Self-report Methods Flashcards
What do self-report methods find out?
How people think and feel about something
Name two self-report methods.
Questionnaire and Interview
What is the main problem with using self-report methods?
Social desirability bias - this means that respondents may provide answers to put themselves in a good light
What is the benefit of using a structured interview?
More easily replicated than an un-structured interview
In what type of interview are the questions developed in response to the participants answers?
Un-structured interview
What are the two main ways to assess the internal validity of a self-report technique?
Face validity and concurrent validity
What is ‘Face Validity’?
A means of establishing validity by concerning the extent to which a test/questionnaire looks as if it is measuring what it intends to measure.
What is ‘Concurrent Validity’?
A means of establishing validity by comparing participants responses on a new test/questionnaire with an established one on the same topic.
Define internal reliability and give one example.
A measure of the extent to which something is consistent within itself, e.g. all the questions on an IQ test should be measuring the same thing
Define external reliability and give one example.
A measure of consistency over several different occasions, e.g. if an interview was conducted by the same interviewer and the same interviewee on one day and then a week later, the outcome should be the same
What is inter-interviewer reliability?
Inter-viewer reliability is whether two interviewers produce the same outcome
State the two ways to assess reliability
The split-half method and the test-retest method
What is the split-half method?
Comparing a person’s performance on two halves of a questionnaire. If it is assessing the same thing in all its questions then there should be a close correlation between the two scores
Explain the test-retest method.
Giving a person a questionnaire/ interview/test on one occasion and then repeating it again after a reasonable interval. If the measure is reliable then the outcome should be the same every time.
What is good about using open questions?
Participants can give their own answers which are detailed and provide valuable insights
