2.3 Descriptive research

Question 1

descriptive research , attempts to..

Answer 1

describe phenomena as they exist rather than to manipulate variables.

Question 2

A case study is …

Answer 2

an in-depth observation of one person or a small group of individuals

Question 3

Case study methods are useful when trying to learn…

Answer 3

complex psychological phenomena that are not yet well understood and require exploration, or that are difficult to produce experimentally.

Question 4

Psychologists who take an interpretive (or hermeneutic) approach to methodology often use …

Answer 4

case studies; their aim is to examine the complex meanings that may underlie human behaviour

Question 5

From an interpretive point of view, explaining a behaviour such as suicide means…

Answer 5

understanding the subjective meanings behind it. Interpreting meanings of this sort typically requires in-depth interviewing.

Question 6

One major limitation of case study methods is..

Answer 6

sample size

Question 7

A second limitation of case studies is their susceptibility to..

Answer 7

researcher bias , also known as observer bias

Question 8

Researcher bias results in ..

Answer 8

systematic errors in measurement due to investigators seeing what they expect to see.

Question 9

Unless the therapy sessions are videotaped, the data are always filtered through the..

Answer 9

psychologist’s theoretical lens

Question 10

Naturalistic observation is..

Answer 10

the in-depth observation of a phenomenon in its natural setting

Question 11

Survey research involves..

Answer 11

asking a large sample of people questions, usually about their attitudes or behaviour, through interviews or questionnaires

Question 12

A stratified random sample specifies..

Answer 12

the percentage of people to be drawn from each population category (age, race etc.) and then randomly selects participants from within each category.

Question 13

The major problem with survey methods is..

Answer 13

they rely on participants to report on themselves truthfully and accurately, and even minor wording changes can sometimes dramatically alter their responses

Question 14

human behaviour is..

Answer 14

complex and people are often motivated by more than one thing

Question 15

Participants may honestly misjudge themselves, or…

Answer 15

their conscious attitudes may differ from attitudes expressed in their behaviour

Question 16

Unlike experiments, descriptive methods cannot..

Answer 16

unambiguously establish causation