Observations Flashcards
What are behavioural categories?
- Devising a set of component behaviours.
What is event sampling?
- Counting number of times a certain behaviour (or event) occurs in a target individual or individuals.
What is time sampling?
- Recording behaviours in a given time frame -> E.g. noting what individual is doing every 30 seconds.
What is controlled observation?
- When the researcher has some of measure of control over the environment.
What are the strengths of a controlled observation?
- Control over extraneous variables
- Inter-observer reliability
- Easy to replicate
What are the weaknesses of a controlled observation?
- Cannot be applied to real-life settings.
- May be subjective towards what the researcher wants to see.
What is a naturalistic observation?
- Studying behaviour in a natural setting where everything has been left as it is normally.
What are the strengths of a naturalistic observation?
- High external (ecological) validity.
- Natural environment: generalised to everyday life.
- Few demand characteristic.
What are the weaknesses of naturalistic observations?
- Replication difficult -> lack of control.
- Uncontrolled extraneous variables.
What is a covert observation?
- ppts are not aware that they are being observed.
What are the strengths of a covert observation?
- No demand characteristics.
What are the weaknesses of a covert observation.
- Ethical issues as they do not know they are being observed.
What is an overt observation?
- Ppts are aware that they are being observed.
What are the strengths of an overt observation?
- Less ethical issues as they are not being deceived.
What are the weaknesses of an overt observation?
- There may be demand characteristics as they know they are being observed.
What is a participant observation?
- The observer acts as part of the group being watched.
What are the strengths of participant observation?
- Exp the situation
- Insight
- Increased validity
What are the weaknesses of participant observation?
- Lose objectivity
- Difficulty in recording observations
- Ethical issues
What is non-participant observation?
- The experimenter foes not become part of the group being observed.
What are the strengths of non-participant observations?
- More ethical
- More objective
What are the weaknesses of non-participant observation?
- Less insight
- Not exp the same things
- lower in validity
What are is structured observation?
- Researcher determines precisely what behaviours are to be observed and uses a standardised checklist to record the frequency with which they are observed within a specific time frame.
What is an unstructured observation?
- The observer recalls all relevant behaviour but has no system.
What is ‘inter rater’ reliability?
- 2 or more interviewers / observers must get some outcome on 80% or more of the behaviours.
How can inter rater reliability be improved?
- Using secondary data -> pre-existing categories e.g. experiment an aggression of teenagers, you use conditions of precious experiments on some topic.
