Describes methods of gathering data where participants provide information about themselves without interference from the researcher.
What are structured interviews?
Where the interviewer has a set list of questions to lead the conversation, a framework which will be rigidly stuck to.
What are unstructured interviews?
Where the interviewer may have a list of topics or questions, but has extra flexibility to lead the conversation further, should participant responses lead to a more detailed discussion.
What are 2 strengths of self-report techniques?
Participants can be asked about their feelings and thoughts, which can be more useful than simply observing behaviour alone.
Scenarios can be asked about hypothetically without having to physically set them up and observe participants’ behaviour.
What are 2 weaknesses of self-report techniques?
Gathering information about thoughts or feelings is only useful if participants are willing to disclose them to the researcher.
Participants may try to give the ‘correct’ responses they think researchers are looking for (or deliberately do the opposite), or try to come across in most socially acceptable way - social desirability bias, which can lead to giving untruthful responses.
What are interviews?
Self-report techniques that involve an experimenter asking participants
questions and record their responses.
What are questionnaires?
A written self-report technique where participants are given a pre-set
number of questions to respond to. They can be administered in person, online, or to a group of participants simultaneously.
What are open questions?
Where there is no restriction on how participants make their response.
What are closed questions?
Where there is a pre-determined set of answers to choose from.
What are 2 strengths of using questionnaires?
Questionnaires are a relatively cheap and quick way to gather a large amount of data.
Since questionnaires can be completed privately (and often anonymously), responses may be more likely to be honest.
What are 2 weaknesses of using questionnaires?
Social desirability issues may arise, where participants give incorrect responses to try to put themselves in a socially acceptable light.
Distributing questionnaires via post or the internet means that any data collected relies on responses to be returned; response rates may be poor, and it may be that only a certain type of person returns questionnaires, so generalising the results to a large population can be unconvincing.
What are 2 weaknesses of using questionnaires?
Questionnaires may be flawed if some questions are leading.
If any questions are misunderstood, participants completing questionnaires privately cannot get clarification on the meaning from an experimenter, so may complete them incorrectly.