Self-Report Flashcards
What is self-report?
It is any method which involves collecting data on people by asking them questions about their feelings, attitudes, beliefs and thoughts
What are the two main self-report techniques?
Questionnaire
Interview
What is one strength of using self-report?
It can potentially enable the researcher to access peoples thoughts.
What are open questions?
Ask a participant to respond to a set question but leave a blank underneath the question so participants can answer in any style they like.
They assess a person’s emotions or the reason why people act in a specific way
What type of data do open questions provide?
Qualitative data- leave respondents to consider their own answer
What are closed questions?
Given answers/options for participants to chose from (chose the most appropriate)
What type of data do closed questions provide?
Provide quantitative data
What are the advantages of closed questions?
- Easier and quicker for participants to respond
- The data collected is easy to compare and analyse
What are the disadvantages of closed questions?
- Restricts participants answers
- Difficult to give real reasons for behaviour/answer
What are the advantages of an open question?
- Gives participants flexibility/options to gives their real reasons for behaviour
- Researchers gain real in depth reasons for participant behaviour
What are the disadvantages of open questions?
- Time consuming to complete by the participants and for the researcher to analyse the responses collected
- Responses may not be relevant to what the researcher desired
How are rating scales completed?
Person completes rating scale by making a mark at an appropriate point along a numerical dimension to indicate the direction/strength of their attitude
What can rating scales relate to and give an example?
Attitudes (eg. 1 = really bad and 10 = really good)
Emotions/feelings (eg. 1= really sad and 10 = really happy)
What can even-numbered rating scales cause?
They cause participants to have a FORCED CHOICE making them suggest a positive or negative leaning in their opinion even if they don’t have one
What are the advantages of rating scales?
- It gives the researcher an idea of how strongly a participant feels about something
- It is more detailed than a simple yes or no answer
What are the disadvantages of rating scales?
- There can be a tendency for participants to chose the middle of the scale so they don’t look to extreme
- Vulnerable to RESPONSE SETS (answer questions in a methodical manner unrelated to their subject)
What are likert scale?
Scales which comprise a number of statements for each of which participant indicates whether they strongly agree/ agree/ are undecided/ disagree or strongly disagree
How does a likert scale control for a standard response set?
Half the statements selected represent a positive attitude and the other half represent a negative attitude.
What is one issue with likert scales?
The number of internal they contain
- Normally contain 5 (odd) statements which enables an ‘undecided option’ if participants have no view in the matter
- An even number of statements can force a participant to have an opinion when in reality they don’t (reduces validity)
What are the two different types of rating scales?
Likert scales
Semantic differentials
What are semantic differential scales?
They are rating scales which make use if polar opposite terms such as good/bad, strong/weak
When would you use a questionnaire method?
If the researcher wishes to gain QUANTITATIVE data from a LARGE sample or participants fairly QUICKLY
When would you use an interview method?
If the researcher wishes to gain IN-DEPTH data from representatives of a fairly NARROW target population
What are the three different types of interviews?
- Structured
- Semi-structured
- Unstructured
Which is the most commonly used type of interview?
Semi-structured
What is a structured interview?
The interviewer asks the same questions to each participant in the same order (often used closed questions with the interviewee picking the answer closest to their opinion
What are the strengths of a structured interview?
- Using the same questions means the interviews is standardised and replicable as it can be repeated in the same way for each participant
- Important/busy people feel more secure knowing question areas
What are the weaknesses of a structured interview?
The interviewer cannot ask any additional questions- may prevent seeking further clarification on a point/can’t follow up interesting comments
What is a semi-structured interview?
The interviewer will have a set of pre-prepared questions to ask and is expected to ask all of them; other questions will be developed in the interview in response to answers given by the interviewee
What are the strengths of a semi-structured interview?
Allows the interviewer to use additional questions to seek clarification on a response or explore an interesting comment made by participants during a set of questions
What are the weaknesses of a semi-structured interview?
Although allows some flexibility the interview is still likely to be constrained around the pre-determined questions
Any additional questions not decided beforehand may vary for each participant making it difficult to compare
What is an unstructured interview?
The researcher has topics to discuss but these don’t have to be in the same order for each participant
The interview is more like a conversation, with further questions being developed in response to the interviewees answers
What are the strengths of an unstructured interview?
The interview allows for information to be gathered that might not be revealed from, pre-determined questions
It allows the interviewer the freedom to ask on the spot questions which could be relevant
Hat are the weaknesses of an unstructured interview?
Difficult to compare responses from the different participants as they may be asked very different questions from each other
What are the advantages of a questionnaire method?
It is easy to collect a lot of varied data from a large group of people
Easy to keep confidential
What are the disadvantages of questionnaires?
It can be difficult to design a good questionnaire
Response rate is often low
Respondents may be untruthful
What are the advantages of the interview method?
It can be good meet with people face to face, reas their body language and build a good rapport/relationship with them
What are the disadvantages of the interview method?
Often interviewers only see one student at a time so it can be time consuming to collect a lot of data
Lack of confidentiality may mean interviewees won’t reveal anything (social desirability bias)
What is face validity?
How accurate the measure looks at first glance
What is concurrent validity?
Whether the test gives the same results as other studies
What is criterion validity?
Can the test predict results on another test
What are the validity problems for questionnaires and interviews?
- Contains LEADING QUESTIONS
- Participants give ‘socially desirable’ answers
- Contains FORCED CHOICE questions
- Respondents work out real aim and respond with demand characteristics
- Respondents lapse into a standard response set
- Censor extreme views due to accountability
- Risk of RESEARCHER BIAS when interpreting data
What is a standard response set?
Giving the same answer to all the questions without rant thinking about what is being asked
What is researcher bias?
When the researcher interprets responses in a way which suggest/support their theory
How do you overcome the problem of LEADING QUESTIONS (validity)?
Don’t use/avoid leading questions
How do you overcome the problem of socially desirable answers (validity)?
Guarantee the anonymity of participants
How do you overcome the problem of FORCED CHOICE questions (validity)?
Don’t ask forced choice questions and have ‘other’ or ‘please specify’ options at the bottom
How do you overcome the problem of demand characteristics (validity)?
Have ‘smokescreen’ / ‘filter’ questions to disguise the aim of the study
How do you overcome the problem of standard response set (validity)?
Reverse some of the statements so that ‘strongly agree’ doesn’t always express a positive attitude towards the subject
How do you overcome the problem of censorship of extreme views (validity)?
Don’t ask respondents to record their name therefore it cannot be traced back to them
How do you overcome the problem of researcher bias (validity)?
Get an independent researcher who is ‘blind’ to the aim of the study to analyse the data
Evaluate the reliability of self-report methods?
- A large number of questions are asked about the same thing
- A questionnaire is repeated with several different groups of people with similar results each time
- The way the questionnaire is administered means some respondents complete it alone whilst others in the company of their friends
- The questionnaire is sent out to a large number of people but the response rate is low
- Unstructured interview are used meaning that different interviewees are Ames different questions
- A questionnaire contains ambiguous questions
- The researcher compares the response from odd-numbered questions with those from even numbered questions (split half reliability)
