Observations Flashcards
(16 cards)
What is an observation?
Involves the researcher watching and recording the behaviour of the ppts. Observations by themselves are non-experimental, but observational techniques can be used as part of an experiment.
What are the 6 types of observation techniques?
Overt or covert, naturalistic or controlled, participant or non-participant.
What is covert?
An undercover observation that consists of observing people without their knowledge.
What is overt?
An ‘open’ observation where the ppts are aware that they are being observed.
What is Non-participant?
The person who is conducting the observation does not participate in the activity being observed.
What is participant?
The person who is conducting the observation also takes part in the activity being observed.
What is naturalistic?
An observation carried out in an unaltered setting in which the observer does not interfere in any way and just observes the behaviour in question as it happens normally.
What is controlled?
An observation conducted under strict conditions, where extraneous variables can be controlled to avoid interference with the behaviour being observed.
What are behavioural categories?
The target behaviour that is being observed should be broken up into a set of observable categories.
What are some issues with behaviour categories?
-Difficult to make clear and unambiguous.(Categories should be self-evident and not overlap, however, this is not always possible to achieve. They should not be open to interpretation. For example, when observing a babies facial expression, the behaviour category. ‘ surprise’, is open to interpretation.
-Dustbin categories( All possible behaviour should be covered by the behaviour categories. There should be no ‘dustbin categories’ where any other un operationalised behaviour goes.
What is time sampling?
Observation are made at regular intervals e.g. once every 15 seconds.
What is a drawback of Time sampling?
Unrepresentative.( If behaviour occurs outside of the time frame it may be missed. Therefore it will appear in the result the behavior occurs less than actually does decreasing the representativeness.
What is a strength of Time sampling?
Captures complex behaviour(Behaviour that occur overtime would be captured better than using event sampling.
What is event sampling?
A target behaviour is recorded every time it occurs.
What is a strength of event sampling?
It is representative( As we observe for the whole time period, no behaviours are missed. Therefore, it is more representative.
