RM - Self-report techniques

Question 1

What type of method is observation?

Answer 1

Non-experimental.

Question 2

What are self-report techniques?

Answer 2

Asking people questions about their experiences and/or beliefs.

Question 3

What are some methods of non-experimental methods?

Answer 3

Observations and self-report techniques.

Question 4

What are 2 examples of self-report techniques?

Answer 4

Questionnaires and interviews.

Question 5

In what ways can a self-report technique be given/used?

Answer 5

In a written format or delivered in real-time (face-to-face or o the telephone).

Question 6

What is the Heinz dilemma?

Answer 6

Heinz’s wife was dying from a particular type of cancer. Doctors said a new drug might save her. The drug had been discovered by a local chemist, and the Heinz tried desperately to buy some, but the chemist was charging ten times the money it cost to make the drug, and this was much more than the Heinz could afford.

Heinz could only raise half the money, even after help from family and friends. He explained to the chemist that his wife was dying and asked if he could have the drug cheaper or pay the rest of the money later.

The chemist refused, saying that he had discovered the drug and was going to make money from it. The husband was desperate to save his wife, so later that night he broke into the chemist’s and stole the drug.

Question 7

Who came up with an interview and researched the Heinz dilemma and what did he want to investigate?

Answer 7

Lawrence Kohlberg (1978) to investigate moral views.

Question 8

What type of interview did Lawrence Kohlberg use in investigating moral views in the Heinz dilemma?

Answer 8

Structured

Question 9

What questions did Kohlberg put in his interview for the Heinz dilemma?

Answer 9

Should Heinz steal the drug? Why/why not?

If the interviewee favours stealing, ask: If Heinz doesn’t love his wife, should he steal the drug for her? Why/why not?

If the interviewee favours not stealing, ask: Does it make a difference whether or not he loves his wife? Why/why not?

Suppose the person dying is not his wife but a stranger. Should Heinz steal the drug for the stranger? Why/why not?

Question 10

What are self-report techniques often used for?

Answer 10

As a means of measuring the DV.

Question 11

What do questionnaires allow a researcher to do?

Answer 11

Discover what people think and feel compared to guessing in an observation based on how they behave.

Question 12

Are questionnaires structured or unstructured?

Answer 12

Structured

Question 13

Are interviews structured or unstructured?

Answer 13

Can be either.

Question 14

What is an unstructured interview sometimes called and why?

Answer 14

A clinical interview because it is a bit like the interview you might have with your doctor.

Question 15

What is an interview?

Answer 15

A research method or technique that involves a face-to-face, ‘real-time’ interaction with another individual and results in the collection of data.

Question 16

What is interviewer bias?

Answer 16

The effect of an interviewer’s expectations, communicated unconsciously, on a respondent’s behaviour.

Question 17

What is a questionnaire?

Answer 17

Data is collected through the use of written questions.

Question 18

What is social desirability bias?

Answer 18

A distortion in the way people answer questions - they tend to answer questions in such a way that presents themselves in a better light.

Question 19

What is a structured interview?

Answer 19

Any interview in which the questions are decided in advance.

Question 20

What is an unstructured interview?

Answer 20

The interview starts out with some general aims and possibly some questions, and lets the interviewee’s answers guide subsequent questions.

Question 21

What are the strengths of self-report techniques?

Answer 21

All self-report techniques allow access to what people think and feel, to their experiences and attitudes.

Therefore are an important way of gathering information about people’s thoughts, attitudes and experiences.

Question 22

What are the limitations of self-report techniques?

Answer 22

• People may not supply truthful answers (social desirability bias).
• Sometimes people don’t know what they think or feel, so they make their answer up, and thus their answers lack validity.
• The sample of people used in any study using self-report may lack representativeness and thus the data collected cannot be generalised.

Question 23

What are the strengths of questionnaires?

Answer 23

• Once designed and tested, questionnaires can be distributed to large numbers of people relatively cheaply and quickly enabling a researcher to collect data from a large sample of people.
• Respondents may be more willing to give personal information in a questionnaire than in an interview, where they may feel self-conscious and more cautious.
• Easily repeated and compared.

Question 24

What are the limitations of questionnaires?

Answer 24

• Only filled in by people who can read and write and have the time to fill them in so the sample is biased.

Therefore issues of design, distribution and bias need to be thought through carefully.

Question 25

What are the strengths of structured interviews?

Answer 25

• Can be easily repeated because the questions are standardised. This means that answers from different people can be compared.
• Easier to analyse than unstructured interviews because answers are more predictable.

Question 26

What are the limitations of unstructured interviews?

Answer 26

• Comparability a problem in a structured interview if the same interviewer behaves differently on different occasions or different interviewers behave differently (low reliability).
• The interviewer’s expectations may influence the answers the interviewee gives (interviewer bias).

So the benefits rely on having skilled interviewers and avoiding interviewer bias as far as possible.

Question 27

What are the strengths of unstructured interviews?

Answer 27

• More detailed information can generally be obtained from each respondent than in a structured interview as the interviewer tailors further questions to the specific responses.

So able to gain deeper insights into the respondent’s feelings and thoughts.

Question 28

What are the limitations of unstructured interviews?

Answer 28

• Require interviewers with more skill than structured interviews because they have to develop new questions on the spot
• The requirement for well-trained interviewers makes unstructured interviews more expensive to produce compared with structured interviews.
• Such in-depth questions may be more likely to lack objectivity than predetermined ones because of their instantaneous nature, with no time for the interviewer to reflect on what they say.

Therefore, there are issues of objectivity and cost to consider.