self-report techniques

• open questionnaires 


  does not have fixed range of answers and respondents are free to answer in any way they wish
• closed questionnaires


  offers a fixed number of responses
• structured interview 


  made up of pre-determined set of questions that are asked in a fixed order
• unstructured interview 


  works like a conversation + not set questions
• semi-structured interviews 


  list of questions but also free to ask follow up questions
• questionnaire (evaluation)


  strength:

  • cost effective
  • gather large amounts of data
  • data it produces is usually straightforward to analyse

  weakness:

  • may not always be truthful
  • demand characteristics
  • respondents answer to quickly or read questions wrong
• structured interviews (evaluation)


  strength:

  • easy to replicate

  weakness:

  • not possible for interviewers to deviate from the topic or elaborate their points
• unstructured interviews (evaluation) 


  strength:

  • much more flexibility
  • can follow up points- more info

  weakness:

  • analysis of data from an unstructured interview is not straightforward
• open questions 


  questions for which there is no fixed choice of response and respondents can answer in any way they wish
• closed questions 


  questions for which there is a fixed choice of responses determined by the question setter

  yes/no answer
• Likert scales 


  respondents indicates their agreement. scale ranges from strongly agree to strongly disagree
• rating scales 


  works in a similar way but gets respondents to identify a value that represents their strength of feeling about a particular topic
• fixed choice option 


  includes a list of possible options
• designing interviews

  • interview schedule
  • standardised for each participant to reduce the researcher bias