Chapter 5 Flashcards
Descriptive research
Observation and description of a behavior, the situation it occurs in, or the individual exhibiting it
Purpose of descriptive research
Describe natural behaviors
Three advantages to descriptive research
Informative, starting point for IDing variables and building HCs that can be tested later using other methods, and it can be the only practical or ethical method
Two categories of descriptive research
Observational and field studies
Observational research
Observe in an unobtrusive manner
3 observational methods
Naturalistic, systematic naturalistic, and participant observation
Naturalistic observation
Observes a wide variety of behaviors in an unobtrusive manner
Systematic naturalistic observation
ID a particular behavior to observe
Participant observation
Researcher becomes a participating member of the group being observed
Advantage to observational designs
Behaviors are not influenced by reactivity or other demand characteristics
Disadvantages of observational designs
Descriptions are susceptible to experimenter expectations, limited in individuals we can find to observe (unrepresentative sample), only have verbal descriptions (qualitative data lacks precision and accuracy), no informed consent, little internal validity
Raters
People who are blind to the hypothesis and trained to use our scoring criteria
Multiple raters
More than one rater
Inter-rater reliability
The extent to which rates agree on the scores they assign to a participant’s behavior
Other observational research procedures
Archival research, ex post facto research, and case studies
Archival research
Source of data is written records
Disadvantages to archival research
Obtaining access to records may be difficult, records are not made with a researcher’s question in mind, and there are few control to prevent the record-keeper’s biases and errors
Advantages to archival research
Allows us to study behaviors that would otherwise be unobservable
Ex post facto research
A descriptive or experimental study conducted after the events of interest have occurred.
Disadvantages to ex post facto research
Obtain potentially unreliable data
Case study
In-depth study of one situation or “case”
Advantage of case studies
Provide an in-depth description
Disadvantage of case studies
Generalizability may be poor