Research Methods for Social Workers by Linda Bell

Author:Linda Bell [Bell, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Social Work, Research, Reference
ISBN: 9781137442833
Google: y9bwDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Macmillan International Higher Education
Published: 2017-01-06T03:16:52+00:00

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This question may assume the respondent only has one child, and, indeed, that the child attends a school. Some explanation should be inserted into the question allowing for more than one box to be ticked if required, or a number might be inserted if more than one child is included.

c) Assuming memory

What services were you using in 1998?

Will people remember that far back?

d) Assuming knowledge

Asking a social care worker whether they feel the document ‘Modernising Social Services’ informs their practice.

Although this may be a legitimate question to ask if your focus is on this document, this question also assumes that the worker is familiar with the document.

f) Double questions

Do you use services X and Y?

What if the respondent uses only X or only Y, how does s/he complete the questionnaire? It would be better to ask two separate questions and a third asking whether X and Y are used in combination.

g) Leading questions

A question asked to a worker such as, ‘Do you agree that service users should have a say in service provision?’ This is a rather leading or loaded question – it is very difficult for the respondent to say no.

h) Presuming questions

Do you think this service offers enough counselling sessions?

There are two presumptions present here:

1 Counselling is necessary and a good thing.

2 There are not enough counselling sessions.

It would be better to ask first how many counselling sessions the person received over a given period (if any). This could then be compared with data from other services. Attitudes towards counselling that is offered could be addressed by a separate question, perhaps using an attitude measure (e.g. Likert scale).

i) Hypothetical questions

If you had no family responsibilities, what would you do about …?

What is the point of this information? There is a strong likelihood it will be ignored.

j) Offensive/sensitive questions

You should of course try to avoid asking any question which is obviously offensive or disrespectful, but some questions may still appear unacceptable to some people, e.g. questions about personal income, age, ethnicity or religion in some cases. You have to decide whether you need to ask such questions in your survey. Sensitive questions would be of particular concern to an ethics committee, and piloting will certainly help to gauge the response you may get from potential respondents.

For more on question wording, see Oppenheim (1992) or Bryman (2012, ch 11).

Questionnaires – reliability, validity and responsiveness to change

If you are designing your own questionnaire, you will need to consider these issues:

If a questionnaire or measure is to be ‘valid’, it should measure what it is intending to measure.

If a questionnaire is to be ‘reliable’, it should produce similar results when re-administered to the same respondents, or to different respondents in similar contexts or circumstances.

If you are intending to use your questionnaire/measure again as a follow-up in a longitudinal study (repeat measures), it should be capable of being responsive to change.

For more details on these points, see Project C, below, and Appendix D-2.

In some projects it is possible to identify an existing questionnaire

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