- The ten-yearly survey of the whole UK population in the form of a written questionnaire.
- A person who completes and returns a questionnaire or takes part in a survey.
- Because they need to be fairly brief (most respondents will not complete long ones), thus limiting the amount of information that can be gathered.
- Because those who respond may be different from those who don’t.
- Because once finalized, the researcher is stuck with the questions they have decided to ask and cannot explore any new areas of interest that may come up during the research.
- They are snapshots; they are too detached; it is not possible to clarify misunderstandings; respondents may lie, forget, not know; closed-ended questions restrict respondents’ ability to express their meanings.
- When two or more factors vary together (such as, one factor rises as the other factor rises or decreases).
- They give a picture of how things are at one moment in time.
- The recipient may not have received the questionnaire, or may not have filled in the questionnaire him/herself.
- Because they produce reliable (replicable)/ quantitative/ large-scale results.
- They are easily replicable by other researchers; they involve no interviewer bias; all respondents are given exactly the same questions.
