Research methods

Before deciding on a questionnaire as my preferred method of extracting information from my sample, I considered some alternatives, which are in the short list below.

Interviews: One-on-one interviews with a random sample. This is similar to a questionnaire, but allows me to gauge responses based on thoughts and opinions as well as just facts about a person. However, this would have taken much too long and I could easily get the intentions of the interviewee wrong, leaving me with inaccurate results. My questions are also far too fact based for this method to be effective and worthwhile.

Vox Pops/Focus group: These two similar terms refer to interviewing several people at once, and judging the results of the whole. However, I cannot see this working for my purposes, as they rely on individual observation.

Observation: This refers to waiting in a location and observing habits. For example, I could wait around a music shop and count the amount of people who watched music videos. However, this would not be effective for my purposes as the places where people watch videos would mainly be homes, which would not allow for group surveillance. Also, it would be really creepy.

I chose to create a questionnaire because they are best suited for my purposes. A small survey of mostly fact-based questions is easily answered quickly, and using closed format question types would make them easy to tally and therefore draw results from. This also allows me to create individual conclusions based on age, gender, or other variables depending on what I ask, where this would have to be guessed with many other types of research methods. Questionnaires are also well suited as they can be filled out on-the-spot, online, handed out or spoken, meaning I can get results quickly and easily, and if necessary, privately/anonymously.