J. W. (1996) “Survey and Case Study Methods in Research on Teaching,” in Berliner, D. C. and Calfee, R. C. (eds) Handbook of Educational Psychology. Macmillan.