Self-reporting Flashcards
What is a questionnaire?
This is a pre-set list of written questions to which a participant responds.
What is an open question?
These tend to produce qualitative data that contains a wide range of different responses but may be difficult to analyse.
What is a closed question?
This offers a fixed number of responses and produces quantitative data which is easier to compare and analyse.
What is a structured interview?
These are made up of pre-determined set of questions that are asked in a fixed order.
What is an unstructured interview?
This works like a conversation, there are no set questions but there is a general aim that a certain topic will be discussed. The interviewee is encouraged to expand and elaborate their answers as prompted by the interviewer.
What is a semi-structured interview?
This type is most likely to appear in everyday life, there is a list of questions hat have been worked out in advance but the interviewers are free to ask follow-up questions based on previous answers.
What is a strength of a questionnaire?
They are cost-effective; they can gather large amounts of data quickly because they can be distributed to large numbers of people, also the data tends to be easy to analyse.
What is a limitation of a questionnaire?
The responses given may not always be truthful as they may be keen to present themselves in a more positive way than they actually are this is called social desirability bias.
What is a strength of structured interviews?
They are straightforward to replicate due to their standardised format.
What is a limitation of structured interviews?
Interviewers are not allowed to deviate from the topic or explain their questions and this will limit the richness of the data collected as well as limit unexpected information.
What is a strength of an unstructured interview?
There is much more flexibility 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.
What is a limitation of an unstructured interview?
Data is hard to analyse, as an unstructured interview is not straightforward, the researcher will have to go through irrelevant information making it very time consuming and generating conclusions may be difficult.
