Buss Evaluation

An advantage of Buss using a questionnaire to collect his data is that a large amount of data could be collected relatively easily and in a relatively short amount/small amount of time about their mate preferences, for example he gave participants a list of things they look for in a potential mate and rate them 3 to 0, they rated things like financial prospects, chastity, trustworthiness, good lucks, ambition and industriousness.

A disadvantage of using a questionnaire however the honesty of participants is cannot be guaranteed, people may give socially desirable answers, and for example participants could say they value good looks to fit in to the crowd and therefore rated it higher this would reduce the overall validity of Buss’ findings.

Data -

Buss Gathered mostly quantitative data which he could analyse and compare results easily, for example 34/37 female’s desired and valued ambition and industriousness more than males. But in 37/37 samples males placed a greater importance on good lucks than females.

However a disadvantage of collecting quantitative data is it's not as in-depth as qualitative data, it doesn't show the answers behind the data collected.

Sample -

Buss sample consisted of 10,047 participants from 33 countries all over the world, an advantage of using this sample was it wasn't gender bias and is also generalizable to a wider population, however 26/27 samples that Buss gathered were from western nations a disadvantage of this could be it's ethnocentric, findings cannot be generalised to alternative non-western nations.