Evaluate the strengths and limitations of using questionnaires to investigate the role of parents in pupils’ achievement

Last Updated on October 8, 2026 by Karl Thompson

An example of a ‘methods in context’ question, taken from an AQA specimen paper, with a suggested answer below.

A near-identical question came up for real on the June 2019 A-level Paper 1 (7192/1), with a different item (Item C): “Applying material from Item C and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of using written questionnaires to investigate the role of parents in their children’s achievement in school.” The answer below works for both versions. In both, you must use the item and keep linking the method to parents and achievement, not just to education in general.

(05) Read Item B, then answer the question below (hooks in bold)

Item B Investigating the role of parents in pupils’ achievement Parents play a vital role in pupils’ achievement. There may be social class differences in parents’ income levels, cultural capital, educational qualifications, attitudes to school and how they socialise their children, for example into using different speech codes. Similarly, ethnic differences among parents, for example in family structure, discipline styles or home language, may affect pupils’ achievement. Questionnaires may be a good way of investigating the role of parents in pupils’ achievement. Pupils can be asked to distribute them to parents at no cost, giving wide coverage. Parents are accustomed to supplying information to the school on a regular basis and this will help to ensure a good response. However, the questions asked may be very personal and some parents may feel that they are being judged. However, they may be less useful when dealing with sensitive issues

Applying material from Item B and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of using questionnaires to investigate the role of parents in pupils’ achievement (20 marks)

Section 1 – Deal with the method, linked to the topic

Remember to deal with:

• Theoretical
• Practical
• Ethical

…and link to the topic as you go, not just to education in general.

Practical strengths and limitations

Questionnaires are a quick and cheap way of collecting data from large numbers of people. As the item says, pupils can be asked to take them home to their parents at no cost, which gives wide coverage. Schools also hold complete lists of pupils and their families, including which pupils receive Free School Meals. This gives the researcher a ready-made sampling frame, so a stratified sample of parents by social class or ethnicity would be relatively easy to draw. Pre-coded answers are quick to analyse, so the researcher could compare hundreds of households.

HOWEVER, the researcher would first need the head teacher’s permission, and schools act as gatekeepers. A school might refuse if it thought the research would upset parents or reflect badly on it. Using pupils as postmen also has an obvious weakness: many questionnaires will be lost in bags, or simply never handed over. Where parents’ first language is not English – one of the ethnic differences mentioned in the item – the questionnaire may need translating, which adds cost and time.

Theoretical strengths and limitations

Positivists would favour questionnaires here because the data is quantitative, reliable and comparable. Every parent answers the same questions, so differences in answers should reflect real differences between families. Some of the factors in the item, such as parents’ income and educational qualifications, are easy to operationalise. With consent, they could be correlated statistically with each pupil’s attainment, allowing the researcher to test hypotheses about class and achievement.

HOWEVER, the main theoretical problem is representativeness. Response rates for questionnaires sent home with pupils are often low. The parents least likely to respond are probably those with the least contact with school, lower literacy, or negative attitudes towards education. These are exactly the parents whose role in their children’s achievement the research most needs to understand. The sample is likely to over-represent engaged, middle-class parents and so exaggerate the positive role parents play.

Interpretivists would also question validity. Parents are likely to give socially desirable answers: few will admit to never reading with their child or never checking homework, especially on a form that has come from the school. The imposition problem matters too. The researcher’s tick boxes may not capture what parents themselves think supporting their child involves.

Ethical strengths and limitations

Questionnaires raise relatively few ethical problems. It is obvious that research is taking place, so informed consent is straightforward, and parents can simply decline. Answers can be kept confidential.

HOWEVER, if the researcher wants to link parents’ answers to their child’s results, the questionnaire cannot be fully anonymous. This needs careful handling of consent and data protection. As the item says, some parents may feel judged, and questions about income, discipline or home language could feel intrusive. This is ethically uncomfortable and also likely to reduce the response rate further.

Section 2 – Link the method to the specific topic

Examples of top mark band statements – these are different from the previous exemplar because the topic under investigation is different, although there is also some overlap because there are similarities.

• Questionnaires might be a quite useful method for researching some aspects of the role of parents in pupils’ achievement because they make it easy to compare differences in home background. Some aspects, such as the income levels and educational qualifications of the parents, are relatively easy to measure, and it would be simple to correlate these with the educational achievement of the child.
• However, other aspects of home life would be more difficult to measure. Cultural capital, for example, is much more complex than income levels, as it appears in many different forms. How could you measure how ‘skilled’ a parent is at choosing a school in a questionnaire, for example?
• Similarly with speech codes and language differences: if parents have linguistic deprivation, they may not be happy completing a questionnaire designed to measure their poor language skills, and they may not even be able to. Thus you would get poor representativeness from such parents.
• Again with socialisation practices, which take place over many years: questionnaires wouldn’t allow you to find out in any depth about the many interactions that go into making up the child.
• A stated strength in the item is that parents are used to giving information to schools, and so would be happy to complete a questionnaire. This may be true of parents who have a good relationship with the school, but less so of those who value education less, or who feel that the school is biased against them, maybe because they perceive it as ethnocentric.
• Also, as stated in the item, if you were going to give the questionnaires to students, those students with poor performance in school may not give their parents the questionnaires, possibly because they think it may harm them.
• A final problem mentioned is that parents may feel they are being judged, and the formal nature of the questionnaire wouldn’t help this, again meaning a low response rate is likely from such parents.

Conclusion

Questionnaires are not as poor a choice of method for this topic as they would be for some others. Much of what the item describes – income, qualifications, family structure, how often parents help with homework – is factual, not especially sensitive, and easy to measure. A questionnaire would give a large, comparable data set showing which home factors are linked to achievement.

HOWEVER, the method is weakest exactly where the topic is most interesting. It would struggle to measure cultural capital or socialisation, and its sample would be biased towards the parents who are already most involved with school. On balance, questionnaires would be useful for establishing the broad patterns, but they would need to be combined with a qualitative method, such as unstructured interviews with a smaller sample of parents, to explain how parents shape their children’s achievement.

Signposting and Related Posts

This post has been written primarily for students preparing for the methods in context question on Paper 1 of the AQA’s A-level sociology course.

For the general strengths and weaknesses of questionnaires that Section 1 draws on, see Questionnaires in Sociology: Strengths and Weaknesses.

For another worked example of questionnaires in an education context, see Using self-completion written questionnaires to investigate unauthorised absences from school.

For more past paper questions and advice, see my exams page.

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