Methods in attachment

Question 1

What are the techniques researchers would use to research attachment and what would they not use ?

Answer 1

Researcher will use observational techniques and not self report techniques as they are babies

Question 2

How would they use observational technique ?

Answer 2

They will record behaviour on camera and make a detailed observation on each frame between caregiver and behaviour. This is called frame by frame video analysis.

Question 3

How is frame by frame video analysis good ?

Answer 3

This can lead to consistent and reliable results. As you cannot ask questions to a baby how they feel, you will be able to see through each frame the emotions of the baby and their reactions and make detailed observations of them. They can also repeat them as much as they want

Question 4

What type of study would a resaercher use to research attachment ?

Answer 4

They would use a longitudinal study

Question 5

What is a longitudinal study ?

Answer 5

This is when a researcher investigates the same participants at multiple timepoints to see how much their behaviour will change over time

Question 6

Why would researchers conduct a longitudinal study ?

Answer 6

They would do this to see how behaviour changes on the child over time

Question 7

Does longitudinal studies have to observational in attachment ? and give an example

Answer 7

No it doesn’t. For example researchers may want to find out the effects of parenting styles on children’s hobbies. They would do this through self report questions and ask at the ages of 5, 10 and 15 of the same person

Question 8

What is one strength of longitudinal studies ?

Answer 8

One is that it allows researchers to gain deeper insights into behaviour and see how it changes over time

Question 9

What is another strength of longitudinal studies ?

Answer 9

This gives researchers insight into how early experiences can shape behaviour in the long run and the bonds between the caregivers and the child

Question 10

What is a third strength of a longitudinal study ?

Answer 10

You will be able to see if the results are reliable and they are consistent over time periods which shows if they are reliable

Question 11

What is one weakness of longitudinal study ?

Answer 11

One is attrition. This is when across the study the researcher will lose some of their participants from their sample as they may not be interested anymore and they will grow older.

Question 12

When the researchers cannot directly manpulate the IV, what experiment will they conduct ?

Answer 12

These are natural/quasi experiemnts

Question 13

What is a limitation of a natural/quasi experiment ?

Answer 13

a problem is that it does not directly test cause and effect

Question 14

If researchers want to directly manipulate IV what is an alternative study ?

Answer 14

Animal study

Question 15

What is one advantage of animal studies ?

Answer 15

there will be no need to rely on natural experiments as they can have extraneous variables and so it directl tests the cause and effect relationship

Question 16

What is one weakness of animal studies ?

Answer 16

One is that results of animal studies may not generalise to humans . For instance effects of variable may not be the same in animals than a human

Question 17

What is another weakness of animal studies ? and what are the arguments for it

Answer 17

It may be unethical for animals as it can cause distress towards them. Some argue that if we argue it does not cause distress it shows animals are different to humans and limit the generalisability of the findings. On the other hand, people would argue the benefits outweight the negative of conducting the research.