Psychology

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SELF REPORT- Questionaires

  • Open questions- Open questions allow the respondant to provide their own answers, they're more difficult to analyse as thye produce more in depth answers. they provide qualitative data.
  • Closed questions- closed questons provide a limited choice for example they have to chosoe between a yes or no answer. This data is easy to analyse but doesnt allow the participant to give in depth answers and limits them. Closed questions provide quantitative data.
  • Likert scale- A likert scale is used when a question is asked and the participant decides how strongly they disagree/agree with the statement (on a scale of 1-10). It gives the questioner an idea of how strongly the participant feels but does not allow them to give any indepth answers and the participant may respond how they feel they should answer. But it gives quantitative data.
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SELF REPORT- Interviews

Interviews are a spoken questionaire where the interviewer records the responses.There are 3 types of interviews

  • Structured
  • Un-structured
  • Semi- structured

Strengths:

 Allows participants to describe their own experiences instead of just observing them.

Easy and Quick

Weaknesses:

May use demand characteristics to answer how they feel the interviewwer wants them to answer.

They may not understand the quieston fully so the answer they givw might not be valid.

Questions can be very leading

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Reliability and Validity for Self Reports

Reliability:

How consistant something is. Questionaires and Structured interviews use the same set of questions for everybody which should increase the relaibility.

To improve reliability interviewers/questioners could be given training.

Validity: Wether a study measures or examines what it claimed to. Questionaires usually lack validity because participants can lie and give answers they believe is wanted

To improve validity, leading questions could eb avoided and open questions could be aadded and confidentiality could be inforced so the participants are less likely to lie

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Ethical Isuues with Self Reports

The researched need to have informed consent

It is important that the question dont cause psychological harm to the pps (embarrasement or personal)

Researches respect confientiallity eg by not asking them their name

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Observations- participant/ non

Non- Participant : The observer is not one of the participants they dont join in but just observe the other participants.

Strengths:

  • Not given demand characteristics so the participant does not act in a certain way to impress the observer
  • Less ethical

Weaknesses:

  • Deception

Participant: The observer is also a participant in the activity being taken place.

Strengths:

  • See things you might not have saw and get a different view of it.

Weaknesses: Deception

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Covert/ Overt

Covert- CANT KNOW! The researcher does not inform people that they are watchign them.

Strengths

  • Different perspective and no demand characteristics

Weaknesses

  • Can be unethical which causes deception

Overt- OF COURSE THEY KNOW! The research does inform people that they are being watched and observed.

Strengths

  • No risk of deception

Weaknesses

  • Dont get a full perspective might change their normal behaviour
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Naturalistic / Controlled

Naturalisitc- Whne behaviour is studied in a natural environment where everything has to be left as it normally would be.

Strengths: Higher validity and ecological validity

Weaknesses: Harder to replicate

Controlled- Where some variables are controlled by the researcher its usually controlled in a labortary.

Strengths: Can be replicated , variables can be controlled makes the results more accurate

Weaknesses- Not ecologically valid

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What you need to say in your PROCEDURE

  • What type of sample you have used and why
  • How will the participants be observed (cameras, observers) and why
  • WIll it be a covert/overt/non participant or participant observation
  • Will it be naturalistic or controlled and why
  • What they will be observed on
  • Will any ethical issues arise and how will you stop them and how can they be caused
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Qualitiative and Quantitiative Data

Qualitiative data: Written data whihc is harder to analyse but does into more depth than quantitiative data about how participants feel ect.. more valid

Quantitiative data is number data for example statistics which show facts. Not very valid because there may have been more to it than just the answer but easy to analyse

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Mean, Mode, Median, Range

Mean- Add up all the numbers and divide by the amount of numbers there are

Mode- Repeated the most

Median- The middle number when you put them all in order

Range- The top number to the bottom number

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Ethical Issues

Deception- To be mislead

Informed consesnt- To know that you are takign part in something and you are allowing someone to use your data

Protection from harm- any questions or anything in the future to do with the experiment/observation/self report you are protected from it (psychologically of physically)

Right to withdraw- The pps can leave the experiment whenever they want to

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