pychology Flashcards
what is opportunity sampling?
making use of the people who are readily available to you and match your target population
what is random sampling?
where all members of the target population have an equal chance of being selected
what is snowball sampling?
when the researcher begins with one participant and asks them to invite others to participate in the study
when is snowball sampling generally used?
if the target population is difficult to contact/access.
what is volunteer/self selected sampling
when an advert eg poster flyer tv advert is placed by the psychologist and people interested in the study will reply. the advert must contain contact details
what is independent variables
variable that is manipulated by the researcher
what is dependent variable
measured by the researcher
what are extraneous variables
anything that may influence results other than the independent variable
what are individual differences
any differences between people
aka participant variables
what is an advantage of opportunity sampling?
it’s the easiest and quickest way to obtain participants because they are already there and available. this makes it more efficient enabling a larger sample to be awaited and make the study more generalisable
what is a disadvantage of opportunity sampling
the sample may not be representative as it is taken from whoever is available at the time, often from the researchers own social/cultural group which limits generalisability of the results to the target population
what is an advantage of random sampling
it is the least biased because all members of the target population have an equal chance of being selected, so the sample should be more representative
what is a disadvantage of random sampling
it is difficult as you need to know all the details of the members of the sample before it can be conducted. one group could be by chance over or underrepresented so it won’t be generalised to the target population
what is an advantage of snowball sampling
relatively easy to do because the researcher only needs to find the first few participants. especially helpful for hard to reach target populations
what is a disadvantage of snowball sampling
non representative sample as they are similar in ways other than any common characteristics needed for the study, as they know each other. this limits generalisability
