research methods

Question 1

Questionnaires:

Answer 1

Pre set list of questions to record thoughts and feelings

Most common type of self report technique

Question 2

Self report tchnique:

Answer 2

any method in which a person us asked to state or explain their own feelings, opinions behaviours and /or experience related to a given topic

Question 3

Open questions:

Answer 3

no fixed range of answers and participants are free to answer in any way they wish

Question 4

Open ended questions tend to produce

what type of data

Answer 4

qualitative data

Question 5

Closed questions

Answer 5

fixed number of responses or scale of 1-10

Question 6

Closed response what type of data

Answer 6

tend to provide more quantitive data

Question 7

Interviews

Answer 7

A live encounter where one person asks a set of questions to asses an interviewees thoughts and or experiences

Question 8

Interviews; structured

Answer 8

Pre seteremied set of questions that are asked in a fixed order
It may be like a questionnaire but conducted face to face in real time the interviewer asks the questions and waits for a response

Question 9

Inyterviews; instructed

Answer 9

No set questions
There is a general aim that a certain topic will be discussed and interaction tends to be free flowing
The interviewee is encouraged to expand and elaborate their answers as prompted by the interviewer

Question 10

Interviews; semi structured

Answer 10

There is a list of questions that have been worked out in advance but interviews are also free to ask follow up questions based on previous answers

Question 11

Emulations strengths of questionnaires

Answer 11

cost effective Questionnaires;
can be completed with or without researcher present
Data produced is usually straightforward to analyse so easy to conduct stats analysis and compare groups of people

Question 12

Evolutions and limitations of questionnaires;

Answer 12

The response may not always be truthful
Respondents are keen to represents trhemsevleves Una positive light. This is a form of demand character called social desirability bias
Questionnaires often produce response bias which is where respondents tend to reply in a similar way or answering at same favoured end of a rating scale
Why respondents may complete assemnet too quickly and fail to read question properly
Acquiescence bias; response bias

Question 13

Evaluation; strutted interviews

Answer 13

Benefits; straightforward to replicate thanks to standardised format. This also reduces differences between interviewers
Limitations; not possible for interviewers to deviate from the topic or explain their questions and this will limit richness of data collected and limit unexpected information

Question 14

Evaluation; unstructed interviews

Answer 14

Benefits: flexibility, interviews can follow up points as they arise and is much more likely to gain insight into the worldview of interviewee and gets unexpected information
Limitation: increased risk of interviewer bias. Analysis from instructed interview is not straightforward
There is a risk that interviewee may lie due to social desirability

Question 15

Likert Scales:

Answer 15

Respondent indicates their agreements or not with a statement using a scale
Scale ranges from strongly agree to strongly disagree

Question 16

Rating scale

Answer 16

Rating scale works similar to a likert scale but gets respondents to identify a value gtghat represents their strength of felling a bout a particular topic

Question 17

Fixed choice option

Answer 17

A list of possible options and respondents are required to indicate those that apply to them
(tick all those that apply)
dont want a yes no good alternative

Question 18

Designing interviews

Answer 18

Interview schedule: list of questions that the interviewer intends to cover. This should be standardised to reduce contaminating effect of interview bias
intervoews can be with a single participants or through group interviews
What makes for a good interview?
Quiet setting away from other people
Start the interview with neutral questions to make interviwee feel relaxed and comfortable and stabilise a rapport
Remind interviewees throughout interview that answers are confidential

Question 19

Questionaires designed

Answer 19

Aim and hypothesis 
Decide items for your questionnaires 
Pilot the questionnaires 
Sampling 
Consider ethical issues 
Analysis of data

Question 20

Correlation

Answer 20

llustrates the strength and direction of an accusation between two or more co-variable

Question 21

Zero correlation:

Answer 21

when there is no relationship between the co variables

Question 22

Evualtion: strengths

of corrections

Answer 22

Corrections are useful preliminary tool for reasearch by assessing the strengths and driection of a relationship between variables
Corrections are often used as a strating point to asses possible patterns between variables before researchers commit to an experimental study
Correlations are quick and economical to carry out. Secondary data can be used is it is less time consuming

Question 23

limitations of correlations

Answer 23

Due to lack of experimental manipulation and control study can only tell us how variables are related not why
Corrections do not demonstrate cause and effect between variables and therefore we do not know which co variable cause the other to change
Intervening variable may be causing the relationship between the two co variables
Summary: correclations can osmically be missed or misinterpreted because relationships can appear causal when they aren’t

Question 24

Primary data

Answer 24

refers to orginal data that has been collected specifically for the purpose of the investigation by the researcher.
It is data that arrives first hand form the participants - through experiment

Question 25

Secondary data

Answer 25

Data that has been collected by someone else and their data is available to use if they want
We already know if there is some interesting significant between the variables
Stuff you didn’t collect yourself for your experiment