Observational techniques + designs

• What are is observation?

  Provide psychologists with way to see what people do without having to ask them - allows flexibility to study more complex interactions between variables
• What are the different types of observations?

  • Naturalistic
  • Controlled
  • Covert
  • Overt
  • Participant
  • Non-participant
• What are naturalistic observations

  Behaviour observed where it would normally occur, everyday environment
• What are controlled observations

  Conducted in a lab, control over environment, manipulation of variables
• What are covert and overt observations?

  Covert = observing ppts without their knowledge

  Overt = observing ppts with their knowledge
• What are participant observations?

  Observer becomes part of the group they are studying
• What are non-participant observations?

  Researcher remains outsider of the group they are studying
• Eval of all observations

  Advantages

  • give special insight into behaviour by capturing what ppts actually do
  • used in experiments and help in detecting cause-and-effect relationships

  Disadvantages

  • observer bias - observer's interpretation of situation may be affected by their expectation ( could be reduced by using more than one observer)
  • Observations cannot demonstrate casual relationships
• Eval of naturalistic obsv

  Advantages

  • High external validity - findings can be generalised to everyday life

  Disadvantages

  • Lack of control = unlikely to be able to replicate
  • Uncontrolled extraneous variables
• Eval of controlled obsv

  Adv

  • Control allows replication to be easier
  • Control of extraneous factors

  Dis

  • Findings can't be generalised to everyday life
• Eval of covert

  Adv

  • No demand characteristics - increases internal validity

  Dis

  • Invasion of privacy - ethics
• Eval of overt

  ADv

  • Ethically acceptable

  Dis

  • Knowledge that ppts are being observed may act as signif influence on their behaviour
• Eval of participant obv

  Adv

  • Researcher experiences situation giving increased insight into lives of ppl being studied

  Dis

  • Researcher may identify too strongly w/ ppts + lose objectivity
• Eval of non-participant

  Adv

  • Researcher maintains objective psychological distance from ppts

  Dis

  • Researcher loses insight to be gained in ppt obsv as they are too far removed from study
• What are observational designs

  • Structured - looking at specific behaviours + simplifies target behaviour
  • Unstructured - researcher records everything they observe, rich in detail
• What are behavioural categories?

  When a target behaviour is broken up into components that are observable/measurable (operationalisation)
• Key feature of unstructured obsv

  Continuous recording of behaviour
• Key feature of structured obsv

  Behavioural categories

  Event sampling - coutning number of times particular behaviour occurs in individual/group

  Time sampling - recording behaviour within pre-established time frame
• Eval of structure obsv technique

  ADv

  • Uses behavioural categories = makes recording data easier, systematic
  • Produces quantitative data - analysing, comparisons are more straightforward
• Eval of unstructured

  Adv

  • Rich in detail, more depth

  Dis

  • Produce qualitative data - more difficult to record/analyse
  • Risk of observer bias due to no behavioural categories
• Eval of behavioural categories

  Adv

  • Data collection = structured, objective

  Dis

  • May be hard to create categories w/o overlap
• Eval of sampling methods

  Adv

  • Event sampling = able to catch all behaviours e.g. if Target behaviour happens quite infrequently
  • Time sampling - effective in reducing number of observations that have to be made

  Dis

  • Event sampling - if event is too complex the observer may overlook important details
  • Time sampling - could miss infrequent behaviours
  • Instances where behaviour is sampled might be unrepresentative of observation as a whole