Questionnaires and Focus Groups for the Evaluation of Public Essay

Questionnaires and Focus Groups for the Evaluation of Public Perception of Waste Recycling - Essay Example Qualitative research would help the researcher evaluate the public perception of waste recycling in a better way as compared to quantitative study. Another reason behind the appropriateness of qualitative study in understanding public perception is that qualitative study focuses more on getting detailed information about the subject. Questionnaires and focus groups are two of the best examples of a qualitative study in which researchers identify the thoughts and perceptions of different people. Let us discuss these techniques in order to understand the public perception of waste recycling. 1. Questionnaires As Brace (2008, p. 2) states, â€Å"questionnaires are written in many different ways, to be used in many different situations and with many different data-gathering media.† Questionnaire is a method of doing qualitative research, which has advantages over many types of research methods. The reason is that they do not take much time and can easily target groups. Moreover, r esearchers can use focus groups to target large populations in wide geographical areas. Questionnaire is one of the widely used methods of research because researchers can apply it in almost every field of study, such as, healthcare, education, organizational analysis, and system and process analyses. Along with these fields of study, questionnaires also produce good results while evaluating public perception about waste recycling. Waste recycling is a process in which different kinds of household and construction wastes are recycled in such a way that they become available for use in the development of different types of products. Although researchers can use both analytical and descriptive types of questionnaires for getting the facts about waste recycling, but descriptive survey can be more productive for them as compared to the analytic one because it provides them with the real perceptions of people about a given scenario. Therefore, researchers can use descriptive questionnair es to identify the perceptions of different people regarding waste recycling. Moreover, the researcher should use numerical, as well as opinion questions in the questionnaire regarding waste recycling. Linda Goldenhar and Cathleen Connell did a research named ‘Effects of Educational and Feedback Interventions on Recycling Knowledge, Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors’ in 1992 in which they studied public perception using feedback groups, education groups, and control groups. The researchers used questionnaires for this purpose. The results revealed that the feedback groups had higher levels of recycling behavior as compared to the control or education groups. In another research, ‘Evaluating the Effectiveness of Deliberative Processes: Waste Management Case-studies’ by Judith Petts, the researcher made use of case studies and questionnaires to gather information about effectiveness of waste recycling processes. The research revealed that people participate a ctively in waste management processes and have a good perception about recycling. 1.1. Advantages of Questionnaires Questionnaires prove to be very useful in conducting qualitative research. Some of the main advantages of using questionnaires in evaluating public perception of waste recycling include cost effectiveness, ease of conduct, answering as no details are required, and no requirement of verbal communication skills. Researchers believe that questionnaires return reliable data from the target population.