Self-report techniques Flashcards
What are self-report techniques?
It involves asking people about their behaviour.
What are questionnaires?
Sets of questions which participants complete independently
Questionnaires can be used as part of an experiments
Questions can be open or closed.
Open questions - Not fixed and respondents are free to answer the way they wish for example, ‘why do you think people follow orders?’. - produces qualitative data, which is rich in detail.
Closed questions - Offers fixed number of responses for example ‘do you think that people follow orders because of (a) the situation they are in, or (b) their personality?’ - produces quantitative (numerical) data which can be easily counted.
What are the strengths of questionnaires?
Can be sent to (potentially) thousands of people, without the researcher needing to be present whilst they are completed. Potentially there is access to a very large sample.
The responses will usually be easy to analyse, especially if the questions are closed.
What are the limitations of questionnaires?
The responses may be biased:
Social desirability bias- not being truthful to try to present yourself in a better light
Response bias- answering all questions in a similar way and not reading the questions properly (ticking ‘yes’ for everything)
Acquiescence bias- a tendency to agree with things, meaning that the questionnaire is measuring a tendency to agree rather than what it is intending to measure.
What are interviews?
Are face-to-face interactions between the researcher and participant.
Interviews can be structured, unstructured or semi-structured.
What are structured interviews?
Interviewer asks a set of pre-determined questions and doesn’t deviate from them.
What is a strengths of structured interviews?
Can easily be repeated and the data are more easy to analyse.
What is a weakness of structured interviews?
Are inflexible and can’t include additional information.
What are unstructured interviews?
No set questions there’s a general aim discussed. Works a lot like a conversation - free-flowing.
What are the strengths of unstructured interviews?
Much more flexibility. The interviewer can follow up points as they arise - insight into the worldview of the interviewee they can then investigate answers in more depth.
What are the limitations of unstructured interviews?
Increased risk of interviewer bias.
Are difficult to repeat and hard to analyse for trends and patterns.
What are semi-structured interviews?
Where there are some pre-set questions but also the opportunity to ask extra questions as well.
What is the strength/ weakness of interviews as a whole?
As in questionnaires, participants may not be honest with their answers, reducing the validity of the responses. The interviewer may be able to get more of a sense of how truthful the participant is being than in a questionnaire, however.
