Methods in Attachment research

• What is a longitudinal study?

  When a researcher investigates the same participants at multiple timepoints to see how participants change over time
• Strengths of a longitudinal study

  1. It allows researchers to gain deeper insights into behaviour and how it changes over time.
  2. It gives researchers insights into how early experiences shape behaviour.
  3. Lead to more reliable results.
• Weakness of a longitudinal study

  across the study, the researcher loses some of their participants from the sample.
• How do researchers observe infants?

  Record their interactions and analyse frame by frame
• Which experiments do researchers usually conduct?

  Natural and Quasi experiments as it would be unethical to directly manipulate the IV
• What is an alternative study if they want to directly manipulate an IV?

  conduct an animal study
• Advantage of animal studies

  No need to rely on natural and quasi experiments and can still directly test cause and effect
• Weaknesses of animal studies

  1. May not generalise to humans
  2. May be unethical as they might cause distress to animals
• Counter argument of 'unethical' animal studies.

  The benefits of the research outweigh the negative impacts of the research.

  Even if animals are quite different to humans, they have sufficiently similar behaviours and genes for the results to still be valid.