Questionnaires can be used to gather large amounts of quantitative data on crime and deviance through representative sampling. However, they have limitations such as only providing a snapshot of information and potentially low validity if subjects do not answer truthfully. There are also ethical issues around using questionnaires with minors or on sensitive topics. Positivists prefer the use of questionnaires for research as they produce reliable and representative results, while interpretivists are critical of their ability to capture valid meanings and experiences.

1. Questionnaires
As a Research Method for researching Crime & Deviance

2. • Practical Issues
• Ethical Issues
• Representativeness
• Validity
• Example
• Reliability
• Theoretical Issues (positivist or interpretivist)
• Evaluate
• Data (quantitative or qualitative)
• CAM: compare another method

3. Practical Issues
• Quick and cheap way to gather large amounts of
quantitative data
• Data is usually easily quantifiable, test the hypothesis and
can discover cause-and-effect relationships
• Data only provides a snapshot & they are inflexible (cannot
gain in depth information). Questions may need to be short
and simple as criminals may have a low literacy level
• The formal nature of this method could mean criminals
identify it with authority. For example, Venkatesh asked
how it felt to be poor and living with violence and was kept
at gunpoint in case he was the police

4. Ethical Issues
There are few ethical issues using questionnaires. However, it
would be necessary to gain informed consent from U16s so
they are usually excluded from research despite being vital
when studying crime and victimisation. Also, it is inappropriate
to ask young people about certain topics, such as sexual
crimes due to distress. To compensate, researchers tend to
ask older respondents about when they were younger so this
is reliant on memory and could reduce validity.

5. Representativeness
Questionnaires are likely to produce representative results
because they can be conducted on a large scale and use
representative samples. However, criminals who weren’t
convicted are unlikely to be included in any sampling frames.
Also, questionnaires tend to have a low response rate from
criminals. Junger-Tas suggests this is because people
involved in law-breaking activities may not wish to respond
because they see it as sent from someone in authority.

6. Validity
Questionnaires don’t always produce valid data. People may
conceal information or lie (‘right answerism’). Also,
researchers meanings may be imposed through the wording
and the choice of the questions. For example, Ditton et al
argue victim surveys on ‘fear of crime’ reflect government and
media agendas so don’t uncover real public concerns. As a
result, questionnaires may include the wrong questions.
It is a detached method, so interpretivists argue
questionnaires fail to produce a valid picture of actor’s
meanings.

7. Example
Self-completion questionnaires are popular method for
researching ethnic differences within crime. They have
revealed smaller gaps between offending rates of different
ethnic groups than suggested by official statistics. However,
such questionnaires tend to not ask about more serious
offences, where there is evidence of a higher rate of
offending by blacks and they exclude prisoners so they
under-represent non-white offenders. Hindelang et al found
that black males with criminal records were less likely to
report offences already known to the police.

8. Reliability
The questionnaire is a standardised measuring instrument so
this method can be regarded as reliable because we can
make comparisons. However, different questionnaires aren’t
always comparable due to differences in opinion about what
crimes to include.

9. Theoretical Issues
Positivists prefer the use of methods such as questionnaires
because they produce representative and reliable quantitative
results. They believe the detachment avoids the researcher
contaminating the subject matter.
On the other hand, interpretivists dislike questionnaires
because they don’t believe they produce a valid picture of the
actors meanings because people can lie/forget/try to impress
(risk of Hawthorne Effect) and the detachment and inflexibility
means researchers can’t probe.

10. Data
Questionnaires produce quantitative data.