self report techniques

• Questionnaire


  set of written questions on a topic to assess participant's thoughts, feelings and opinions - always pre-determined and structured unlike interviews which can be structured or unstructured - can include open (written response) or closed questions (limited number of options to choose from) or both
• closed questions


  offers a fixed number of responses - might involve questions with simple yes or no responses - might ask participants to rate themselves on a fixed scale - problem, can result in response set bias where participants always respond in similar way (always ticking yes or rating themselves 5) - collects quantitative data - advantage, easy to collect - disadvantage, limited amount of answers and not much detail
• open questions


  doesn't have a fixed range of answers and respondents are free to answer in any way they wish - open questions tend to produce more detailed responses - researcher asks question and provides space underneath to write answer - collects qualitative data - advantage, better detail - disadvantage, harder to analyse
• questionnaire evaluation


  advantages - can use as many participants as they want (large sample) increases population validity - no investigator effects - more quantitative data

  disadvantages - questions could be ambiguous (difficult to answer) - lacks detail
• interviews


  asking participants questions face to face on a topic to assess the participants' thoughts, feelings and opinions - structured (questionnaire being read out by interviewer) or unstructured interview (like a free flowing conversation without any reliance on pre-determined questions - semi structured interviews mixture of two approaches
• structured interviews 


  pre-determined set of questions asked in fixed order - design of structured interviews similar to design of questionnaires - allows interview to follow more standardised format for each participant - only real difference to questionnaire is they're conducted face to face in real time

  advantages - easy to replicate - less investigator effects

  disadvantages - can't establish sense of trust - not as much flexibility to explore a topic
• unstructured interviews


  free-flowing conversation with no set questions - general aim that a topic will be discussed and interaction tends to be free flowing with new questions developed during course of interview - interviewee encouraged to expand and elaborate answers as prompted by interviewer

  advantages - can establish sense of trust - more flexibility to explore a topic

  disadvantages - difficult to replicate - investigator effects
• semi-structured interview


  compromise between two interview types - may be list of predetermined questions but also freedom for the interviewer to ask follow up questions when they feel is appropriate - job interviews may follow this format - all interviews may benefit from being recorded or videotaped to make it easier to transcribe everything said and all behaviour
• interviews evaluation


  advantages - interviewer can explain questions - can observe behaviour - more detail

  disadvantages - investigator effects - can't use lots of participants (low population validity)