Self-Report

• What are the 3 methods of self-report?

  Questionnaire, interviews and self-reports
• What are two benefits of questionnaires?

  • Gather information from a huge sample of people for very little effort
  • Can access what people think and tell us what people do and why.
• What are the strengths and weaknesses for closed questions?

  S- Quantitative data which is easily compared, easy for respondents to answer, and easier to test for reliability.

  T- Only produce quantitative data so no detail or reasons behind answers, risk of response bias, limited number of choices which may lower the validity.
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of liker/ rating scales?

  S- Provide more detail than yes/no answers, option to agree/ disagree to an extent which is more likely to gain responses

  T-Subjective as people interpret ratings differently, people may not understand the terminology of semantic differential scales
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of open questions?

  S- Collect qualitative data such as feelings and experiences increasing validity, Respondants can express themselves freely increasing validity.

  T- Qualitative data is difficult to analyse and make comparisons, participants may get bored and therefore wont give full answers.
• What are the ethics of questionnaires?

  • Confidential
  • full debrief
  • once submitted they lose their right to withdraw
  • protection from harm with helpful websites
  • informed consent by answering and instructions
• How do you test for internal reliability in questionnaires?

  • Repeat questions- questions worded slightly different to see if the answers would be drastically different
  • Split half method- scores from two halves of a test are compared
• How do you test for external reliability in questionnaires?

  Test re-test Method- redoing the questionnaire to see if they give us the same responses
• How to test for internal validity for questionnaire's?

  • Evaluation Apprehension- participants worried/concerned about being tested-questionnaires reduce this better than intrviews as they are faceless and often confidential
  • Demand Charactristics- change their behaviour to what they think the researcher is after based on what they think the aim is
  • Social Desirability- presents them in a better of light
  • Pilot Studies- good way to check if questions work
• What are the strengths of questionnaire's?

  • Quantitative data analysed and compared easily so can form valid conclusions
  • Quick to administer and can target a large sample
  • data can be used to idetify and predict patterns and trends
  • high level of reliability as can be easily repeated and checked for consistency
• What are the weaknesses for questionnaire's?

  • Responses often limited and may not represent respondants opinion, attitude, belief and view reducing validity
  • Demand charictaristics reducing validity
  • cannot probe for deeper answers so lacking detail and validity
  • Low response rate
• What are the strengths and weaknesses for structured interviews?

  S- Easily repeated, comparisons between participants

  T- Lower validity as restricted questions so may not be a true measure, interviewer bias so p's may respond with a different answer rather than a true one
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of unstructured interviews?

  S- Can freely ask questions meaning more information may be gathered, pick up on small details giving better insight into true thoughts and feelings

  T- Analysis of data complex due to difficult to replicate, interviewer bias
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of semi-structured interviews?

  S- pre-determined questions and freedom of conversation allows better insight into thoughts an feelings, pre-determined questions so still possible to compare answers

  T- difficult to replicate due to variety of questions so low external reliability as cannot be repeated and re-tested, difficult to analyse due to additional questions as not consistent so hard to make comparisons