3 - Research Methods

Question 1

4 ways data commonly collected

Answer 1

Child self-reports, parent/teacher reports, psychophysiological observations, behavioral observations

Question 2

Child self-reports

Answer 2

Information provided by children thru questionnaires or interviews. Often need help or time to answer.

Question 3

Parent reports

Answer 3

Question is whether these are accurate or reliable. Report recent events more reliably. Negative problems less likely to report. Likely to exaggerate positive.

Question 4

Teacher reports

Answer 4

Assess children’s relative behavior vs other kids.

Question 5

Observing children

Answer 5

Can be done either in natural setting or lab. Difficult for observer not to distort participant behavior. Observer bias. Infrequent behaviors of interest may be missed in natural.

Question 6

Three kinds of sampling vs time

Answer 6

Time sampling - record at regular intervals such as every minute what happens
Focal event sampling - record time and duration of behaviors of interest
Specimen record - record everything that happens

Question 7

Correlation

Answer 7

Estimate of relationship of two variables. In social development studies coefficients of .2 to .5 are “significant”. Correlation does not equal causation!! 3rd variables. Also if data points represent group averages rather than individuals, relationships within groups may be different than those between. But correlation used because variable manipulation sometimes hard, or starting point of research.

Question 8

Issues with lab studies

Answer 8

Ecological validity - may not accurately represent real-world processes.
Over-generalizing - tell us what can cause changes, but not what actually do cause changes in natural settings. Only examining behavior right after for instance.
Children behave differently.

Question 9

Field Experiments

Answer 9

Assessing causal relationships in real world.

Question 10

Intervention studies

Answer 10

Extension of field experiments - educational. Often with object of improving participants’ lives

Question 11

Natural experiments

Answer 11

Also called quasi. Measure impact of a naturally occurring event that is assumed to affect lives/development. For example a famine, war, orphanage. The independent variable cannot be controlled; participants cannot be assigned to groups. Can make causality difficult.

Question 12

Cross-sectional designs

Answer 12

Subjects from different age groups studied simultaneously. Data can be collected in a relatively short time.However, there could be cohort effects - differences related to environment from different times - rather than real developmental change. Cohort less likely when studying people of close age groups

Question 13

Cohort effect

Answer 13

Possible issue with cross-sectional studies.

Question 14

Longitudinal designs

Answer 14

One group is studied repeatedly for months or years. Better able to measure stability, developmental change, commonalities between members, individual differences. Can enable researchers to find causality. Costly and difficult to organize though. Selective attrition ->less representative. May produce results that are only relevant to specific group.

Question 15

Sequential design

Answer 15

Cross-sectional and longitudinal mixup. Recruit several different age groups and follow each repeatedly over long period. Can examine if cohort effects, can make cross-sectional and longitudinal observation at once, less long than longitudinal.

Question 16

Microgenetic designs

Answer 16

Participants studied intensely over short period while developmental changes occur. Costly and time consuming with large samples though.

Question 17

Case studies

Answer 17

Researcher gathers extensive info about an individual and tests developmental hypotheses by examining life history. Limited generalizability

Question 18

National surveys

Answer 18

Recruit thousands of children to ensure all groups represented in same proportion as natural population. Extreme $$. Often not enough detail.