Advantages

Disadvantages

Questionnaires

· suitable for a large number of people;

· not time-consuming or costly;

· plentiful focused, standardised and organised data;

· honest answers from respondents ;

· conducted anonymously;

· less interviewer bias

· idealised responses;

· a low rate of return;

· difficult to strike a balance between too many and too few questions;

· self-selecting bias;

· limited information and range of responses;

· lack of opportunity to clarify issues

Interviews

· helpful in collecting in-depth information;

· vague questions or answers able to be clarified;

· economy, familiarity, higher degree of co-operation, less requirements of specialist training and the development of a rapport

· time-consuming;

· interviewer’s bias and inconsistency;

· less standardized;

· quality of the data dependent on the interviewer’s skills

Observations

direct, in-depth, contextualised study of

· participants’ actual performances;

· the activities of interest in their natural environment

unnatural environment and performances caused by the presence of the outside observer in non-participant observation