You are viewing a free preview of this lesson.
Subscribe to unlock all 10 lessons in this course and every other course on LearningBro.
Quantitative methods are research approaches that produce numerical data which can be analysed statistically. They are closely associated with the positivist tradition in sociology, which seeks to apply the methods of the natural sciences to the study of society. In this lesson, we focus on two of the most widely used quantitative methods: questionnaires and structured interviews.
A questionnaire is a set of pre-written questions designed to collect data from respondents. Questionnaires may be distributed in several ways:
| Distribution Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Postal questionnaire | Sent by post with a pre-paid return envelope |
| Email / online questionnaire | Distributed electronically using platforms such as Google Forms or SurveyMonkey |
| Hand-delivered questionnaire | Given directly to respondents, often in a specific location such as a school or workplace |
| Telephone questionnaire | Questions read aloud by a researcher over the phone |
Questionnaires typically use two main types of question:
Subscribe to continue reading
Get full access to this lesson and all 10 lessons in this course.