Midterm 2 - Chpt. 7 Flashcards
You might need to ask your Ps some questions - why? (4)
- to analyze & understand trends
- for correlational research
- as the DV in an experiment
- as a manipulation check in an experiment
What kind of information might you need to find out from Ps? (3)
□ ₋ Attitudes and beliefs
□ ₋ Facts and demographics
□ ₋ Behavioral frequencies
Simplicity (Question wording considerations)
avoid jargon, abbreviations, complexity!
Double-barreled questions (Question wording considerations)
EX: Do you support free tuition and reduced healthcare?
- Do you feel anxious and depressed when thinking about exams?
Loaded Questions (Question wording considerations)
Are you in favor of having your terrific instructor Mark Lam teach another term of fun-filled 217?
Negative Wording (Question wording considerations)
Do you agree that the City of Vancouver should not allow the homeless to camp on the streets?
Creating Q’s - Question validity:
Does the question assess what you want it to assess? (more later in the term)
EX: A researcher want to measure the number of close friendships a person has, and asks:
How many friend requests do you have on FaceBook?
Is this a valid measure of close friendship?
How to validate/test question validity?
Pre-testing:
– Have others answer the questions
– Ask for feedback
– Revise questions that are unclear or misunderstood
- OR use an existing & validated questionnaire!
Response Sets (Additional Considerations for Surveys)
A tendency to respond to all questions from a particular perspective or in a particular way rather than to provide answers to the questions themselves.
Social Desirability (Additional Considerations for Surveys)
(aka “faking good”)
Tendency for a participant to respond in the most socially acceptable way, or as “most people” would. - more likely with sensitive topics
Additional Considerations for Surveys
- Response sets
- Extraversion
- Social desireability
- Open-ended vs. closed-ended
Pros of open ended Q’s:
- Can get rich, creative, unexpected, and/or complex answers
- Identify common themes
Cons of open ended Q’s:
- Reponses may be ambiguous
- P’s may interpret questions in different ways
- Time consuming to code
READINGS
Survey research uses questionnaires and interviews to ask people to provide information about themselves
○ Attitudes
○ Beliefs
○ Demographics
○ Past behaviours
○ Intended future actions
4 reasons to conduct surveys:
- Method to ask people to tell us about themselves (self-report)
- Society demands data about issues, rather than just intuition and anecdotes
- Survey data, if collected in a responsible fashion, can more useful information than individual anecdotes (□ For example, collecting student opinions to create effective curriculums)
- When using basic research, you can easily study many important variables using questionnaires or interviews
How can surveys be used? (3)
- To provide snapshots of how particular groups think and behave
- To gather data for studying relationships among variables
- Closed ended questions, with only certain numerical responses allowed, provide quantitative data that can be tracked over time, or to compare scores for one institution with similar institutions
- Open ended questions can be content analyzed for additional insight into what undergraduates think would enrich their education
Panel Study (How can surveys be used?)
when the same people are tracked & surveyed at two or more points in time, the design is sometimes called a panel study, or a longitudinal design
- Each period is known as a wave - a two wave study involves surveying people at two points in time
- Allow for research questions about the relationship between one variable (at time one) and another variable (at time two)
Response bias in survey research:
- If a minority of people provide inaccurate information, the data as a whole may remain valuable and informative
- Only when there’s an excess of inaccurate information that overshadows or masks the true variance in scores do have serious problems
Response Bias
a tendency to respond to all questions from a particular perspective, or in a particular way, rather than provide answers directly related to the questions themselves
Most common type of response bias?
social desirability: leads an individual to answer in the most socially acceptable way - the way the person thinks “most people” would respond, or the way that would present the person in the most positive light
- Occur during questions on sensitive topics
How can we prevent response bias?
- To ask sensitive questions in a way that hides their main intent
- Ensure privacy when completing the survey, by stressing confidentiality and anonymity, and increasing motivation to respond accurately
Defining the research objectives
Potentially unethical to ask q’s with no real use for information - more q’s asked, greater of a burden placed on the participant with little benefit
Attitudes & Beliefs (Defining the research objectives)
- Q’s focus on the ways people evaluate, feel, and think about issues
- Tap into important aspects of how people see the world and the value that different things hold for them
