Lecture 9 - Data Collection Techniques in Psychological Research Flashcards
What are experimental designs?
When the IV causes the DV - causal relationship is clear
What are laboratory-based experiments?
Carried out in laboratory, researcher has greatest control over environment an other factors
What are the advantages of laboratory experiments?
- Highly-controlled environments, so extraneous and/or confounding variables may be excluded
- Easier to replicate due to standardised procedure
What are the disadvantages of laboratory experiments?
- Setting likely to be artificial and so participants’ behaviour may be unnatural, and so ecological validity may be a concern
- Demand characteristics may influence participants’ behaviour
What are field experiments?
Carried out in everyday environment, but researcher still manipulates variables of interest
What are the advantages of field experiments?
- Naturalistic environment, so participants’ behaviour more likely to reflect real responses (i.e., higher ecological validity)
- Demand characteristics less likely to affect participants (especially true in covert field experiments)
What are the disadvantages of field experiments?
- Less control over extraneous and/or confounding variables, making replication more difficult
- Reliability may be affected
What are natural experiments?
Carried out in everyday environment, but researcher cannot manipulate variables of interest, as these naturally occur
What are advantages of natural experiments?
- Naturalistic environment, so very high ecological validity
- Demand characteristics unlikely to affect participants (especially true in covert natural experiments)
- Can be used in situations where ethical considerations prevent manipulation of independent variables (e.g., stress research)
What are disadvantages of natural experiments?
- Can be costly (e.g. time, financial, economic, human costs)
- No control over extraneous or confounding variables (e.g., randomisation to condition not possible, so self-selection and pre-existing differences may be an issue)
- Reliability may be an issue
What are correlation designs?
- All variables are measured and the strength of associations between them is assessed
- May be possible to establish causation through theoretical or other considerations
- Variables are measured and the strength of associations between them is examined
- Naturalistic observation and surveys often used in correlational designs
What are advantages of correlation designs?
- May allow study of phenomena that cannot be investigated ethically or practically using experiments
- May help to establish how well findings from experiments generalise to more naturalistic contexts – provides confirmatory evidence
- Allows researcher to predict direction and strength of relationship(s) between variables, but only based on theoretical or other considerations
What are disadvantages of correlation designs?
Cannot establish causation, unless logical sequence of relationships exists
What are the methods for data collection?
- Observational methods
- Case studies
- Surveys
- Interviews
- Experiments
- New technologie
What are observational studies?
- Behaviour is observed within the setting in which it naturally occurs
- Participants may know that they are being observed (overt observation) or they may be unaware (covert observation)
What are the three main types of observational studies?
- Controlled observation
- Naturalistic observations
- Participant observations
What are controlled observations?
- Usually under laboratory conditions, so researcher maintains control over environment and context
- Behaviour usually systematically classified and coded into distinct categories, using a specific timed-observation schedule
- Behaviour may be coded by more than one researcher and inter-rater reliability checked
What are examples of controlled observations?
- Bandura (1961) - Bobo doll studies
- Ainsworth (1970) – Attachment styles
What are the strengths of controlled observations?
- Easy to replicate using same methods and observation schedule
- Data is quick to analyse using quantitative statistical methods and software
- Relatively quick to conduct, so large samples possible
What are the limitations of controlled observations?
- Hawthorne effect or demand characteristics may limit validity
- Do participants act differently when being observed?
What are naturalistic observations?
- Behaviour observed under naturalistic conditions
- Data recorded using variety of methods
What are the strengths of a naturalistic observation?
- Observing flow of behaviour in natural setting increases ecological validity
- Often used to inform further research
What are the limitations of naturalistic observations?
- Observations on small scale may not be representative
- May be difficult to replicate circumstances and findings
- Substantial training required – what to observe?
- May not be able to establish cause and effect relationships or direction
What are participant observations?
- Variation on naturalistic observations
- Researcher becomes participant, becomes part of the group under investigation
- Assumes false role and identity, goes ‘under-cover’
What are examples of participant observations?
- Festinger (1957) – Cults and cognitive dissonance
- Rosenhan (1973) - “On Being Sane in Insane Places”
What are the strengths of participant observations?
As for naturalistic observations
What are the limitations of participant observations?
- Challenges with recording of data
- Loss of objectivity and researcher bias
What are the three main sampling methods?
- Event sampling
- Time sampling
- Instantaneous (target time) sampling
What is event sampling?
- Events identified in advance, coding established
- Event frequency and other characteristics recorded
- All other behaviours ignored
What is time sampling?
- Events identified in advance, coding established
- Observations take place within specific period (e.g., ten minutes each hour), with set sampling schedule (e.g., each hour for 12 hours)
- Behaviour at all other times ignored
What is instantaneous (target time) sampling?
- Observations made at a specific time-point
- All observations before or after ignored
What are case studies?
- Individual, group or event is investigated in detail
- Multiple techniques may be employed (e.g. observational coding, interview, psychometric tests)
- Often involves the idiographic approach
- Observing what happens to a participant
- Reconstructing the ‘case history’ of a participant or group (e.g. school class or specific social group)
- Often used in clinical psychology and psychiatry
- Provides a rich source of information, insight for further research
What are the advantages of case studies?
- Offers rich descriptive information
- Often indicates possible hypotheses for future research
- Can study rare phenomena in detail
- Provides opportunity to investigate factors that would be unethical to manipulate experimentally
What are the disadvantages of case studies?
- Often unable to establish cause-effect relationship (causal inference)
- Focus of case study may not be typical or representative
- Cannot generalise findings to wider population
- Often relies heavily on subjective interpretation of data
- Difficult to replicate
What are the main features of surveys?
Question(s) administered to sample drawn from larger population
What are the advantages of surveys?
- Carefully selected, representative sample provides accurate information about population of interest
- Samples can potentially be quite large, increasing external reliability
What are the disadvantages of surveys?
- Unrepresentative sample may provide misleading information
- Researcher biases or social desirability bias may distort findings
What are the different types of surveys?
- In-person surveys
- Telephone surveys
- Mail-out surveys
- Web-based surveys
What are in-person surveys?
Participants complete survey in physical presence of researcher
What are the advantages of in-person surveys?
- Control over environment, exclude/reduce biases
- Researcher can provide explicit instructions, address queries
- Highest quality data
What are the disadvantages of in-person surveys?
- Very time-consuming and expensive
- Small samples as a result
What are telephone surveys?
Researcher telephones participants to complete survey
What are the advantages of telephone surveys?
- Cheaper than in-person so larger samples possible
- Anonymous
What are the disadvantage of telephone surveys?
- Less control, less credibility
- Visual materials unavailable
- Materials less sophisticated
What are mail-out surveys?
Researcher send survey to participants by mail (snail-mail or email)
What are the advantages of mail-out surveys?
- Relatively cheap
- Convenient
- Ample time for completion
- No interviewer bias
- Visual aids possible
- Rapid data collection
- Anonymous
What are the disadvantages of mail-out surveys?
- Full instructions required
- Self-selection bias
What are web-based surveys?
Researcher makes survey available online, invites respondents
What are the advantages of web-based surveys?
- Cheapest of all methods
- Convenient
- Ample time for completion
- No interviewer bias
- Visual aids possible
- Rapid data collection
- Anonymous
What are the disadvantages of web-based surveys?
- Full instructions required
- Self-selection bias
What are interviews?
Relatively small number of respondents provide rich data in ‘live’ interaction with researcher (e.g. in-person, by telephone)
What are the advantages of interviews?
Carefully selected, representative sample provides rich and accurate information about population of interest
What are the disadvantages of interviews?
- Unrepresentative sample may provide misleading information
- Researcher biases or social desirability bias may distort findings
What are the strengths and weaknesses of open questions?
Open questions provide rich source of data, but harder to analyse using empirical analysis
What are the strengths and limitations of closed questions?
Closed questions provide more specific answers, but likely to bias answers given
What are experiments?
- Independent variables (IVs) are manipulated and their effect(s) on dependent variables (DVs) are measured
- Can be laboratory or field-based
What are the advantages of experiments?
- Best method for establishing cause-effect relationships (causal inference)
- Greater physical control for extraneous/confounding variables, so ruling out alternative explanations for effects
What are the disadvantages of experiments?
A variety of potential issues related to validity and reliability of findings may threaten the validity of the conclusions (see Experimental Design lectures)
