Research Methods AO1 (Observations-Correlations) Flashcards
What are the 6 types of observations?
Naturalistic, Controlled, Overt, Covert, Participant and Non-Participant
What is a Naturalistic observation and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
DESCRIPTION
-Takes place in a setting where the behavior usually occurs e.g. silence in a library
STRENGTHS
-High external validity as findings can be generalized to everyday life
WEAKNESSES
-Harder to replicate as lack of control over situation
- Uncontrolled variables e.g. extraneous variables
What is a Controlled observation and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
DESCRIPTION
- Control over variables and certain aspects of the observation are controlled e.g what room it is in
STRENGTHS
-Replication is easier
-More control over extraneous variables
WEAKNESSES
-May produce findings that cannot always be applied to everyday life (Low external validity)
What is a Overt observation and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
DESCRIPTION
- Participants know they are being observed and have consented beforehand
STRENGTHS
-Ethics are not a problem as they know they are being watched
WEAKNESSES
- Higher chance of demand characteristics
What is a Covert observation and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
DESCRIPTION
-Participants are not aware they are being studied and have not consented beforehand and must be completed in a natural setting where participants are expecting to be observed
STRENGTHS
- Removes the risk of demand characteristics and ensures natural behavior
- Increases external validity
WEAKNESSES
- Ethics are questioned as people may not wish to have behavior recorded
What is a Participant observation and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
DESCRIPTION
- The observer becomes part of the group they are studying (cannot become apart of every group)
STRENGTH
- Increased insight and increases external validity
WEAKNESS
- Lose objectivity and line between researcher and participant becomes blurred
What is a Non-Participant observation and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
DESCRIPTION
- Researcher does not become part of the selected group and remains separate
STRENGTHS
- Maintain objective and psychological distance
WEAKNESSES
-May loose insight and are too far removed from people and the behavior studied
What do researchers need for an observation?
What does a researcher need to create before their observation begins?
Behavioral Categories (Behavior we are going to record/ target behavior which is sorted before the observation begins)
What are the 2 sampling procedures?
Which can be used during an observation.
Event Sampling and Time Sampling
What is Event Sampling?
- Count/ record the number of times a particular behavior occurs in an individual or group and record the ‘event’ every time it occurs for the duration of the observation
What is Time Sampling?
-Count/ record the behavior in a fixed time frame e.g. every 60 seconds
-Can observe one person or a group
How do we complete inter-observer reliability in an observation?
-Ideally observations should have more than one observer
- This allows for a check of inter-observer reliability
1) Observers familiarize themselves with behavioral categories
2) Carry out observations at the same time (but independently)
3) Compare results and discuss any differences
4) Compare each pair of observations and if more than +/- 0.8 we can assume we have good inter-reliability
What are the 3 different self- reporting methods?
Structured Interview, Unstructured Interview, and Questionnaire (also a semi-structured interview)
What is a Structured Interview and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
DESCRIPTION
- Pre-determined set of questions that are asked in a fixed order (usually collects qualitative data)
STRENGTHS
- Easy to replicate due to standardised format
- Easier to analyse and compare as have all be asked the same questions
- Interviewer can establish a rapport with participants before interview (biscuits)
WEAKNESSES
- Cannot deviate from topics or ask participants to elaborate which can limit richness of data
- Participants can lie to make themselves look better (social desirability)
What is a unstructured interview and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
DESCRIPTION
- No set questions but there is a general aim/ topic the researcher wants to discuss
- More like a conversation and participants usually lead and participants are encourage to elaborate on answers
STRENGTHS
- Has flexibility and can ask follow up questions which might open up ideas the researcher had not initially considered
- Researcher can establish a rapport between the participants before the interview
WEAKNESSES
- Hard to analyse the data as lots of irrelevant information and lack of consistency between participants and drawing conclusions is hard
- Participants can lie to look better (social desirability)
What is a questionnaire and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
DESCRIPTION
- Pre-set list of written questions and participant responds
- Used to assess thoughts and feelings
- Involves closed and open questions
- Begins with standardised questions
STRENGTHS
- Are cost effective and can give large amount of data and can be quickly distributed to large amounts of people
- Can be completed without the researcher being present
- Easy to replicate and easy to analyse without breaking ethics
WEAKNESSES
- Low response ratio compared to how many the questionnaire is sent to
- Responses may not always be truthful and demand characteristics of social desirability
- Response bias of where participants always tick yes or answer the same and do not read the questions right
What are the 2 main types of questions?
Open Questions & Closed Questions
What is an open question?
Does not have a fixed set of answers and participants can answer any way they want and usually produce qualitative data e.g. ‘why questions’
- Harder to analyse as data and questions can be subjective
- More depth and detail in the data which increases validity
What is a closed question?
Fixed number of responses and can sometimes be another scale and usually produced quantitative data
- Easier to analyse in an objective way
- Lack of detail and depth and decreases validity of results as we dont know why participants answered this way
What are the 3 types of closed questions?
Likert scales, Rating scales and Fixed-choice options
What is a likert scale?
Respondent indicates their agreement with the statement on a scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree
What is a Rating scale?
It is similar to a likert scale but instead respondents identify a value that represents their strength of feelings e.g. number scale
What is a Fixed- choice option?
List of possible options and respondent must indicate which one applies to them
What is a case study and its characteristics?
- A detailed and in-depth study into an individual or small group
- Often involves rare/ unusual individuals or events
- Produces qualitative data
- Uses lots of different data collection methods e.g. interviews and questionnaires
- Can be a longitudinal study and take place over long periods of time e.g. Genie
- Information is gathered from the individual as well as family and friends
What are the strengths of a case study?
- Rich and detailed insights are provided
- Can be a way to study rare behavior/ events
- Can contribute to our understanding of ‘typical’ functioning
What are the limitations of a case study?
- Generalisability issues
- Often involve subjective data and analysis
- Evidence collected in case studies can be low in validity
- Issues with confidentiality
What is a meta- analysis?
- Analysed the secondary data results of a number of different studies and pulls the information together to form an overall conclusion
What is a Longitudinal Study?
- A study that takes place over a long period of time and allows to see how behavior will change over time
What is a content analysis?
A research technique that enables the indirect study of behavior by examining communications that people produce e.g. texts, emails, TV, film and other media:
- Technique for analysing qualitative data of various kinds
+ Data can be categorised or collected
+ Can be analysed in themes
What do we do to data collected in a content analysis?
- Content analysis often involves lots of data so we need to categorise the data into meaningful units/ codes
- This could involve counting the number of times a word/ phrase occurs
What are the key 4 points for a content analysis?
- Psychologist reads/ watches/ looks through the data
- Identify potential categories which emerge from the data
- Give examples of the categories e.g. amount of times a word is said
- Read/ look through the data again and look for the examples of categories
What is a thematic analysis?
- Form of content analysis but the outcome is mostly qualitative
- Aim to identify themes- ideas that keep cropping up through the data
- Themes are much more descriptive that ‘codes’ used in quantitative
- When themes have been identified they can be developed into broader categories
- Can then collect some new data to test the validity of the themes/ categories
What are the strengths and weaknesses of a content analysis?
- Reliable as can easily check for inter-observer reliability
- Can circumnavigate many of the ethical issues associated with research
- Analysed outside of the context the behavior occurred in so can lead to incorrect interpretations
- Lack of objectivity (facts) particularly with thematic analysis
What does a correlation attempt to measure?
The relationship between 2 co-variables
Why are correlational studies considered to be non- experimental?
- There is no manipulation of variables only measuring 2 co-variables
- Looks at a relationship and not a difference
What is the main limitation of a correlational analysis?
Cannot establish cause and effect
What do we call the variables that are measured in a correlation analysis?
Co-variables
What would a a Non-Directional analysis look like for a correlation analysis?
There will be a relationship between between ? and ?
(Never predicts whether positive or negative)
What would a Directional analysis look like for a correlational analysis?
There will be a negative/ positive correlation between ? and ?
What would a Null Hypothesis be for a correlational analysis?
- Saying there would be no relationship between the 2 co-variables
What are the rules of drawing a scattergraphs?
- First draw an axis and label (doesn’t matter which goes on which axis)
- Plot a paired score using crosses
- DO NOT add a line of best fit
- Remember to put a title
What is a Positive Correlation?
As one co-variable increases, the other co-variable increases
What is a Negative Correlation?
As one co-variable increases, the other co-variable decreases
What is the Correlation Coefficient?
This is where the relationship is calculated and a number between +1 and -1. The closer to -1 and +1 The stronger the relationship is. At 0 there is no relationship at all
