Psychological Investigations - Interviews & Questionnaires

• Interviews and questionaires = self-report measures

• Self report measures refers to to asking participants to give their own ideas

• Subject matters normally include feelings, attitudes & beliefs

• They allows participants to provide their own experiences rather than just observation

A number of questions are used:

• Open questions = reqire opinions and explanations from participants - qualitative data

• Closed questions = forces choice e.g yes/no - quantitative data

• Likert scale = measures strength of opinion e.g. strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree - quantitative data

• Closed questions provide a limited choice
• This provides quantitative data which is easy to analyse
• However, it fails to give a clear idea or allow in depth research

• Open questons allow the repondant to give their on data
• They give qualitative data which is much more difficult to analyse
• It allows a more in depth investigation and ensures the reponsses are ot put into catergories = determinism

Determinism is when it is suggested that people's behaviour are always determind by different factores

• The most used rating scale is a Likert Scale
• A statment is provided and the respondent identitfies how strongly they agree or disagree
• They allow more than a yes/no answer
• The structure makes the data easy to analyse
• However, some may choose the 'middle' numbers/repsponce = a less extreme responce

Order Effects = when a participant chooses specific numbers due to different reasons e.g. favourite number

• A type of self-report method ususally consisting of a highly structures, written formatat

• Require the participants to provide and record their own answers

• Semi-structured - if the participants brings up interesting conversation then the interviwer can ask more questions

• Free interview - know the topic but not set questions

• Structured - set number of questions always asked to every participant

• Form of self-report recorded by the investigator
• Interview written into a transcript

• They can be reliable - no ambiguous questions

• Easy to administer to a large sample

• Can be valid - concurrent validity

• Can be achieved quickly

• Social desirability bis

• Reponse/experimenter bias

• Leading questions

• Questions may be percieves differently by different people

• Transcribing interviews and looking at open questions can be time consuming