Lecture 5b: Self-Report Methods

Question 1

What are the different self-report methods?

Answer 1

• survey & questionnaires
• interviews

Question 2

What is a survey?

Answer 2

a set of questions answered by participants regarding their attitudes and behaviours

Question 3

Why are surveys convenient?

Answer 3

can gather a lot of info
- larges samples possible
- many different variables measures

Question 4

What are issues in survey/questionnaire research?

Answer 4

• survey & questionnaires rely on participants’ honest and meaningful responses (social desirability bias, careless responding, misunderstanding questions)
• using existing survey/questionnaire vs. creating your own (wording, reliability and validity)

Question 5

Are surveys and questionnaires quantitative or qualitative?

Answer 5

both
- close-ended questions: quantitative
- open-ended questions: qualitative

Question 6

What are interviews?

Answer 6

a data collection approach where researchers ask participants question orally

Question 7

What is a potential risk of interviews?

Answer 7

subject to interview bias

Question 8

What is interview bias?

Answer 8

any influence the interviewer has over the participants’ response
- subtle reinforcement of certain responses
- social desirability bias
- personal characteristics
- experimenter expectancy effects

Question 9

What are the different types of interviews?

Answer 9

• face-to-face interviews
• telephone interviews
• focus groups

Question 10

What are face-to-face interviews?

Answer 10

• quantitative & qualitative
• interviewer & participant meet in person to complete the interview
• include both closed- & open-ended questions
• more likely is sample size is small

Question 11

What are telephone interviews?

Answer 11

• held by phone, Skype, Face Time, Zoom, etc.
• include both closed- & open-ended questions
• adaptable to larger samples if using multiple interviewers

Question 12

What are focus groups?

Answer 12

• interviews of 6-8 participants at a time from a particular target group
• typically open-ended questions, group interaction can also be coded
• very rich data, but take a lot of time to collect and code data

Question 13

What are advantages of surveys/questionnaires?

Answer 13

• affordable & efficient
• large sample sizes
• anonymity
• flexibility

Question 14

What are disadvantages of surveys/questionnaires?

Answer 14

• risk of collecting biased or untruthful data is higher

Question 15

What are advantages of interviews?

Answer 15

• rich information
• can confirm patient understanding
• can detect careless responses

Question 16

What are disadvantages of interviews?

Answer 16

• time & resource costly
• issue of social desirability
• interviewer bias
• challenge of consistency