observations

• what are observations?

  • involve watching people and recording their behaviour to gain some insight
  • can be used in an experiment to access DV
• what are unstructured observations:

  writing down everything you see
• what is a structured observation?

  operationalising (simplifying the behaviour that intended to be observed) e.g behavioural categories
• what are behavioural categories?

  Behavioural categories are groupings of specific behaviours based on common characteristics or functions.
• what is event sampling?

  counting the number of times a particular behaviour ‘events’ occur
• what is time sampling?

  recording behaviour with a pre-established time frame
• what is the difference between inter-rater and intra-rater reliability?

  inter-rater

  consistency between observers

  intra-rater

  consistency for the same observer
• what are the types of observation?

  • naturalistic
  • controlled
  • overt
  • covert
  • participant
  • non-participant
• what does naturalistic mean?

  conducted in an everyday environment where participants behave normally
• what does controlled mean?

  conducted in an artificial environment- may be set up e.g a two-way mirror
• what does overt mean?

  participants know they are being studied
• what does covert mean?

  participants don’t know they are being studied
• what does participant mean?

  observer becomes part of the group that they are observing
• what does non-participant mean ?

  observer takes a step back from the group
• what does the term ‘go native mean’

  to join in with the group / become apart of the group