SOC 2805 Lecture 18: DATA COLLECTIO1
Document Summary
Which approach: primary, observation, interviews, questionnaires, secondary, government documents, pre-existing data sets, personal records, service records. Questionnaires: respondent reads & records own answer, must be clear, easy to understand, written conversationally, no one to interpret. Administering questionnaires: mail, collective administration (captive group, administration in a public place online. Questionnaires: disadvantages, only for literate pop, low response rate, self-selection bias, no clarification, other question influence, advantages, efficient & inexpensive, allows for anonymity, requires less skill than interviews to conduct, allows for geographic dispersion. Cover letters: explain what you are doing, why, how, provide contact information, provide sense of your own legitimacy. Types of questions: typically, close-ended questions, some open ended (depending on size, typically, deductive, use of pre-set measures of concepts. Closed ended questions: disadvantages, less in-depth, limits variability, question order can influence answers, may allow mindless answers, advantages, easy to analyze, even in large numbers, assure researcher gets the data needed.
