| 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 |