Self-report design

• Questionnaires and interviews must be objective and systematic. Factors that inhibit this are the use of leading questions, the clarity of the questions, any bias involved or difficult to analyse responses.
• Clarity: to achieve this, questions must be easy to understand without ambiguity. Questions with double negatives or double barrelled questions must be avoided.
• Bias: questions that lead a participant to give a particular answer. Social desirability bias means ppts may want to answer in a way that makes them seem better than they truly would be.
• Analysis: questions written so they are easy to analyse. Open question encourage more personal answers that vary uniquely between individuals. Closed questions have a fixed range of answers but do not reflect real thoughts.
• A good questionnaire should contain filler questions, a logical sequence of questions, a good sampling technique and use a pilot study.
• Filler questions in a questionnaire may distract a ppt from the main aim of the study - reduces chance of demand characterics.
• Strength of open questions: respondents can expand on answers and give unexpected answers to questions giving researchers new insights.
• Limitation of open questions: produces qualitative data which is more difficult to analyse and find patterns of behaviour.
• Strength of closed questions: produces quantitative data that is easy to analyse using descriptive statistics.
• Limitation of closed questions: limited range may force ppts to choose an answer that doesn’t truly select their behaviour (lack of validity). Also may be vulnerable to acquiescence bias (tendency to agree with items on a questionnaire).
• Interviewer bias: when the intentions of the interviewer affect how a participant responds to questions.
• Ways of improving the validity of questionnaires: removing unnecessary questions that affect the aim of the study, avoid ambiguity, pilot studies.