Self-report techniques

Question 1

What type of data is collected from closed questions?

Answer 1

Quantitative

Question 2

What type of data is collected from open questions?

Answer 2

Qualitative

Question 3

What are self-report techniques?

Answer 3

Any method in which a person is asked to state or explain their own feelings, opinions, behaviours and/or experiences related to a given topic.

Question 4

What are questionnaires?

Answer 4

A set of written questions (sometimes referred to as ‘items’) used to assess a person’s thoughts and/or experiences

Question 5

What are interviews?

Answer 5

A ‘live’ encounter (face-to-face or on the phone) where one person (the interviewer) asks a set of questions to assess an interviewee’s thoughts and/or experiences. The questions may be pre-set (as in a structured interview) or may develop as the interview goes along (unstructured interview)

Question 6

What are structured interviews?

Answer 6

Any interview where the questions are decided in advance, basically a questionnaire delivered by a person

Question 7

What are unstructured interviews?

Answer 7

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

Question 8

What are semi-structured interviews?

Answer 8

An interview that combines some predetermined questions (as in a structured interview) and some questions developed in response to answers given (as in an unstructured interview)

Question 9

What is interviewer bias?

Answer 9

A type of human error committed by recruitment professionals wherein they form a baseless judgment about an interviewee. This kind of bias hinders them from assessing a candidate objectively, which greatly affects the purpose of the interview.

Question 10

What are open questions?

Answer 10

Questions for which there is no fixed choice of response and respondents can answer in any way they wish. For example Why did you take up smoking?

Question 11

What are closed questions?

Answer 11

Questions for which there is a fixed choice of responses determined by the question setter. For example Do you smoke? (yes/no)

Question 12

What are 2 strengths of questionnaires?

Answer 12

• Once designed and tested, questionnaires can be
  distributed to large numbers of people relatively
  cheaply and quickly. This enabled 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

Question 13

What is a weakness of questionnaires?

Answer 13

Questionnaires are only filled in by people who can read and write and have the time to fill them in. This means that the sample is biased.

Question 14

What are 2 strengths of structured interviews?

Answer 14

• The main strength of a structured interview (as
  well as an questionnaire) Is that it can be easily
  repeated because the questions are standardised.
  This means answers from different people can be
  compared
• This also means that they are easier to analyse
  than an unstructured interview becuase answers
  are more predictable

Question 15

What are 2 weaknesses of structured interviews?

Answer 15

• Comparability may be a problem if the same
  interviewer behaves differently on different
  occasions or different interviewers behave
  differently (low reliability)
• A limitation of both structured and Unstructured
  interviews is that the interviewer’s expectation
  may influence the answers the interviewee gives
  (interviewer bias)

Question 16

What is a strength of unstructured interviews?

Answer 16

There is much more flexibility than in structured interview as the interviewer can follow up points as they arise and is much more likely to gain insight into the worldview of the interviewee, including eliciting unexpected information

Question 17

What are 2 weaknesses of unstructured interviews?

Answer 17

• Analysis of data is also not straightforward – the
  researcher may have to sift through much
  irrelevant information and drawing firm
  conclusions may be difficult
• There is also an increased risk of interviewer bias

Question 18

What are 2 strengths of open questions?

Answer 18

• Respondents can expand on their answers which
  increases the amount and detail of information
  collected
• Open questions can provide unexpected answers,
  thus allowing researchers to gain new insights into
  people’s feelings and attitudes

Question 19

What are 2 weaknesses of open questions?

Answer 19

• Most respondents may simply avoid giving
  lengthy complex answers, therefore in practice
  open questions may not actually provide detailed
  extra information
• Open questions produce qualitative data, which is
  more difficult to summarise becuase there is likely
  to be a wide range of responses. This makes it
  harder to detect clear patterns and draw
  conclusions

Question 20

What is a strength of closed questions?

Answer 20

Closed questions have a limited range of answers and produce quantitative data, which means the answers are easier to analyse using graphs and measures such as the mean

Question 21

What is are 2 weaknesses of closed questions?

Answer 21

• Participants may select “don’t know” or have a
  preference to answer “yes” (an acquiescence bias)
  and therefore the data collected are not
  informative
• Respondents may be forced to select answers that
  don’t represent their real thoughts or behaviour.
  This means that the data collected lacks validity

Question 22

Writing good questionnaires - analysis?

Answer 22

Questions need to be written so that they are easy to analyse. Closed questions are easiest to analyse, but they may force people to select answers that don’t represent their real thoughts or behaviour. Whereas open questions may really represent their real thoughts or behaviour, but because everyone could potentially give a different answer, they are more difficult to analyse.

Question 23

Writing good questionnaires - bias?

Answer 23

Questions should be free of bias. This is because any bias in a question could lead the respondent to be more likely to give a particular answer (a leading question or emotive language). The greatest problem is social desirability bias as participants may give answers to make themselves look more attractive, nicer, more generous etc. rather than being truthful.

Question 24

Writing good questionnaires - clarity ?

Answer 24

Questions should be clear and unambiguous i.e. they should be written in a way that the respondent understands what is being asked (i.e. do not overuse jargon). The use of double negatives reduces clarity (e.g. Are you against banning capital punishment?), as do double barrelled questions (e.g. Do you suffer from sickness and headaches?)