OBSERVATIONS

• What are the 6 observational techniques?

  Naturalistic

  Controlled

  Covert

  Overt

  Participant observation

  Non-participant observation
• what is an observation?

  a way of seeing or listening to what people do without having to ask them. Often used within an experiment as a way of assessing the DV
• Strength of observation

  capture what people do - people act differently from how they day they will in self report methods. so observations are useful as they give an insight into spontaneous behaviour
• weakness of observation

  risk of observer bias - researchers interpretation of the situation may be affected by expectations. Bias can be reduced by using more than one observer
• What is a naturalistic observation?

  takes place where the target behaviour would normally occur
• What is a controlled observation?


  some control/manipulation of variables including control of CV and EVs
• what is a covert observation?

  participants are unaware they are being studied
• what is an overt observation?

  participants are aware of being studied
• what is a participant observation?

  researcher becomes part of the group they are studying
• what is non-participant observation?

  researcher remains separate from the group they are studying
• What are behavioural categories?

  the target behaviour to be observed should be broken up into a set of observable categories. similar to operationalisation
• What are the two types of sampling behaviour?

  time sampling

  event sampling
• what is event sampling?

  looking for a few specific behaviours and counting every time they occur
• strength of event sampling?

  useful for infrequent events
• weakness of event sampling?

  if a behaviour happens too often it may be missed
• what is time sampling?

  when behaviour is recorded in a fixed time frame, for example every 30 seconds
• strength of time sampling?

  useful for recording frequent behaviours
• weakness of time sampling?

  may be unrepresentative