self-report techniques

• questionnaires: a questionnaire is a set of written questions, it is designed to collect information about a topic or topics, questions permit a researcher to discover what people think and feel a contrast to observations which rely on 'guessing' what people think and feel on the basis of how they behave
• questionnaires: with a questionnaire you can ask people directly whether they give you truthful answers is another matter, questionnaires can be an objective and scientific way of conducting research but this involves more than just thinking up some questions, design is important which is discussed on the next spread
• questionnaires: questionnaires are always pre-determined i.e. structured whereas an interview can be structured or unstructured
• a structured interview: a structured interview has pre-determined questions in order words it is essentially a questionnaire that is delivered face-to-face (or over the telephone) w/ no deviation from the original questions
• a structured interview: it is conducted in real-time - the interviewer asks questions and the interviewee replies
• unstructured interview: an unstructured interview has less structure, basically this 'structure' refers to the pre-determined questions, in an unstructured interview new questions are developed during the course of the interview
• unstructured interview: the interviewer may begin w/ general aims and possibly a few pre-determined questions but subsequent questions develop on the basis of the answers that are given
• unstructured interview: this is sometimes called a clinical interview because it is a bit like the kind of interview you might have w/ a doctor, they start w/ some pre-determined questions but further questions are developed as a response to your answers
• self-report techniques S: the key strength is that all self-report techniques allow access to what people think and feel to their experiences and attitudes
• self-report techniques L: people may not supply truthful answers its not that people deliberately lie but they may simply answer in a socially desirable way (social desirability bias) e.g. if asked whether you are a leader or a follower many people would prefer not to class themselves as a follower even if they are
• self-report techniques L: people sometimes simply don't know what they think or feel, so they may make their answers up and this their answers lack validity
• self-report techniques L: the sample of people used in any study using se;f-report may lack representativeness and thus the data collected can't be generalised
• despite these limitations self-report techniques are an important way of gathering information about people's thoughts, attitudes and experiences
• questionnaire S: once designed and tested, questionnaires can be distributed to large number of people relatively cheaply and quickly this enables a researcher to collect data from a large sample of people
• questionnaire S: respondents may be more willing to give personal information in a questionnaire than in an interview where they may feel self-conscious and more cautious
• questionnaire L: questionnaires are only filled in by people who can read and write and have the time to fill them in, this means that the sample is biased
• therefore although questionnaires are a powerful way of gathering a large amount of information, issues of design, distribution and bias need to be thought through carefully
• structured interview S: the main strength of a structured interview (as well as questionnaire) is that it can be easily repeated because the questions are standardised this means answers from different people can be compared
• structured interview S: this also means that they are easier to analyse than an unstructured interview because answers are more predictable
• structured interview L: comparability may be a problem in a structured interview (but not a questionnaire) if the same interviewer behaves differently on different occasions or different interviewers behave differently (low reliability)
• structured interview L: a limitation of both structured and unstructured interviews is that the interviewer's expectations may influence the answers the interviewee gives (a form of investigator effect called interviewer bias)
• the many benefits of structures interviews therefore depend on having skilled interviewers and avoiding interviewer bias as far as possible
• unstructured interview S: more detailed information can generally be obtained from each respondent than in a structured interview, this is because the interviewer tailors further questions to the specific responses
• unstructured interview L: unstructured interviews require interviewers w/ more skill than a structured interview because the interviewer has to develop new questions on the spot, the requirement for well-trained interviewers makes unstructured interviews more expensive to produce compared w/ structured interviews
• unstructured interview L: such in-depth questions may be more likely to lack objectivity than predetermined ones because of their instantaneous nature w/ no time for the interviewer to reflect on what to say
• therefore while unstructured interviews allow researcher to gain deep insights into the respondent's feelings and thoughts there are issues of objectivity and cost to consider