Questionnaires

Questionnaires are one of the principal research tools for discovering people's thoughts, experience, attitudes and orientations to future action. Social scientists and researchers have been using questionnaires systematically for about three quarters of a century, since market research, opinion polling and survey research became a feature in both US and UK society in the 1920s and 30s.

This unrivalled collection provides the most complete resource of material about questionnaires.

The first volume provides an introduction to the use of questionnaires. It examines the principles of question construction, considers different types of questionnaire, principles of social measurement and the relationship between expressed attitudes, and actual social behaviour.

The second volume covers the main types of questionnaire and question construction. Included here is material on question order, question wording and ...

Editor's Introduction: Questionnaires – An Overview

MartinBulmer

Introduction

Social research employs a rich portfolio of methods and techniques from which to construct data. These data form the basis for the analysis of issues and problems and the drawing of practical and theoretical conclusions which are both the starting point and the end point of the research. Some of these methods are primary, the collection of data by the investigator at first hand, others of these methods are secondary, involving the use of pre-existing sources. One of the most important forms of primary research, since the growth of large-scale social research in the early part of the twentieth century, has been to ask people directly about particular issues, to do so systematically using structured questions which are the ...

locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles