landmark 3 Flashcards
Interviewer bias
the effect of an interviewer’s expectations, communicated unconsciously, on a respondents behaviour
Strengths and limitations of questionnaires
Strengths:
Once designed and tested, questionnaires can be distributed to large numbers of people relatively cheaply and quickly. This enables a researcher to collect data from a large sample of people
Respondents may be more willing to give personal information in a questionnaire than in an interview, where they may feel self-conscious and more cautious
Limitations:
Questionnaires are only filled in by people who can read and write and have the time to fill them in. This means that the sample is biased
Social desirability bias
a distortion in the way people answer questions - they tend to answer questions in such a way that presents themselves in a better light
Strengths and limitations of structured interview
Strengths:
Can be easily repeated because the questions are standardised. This means answers from different people can be compared
This also means that they are easier to analyse than unstructured interviews because answers are more predictable
Limitations:
Comparability may be a problem in a structured interview (but not a questionnaire) if the same interviewer behaves differently on different occasions or different interviewers behave differently (low reliability)
A limitation of both structured and unstructured interviews is that the interviewer’s expectations may influence the answers the interviewee gives (a form of investigator effect called interviewer bias)
Strengths and limitations of unstructured interview
Strengths:
More detailed information can generally be obtained from each respondent than in a structured interview. This is because the interviewer tailors further questions to the specific responses.
Limitations:
Unstructured interviews require interviewers with more skill than a structured interview because the interviewer has to develop new questions on the spot. The requirement for well-trained interviewers makes unstructured interviews more expensive to produce compared with structured interviews
Such in-depth questions may be more likely to lack objectivity than predetermined ones because of their instantaneous nature, with no time for the interviewer to reflect on what to say
Therefore, while unstructured interviews allow researchers to gain deeper insights into the respondent’s feelings and thoughts, there are issues of objectivity and cost to consider.
Strengths and limitations of self report techniques
Strengths:
The key strength is that all self-report techniques allow access to what people think and feel, to their experiences and attitudes.
Limitations:
People may not supply truthful answers. It’s not that people deliberately lie, but they may simply answer in a socially desirable way (called a social desirability bias). For example, if asked whether you are a leader or a follower, many people would prefer not to class themselves as a follower even if they are
People sometimes simply don’t know what they think or feel, so they may make their answer up, and thus their answers lack validity
The sample of people used in any study using self-report may lack representativeness and thus the data collected cannot be generalised
Likert scale
rating system, used in questionnaires, allows us to rank participants
Acquiescence bias
also known as agreement bias, the tendency for survey respondents to agree with research statements, without the action of being a true reflection of their own position or question itself
Lawerence Kohlberg (1978)
used the scenario of Heinz stealing a drug to cure his wife’s rare type of cancer to investigate moral views - he used interviews and asked people a structured set of questions
strengths/ limitation’s of closed questions
Strengths:
Closed questions have a limited range of answers and produce quantitative data, which means the answers are easier to analyse using graphs and measures such as the mean
Limitations:
Respondents may be forced to select answers that don’t represent their real thoughts or behaviour. This means that the data collected lack validity
Participants may select ‘don’t know’ or have a preference to answer yes (an acquiescence bias) and therefore the data collected are not informative
strengths/ limitation’s of open questions
Strengths:
Respondents can expand on their answers, which increases the amount and detail of information collected
Open questions can provide unexpected answers, thus allowing researchers to gain new insights into people’s feelings and attitudes
Limitations:
Most respondents may simply avoid giving lengthy complex answers; therefore, in practice, open questions may not actually provide detailed extra information
Open questions produce qualitative data, which are more difficult to summarise because there is likely to be a wide range of responses. This makes it harder to detect clear patterns an draw conclusions
Writing good questions:
Analysis - questions need to be written so that they are easy to analyse (closed questions = easy to analyse, but may not reflect actual thoughts/ behaviour)
Bias - questions should be free of bias. If not could lead the respondent to be more likely to give a particular answer (a leading question or emotive language)
Social desirability bias - participants may give answers to make themselves look more attractive, nicer, more generous etc. rather than being truthful.
Clarity - questions should be clear and unambiguous - should be understandable (do not overuse jargon) - The use of double negatives reduces clarity, as do double barrelled questions
Writing good questionnaires:
Should contain good questions (above)
Filler questions - to distract participants from the aim of the study to try reduce demand characteristics
Sequence for the questions – start with the easy ones and save the ones that may make people anxious or defensive for when the participant has relaxed
Sampling technique - Questionnaires often use stratified sampling (where the researcher divides or ‘stratifies’ the target group into sections, each representing a key group (or characteristic) that should be present in the final sample)
Pilot study - before the main study. This means that the questions can later be refined in response to any difficulties encountered.
These design decisions are to make questionnaires objective and systematic ways of doing psychological research (i.e. it makes them a scientific tool) so that the data collected truly reflects what a person actually thinks and/or feels.
How to record the interview:
Can take notes - but could interfere with listening skills - might make the participant feel that what they said was not valuable (because not everything said is written down)
This could lead to social desirability bias or demand characteristics.
Alternatively, interviews may be audio recorded or video recorded
The effect of the interviewer:
Non-verbal communication – various behaviours such as sitting with arms crossed and frowning communicate disapproval and disinterest, whereas head nodding and leaning forward may encourage the respondent to speak
Listening skills – an interviewer needs to know when and how to speak e.g. they should not interrupt too often and when they do speak they should have a range of encouraging comments to show that they are listening
