Self-Report

Question 1

What is self-report?

Answer 1

It is any method which involves collecting data on people by asking them questions about their feelings, attitudes, beliefs and thoughts

Question 2

What are the two main self-report techniques?

Answer 2

Questionnaire
Interview

Question 3

What is one strength of using self-report?

Answer 3

It can potentially enable the researcher to access peoples thoughts.

Question 4

What are open questions?

Answer 4

Ask a participant to respond to a set question but leave a blank underneath the question so participants can answer in any style they like.
They assess a person’s emotions or the reason why people act in a specific way

Question 5

What type of data do open questions provide?

Answer 5

Qualitative data- leave respondents to consider their own answer

Question 6

What are closed questions?

Answer 6

Given answers/options for participants to chose from (chose the most appropriate)

Question 7

What type of data do closed questions provide?

Answer 7

Provide quantitative data

Question 8

What are the advantages of closed questions?

Answer 8

• Easier and quicker for participants to respond
• The data collected is easy to compare and analyse

Question 9

What are the disadvantages of closed questions?

Answer 9

• Restricts participants answers
• Difficult to give real reasons for behaviour/answer

Question 10

What are the advantages of an open question?

Answer 10

• Gives participants flexibility/options to gives their real reasons for behaviour
• Researchers gain real in depth reasons for participant behaviour

Question 11

What are the disadvantages of open questions?

Answer 11

• Time consuming to complete by the participants and for the researcher to analyse the responses collected
• Responses may not be relevant to what the researcher desired

Question 12

How are rating scales completed?

Answer 12

Person completes rating scale by making a mark at an appropriate point along a numerical dimension to indicate the direction/strength of their attitude

Question 13

What can rating scales relate to and give an example?

Answer 13

Attitudes (eg. 1 = really bad and 10 = really good)
Emotions/feelings (eg. 1= really sad and 10 = really happy)

Question 14

What can even-numbered rating scales cause?

Answer 14

They cause participants to have a FORCED CHOICE making them suggest a positive or negative leaning in their opinion even if they don’t have one

Question 15

What are the advantages of rating scales?

Answer 15

• It gives the researcher an idea of how strongly a participant feels about something
• It is more detailed than a simple yes or no answer

Question 16

What are the disadvantages of rating scales?

Answer 16

• There can be a tendency for participants to chose the middle of the scale so they don’t look to extreme
• Vulnerable to RESPONSE SETS (answer questions in a methodical manner unrelated to their subject)

Question 17

What are likert scale?

Answer 17

Scales which comprise a number of statements for each of which participant indicates whether they strongly agree/ agree/ are undecided/ disagree or strongly disagree

Question 18

How does a likert scale control for a standard response set?

Answer 18

Half the statements selected represent a positive attitude and the other half represent a negative attitude.

Question 19

What is one issue with likert scales?

Answer 19

The number of internal they contain
- Normally contain 5 (odd) statements which enables an ‘undecided option’ if participants have no view in the matter
- An even number of statements can force a participant to have an opinion when in reality they don’t (reduces validity)

Question 20

What are the two different types of rating scales?

Answer 20

Likert scales
Semantic differentials

Question 21

What are semantic differential scales?

Answer 21

They are rating scales which make use if polar opposite terms such as good/bad, strong/weak

Question 22

When would you use a questionnaire method?

Answer 22

If the researcher wishes to gain QUANTITATIVE data from a LARGE sample or participants fairly QUICKLY

Question 23

When would you use an interview method?

Answer 23

If the researcher wishes to gain IN-DEPTH data from representatives of a fairly NARROW target population

Question 24

What are the three different types of interviews?

Answer 24

• Structured
• Semi-structured
• Unstructured

Question 25

Which is the most commonly used type of interview?

Answer 25

Semi-structured

Question 26

What is a structured interview?

Answer 26

The interviewer asks the same questions to each participant in the same order (often used closed questions with the interviewee picking the answer closest to their opinion

Question 27

What are the strengths of a structured interview?

Answer 27

- Using the same questions means the interviews is standardised and replicable as it can be repeated in the same way for each participant - Important/busy people feel more secure knowing question areas

Question 28

What are the weaknesses of a structured interview?

Answer 28

The interviewer cannot ask any additional questions- may prevent seeking further clarification on a point/can’t follow up interesting comments

Question 29

What is a semi-structured interview?

Answer 29

The interviewer will have a set of pre-prepared questions to ask and is expected to ask all of them; other questions will be developed in the interview in response to answers given by the interviewee

Question 30

What are the strengths of a semi-structured interview?

Answer 30

Allows the interviewer to use additional questions to seek clarification on a response or explore an interesting comment made by participants during a set of questions

Question 31

What are the weaknesses of a semi-structured interview?

Answer 31

Although allows some flexibility the interview is still likely to be constrained around the pre-determined questions Any additional questions not decided beforehand may vary for each participant making it difficult to compare

Question 32

What is an unstructured interview?

Answer 32

The researcher has topics to discuss but these don’t have to be in the same order for each participant The interview is more like a conversation, with further questions being developed in response to the interviewees answers

Question 33

What are the strengths of an unstructured interview?

Answer 33

The interview allows for information to be gathered that might not be revealed from, pre-determined questions It allows the interviewer the freedom to ask on the spot questions which could be relevant

Question 34

Hat are the weaknesses of an unstructured interview?

Answer 34

Difficult to compare responses from the different participants as they may be asked very different questions from each other

Question 35

What are the advantages of a questionnaire method?

Answer 35

It is easy to collect a lot of varied data from a large group of people Easy to keep confidential

Question 36

What are the disadvantages of questionnaires?

Answer 36

It can be difficult to design a good questionnaire Response rate is often low Respondents may be untruthful

Question 37

What are the advantages of the interview method?

Answer 37

It can be good meet with people face to face, reas their body language and build a good rapport/relationship with them

Question 38

What are the disadvantages of the interview method?

Answer 38

Often interviewers only see one student at a time so it can be time consuming to collect a lot of data Lack of confidentiality may mean interviewees won’t reveal anything (social desirability bias)

Question 39

What is face validity?

Answer 39

How accurate the measure looks at first glance

Question 40

What is concurrent validity?

Answer 40

Whether the test gives the same results as other studies

Question 41

What is criterion validity?

Answer 41

Can the test predict results on another test

Question 42

What are the validity problems for questionnaires and interviews?

Answer 42

- Contains LEADING QUESTIONS - Participants give ‘socially desirable’ answers - Contains FORCED CHOICE questions - Respondents work out real aim and respond with demand characteristics - Respondents lapse into a standard response set - Censor extreme views due to accountability - Risk of RESEARCHER BIAS when interpreting data

Question 43

What is a standard response set?

Answer 43

Giving the same answer to all the questions without rant thinking about what is being asked

Question 44

What is researcher bias?

Answer 44

When the researcher interprets responses in a way which suggest/support their theory

Question 45

How do you overcome the problem of LEADING QUESTIONS (validity)?

Answer 45

Don’t use/avoid leading questions

Question 46

How do you overcome the problem of socially desirable answers (validity)?

Answer 46

Guarantee the anonymity of participants

Question 47

How do you overcome the problem of FORCED CHOICE questions (validity)?

Answer 47

Don’t ask forced choice questions and have ‘other’ or ‘please specify’ options at the bottom

Question 48

How do you overcome the problem of demand characteristics (validity)?

Answer 48

Have ‘smokescreen’ / ‘filter’ questions to disguise the aim of the study

Question 49

How do you overcome the problem of standard response set (validity)?

Answer 49

Reverse some of the statements so that ‘strongly agree’ doesn’t always express a positive attitude towards the subject

Question 50

How do you overcome the problem of censorship of extreme views (validity)?

Answer 50

Don’t ask respondents to record their name therefore it cannot be traced back to them

Question 51

How do you overcome the problem of researcher bias (validity)?

Answer 51

Get an independent researcher who is ‘blind’ to the aim of the study to analyse the data

Question 52

Evaluate the reliability of self-report methods?

Answer 52

- A large number of questions are asked about the same thing - A questionnaire is repeated with several different groups of people with similar results each time - The way the questionnaire is administered means some respondents complete it alone whilst others in the company of their friends - The questionnaire is sent out to a large number of people but the response rate is low - Unstructured interview are used meaning that different interviewees are Ames different questions - A questionnaire contains ambiguous questions - The researcher compares the response from odd-numbered questions with those from even numbered questions (split half reliability)