Research Methods Landmark 3

Question 1

What is the likert scale?

Answer 1

likert scale - rating system, used in questionnaires, allows us to rank participants

Question 2

What is acquiescence bias?

Answer 2

acquiescence bias - also known as agreement bias, the tendency for survey respondents to agree with research statements, without the action of being a true reflection of their own position or question itself

Question 3

What are the strengths and limitations of self report techniques?

Answer 3

Strengths:
- The key strength is that all self-report techniques allow access to what people think and feel, to their experiences and attitudes.

limitations:
- People may not supply truthful answers. It’s not that people deliberately lie, but they may simply answer in a socially desirable way (called a social desirability bias). For example, if asked whether you are a leader or a follower, many people would prefer not to class themselves as a follower even if they are.
- People sometimes simply don’t know what they think or feel, so they may make their answer up, and thus their answers lack validity.
- The sample of people used in any study using self-report may lack
representativeness and thus the data collected cannot be generalised.
- Despite these limitations, self-report techniques are an important way of gathering information about people’s thoughts, attitudes and experiences.

Question 4

What is a questionnaire?

Answer 4

Questionnaire - a set of written questions. It is designed to collect information about a topic or topics. They permit a researcher to discover what people think and feel. They can be objective and scientific. They are always pre-determined

Question 5

What are the strengths and limitations of questionnaire?

Answer 5

Strengths:
- Once designed and tested, questionnaires can be distributed to large numbers of people relatively cheaply and quickly. This enables a researcher to collect data from a large sample of people.
- Respondents may be more willing to give personal information in a questionnaire than in an interview, where they may feel self-conscious and more cautious.

Limitations:
- Questionnaires are only filled in by people who can read and write and have the time to fill them in. This means that the sample is biased.
- Therefore, although questionnaires are a powerful way of gathering a large amount of information, issues of design, distribution and bias need to be thought through carefully.

Question 6

What is a structured interview?

Answer 6

Structured Interview - predetermined questions, questionnaire delivered face to face or over the telephone - no deviation from the original questions - conducted in real time

Question 7

What are the strengths and limitations of a structured interview?

Answer 7

Strengths:
- The main strength of a structured interview (as well as a questionnaire) is that it can be easily repeated because the questions are standardised. This means answers from different people can be compared.
- This also means that they are easier to analyse than an unstructured interview because answers are more predictable.

Limitations:
- Comparability may be a problem in a structured interview (but not a
questionnaire) if the same interviewer behaves differently on different occasions or different interviewers behave differently (low reliability).
- A limitation of both structured and unstructured interviews is that the interviewer’s expectations may influence the answers the interviewee gives (a form of investigator effect called interviewer bias).
- The many benefits of structured interviews therefore depend on having skilled interviewers and avoiding interviewer bias as far as possible.

Question 8

What is an unstructured interview?

Answer 8

Unstructured Interview - new questions are constantly developed during the course of the interview - interviewer may begin with some general aims and possibly a few pre-determined questions but subsequent questions develop on the basis of the answers that are given - sometimes called a clinical interview

Question 9

What are the strengths and limitations of unstructured interviews?

Answer 9

Strengths:
- More detailed information can generally be obtained from each respondent than in a structured interview. This is because the interviewer tailors further questions to the specific responses.

Limitations:
- Unstructured interviews require interviewers with more skill than a structured interview because the interviewer has to develop new questions on the spot. The requirement for well-trained interviewers makes unstructured interviews more expensive to produce compared with structured interviews.
- Such in-depth questions may be more likely to lack objectivity than predetermined ones because of their instantaneous nature, with no time for the interviewer to reflect on what to say.
- Therefore, while unstructured interviews allow researchers to gain deeper insights into the respondent’s feelings and thoughts, there are issues of objectivity and cost to consider.

Question 10

What is the best way to record an interview?

Answer 10

An interviewer may take notes throughout the interview to document answers. However, this is likely to interfere with their listening skills, and potentially make the participant feel a sense of evaluation because the interviewer may not write everything down and then the respondent feels that what they said was not valuable. This could lead to social desirability bias or demand characteristics. Alternatively, interviews may be audio recorded or video recorded.

Question 11

How can the interviewer effect the results of the interview?

Answer 11

• One of the strengths of conducting an interview compared to a questionnaire is that the presence of an interviewer who is interested in the respondent’s answers may increase the amount of information provided. This means that the interviewers need to be aware of behaviours that demonstrate their ‘interest.’ This includes:
  
  • Non-verbal communication – various behaviours such as sitting with arms crossed and frowning communicate disapproval and disinterest, whereas
    head nodding and leaning forward may encourage the respondent to speak.
  • Listening skills – an interviewer needs to know when and how to speak e.g. they should not interrupt too often and when they do speak they should have a range of encouraging comments to show that they are listening.

Question 12

In what type of interview is questioning skills required?

Answer 12

In an unstructured interview, there are special skills to be learned about what kind of follow up questions should be asked. It is important to be aware of the questions already asked avoid repeating them. It is also useful to avoid probing too much, or to ask ‘why?’ too often. It is better to ask more focused questions – both for the interviewee and, also for the analysis of the answers later.

Question 13

What are the three things needed when writing good questionnaire questions?

Answer 13

Analysis, lack of bias, clarity

Question 14

Why is it important that questions in a questionnaire are easy to analyse?

Answer 14

Analysis – questions need to be written so that they are easy to analyse. Closed questions are easiest to analyse, but they may force people to select answers don’t represent their real thoughts or behaviour. Whereas open questions may really represent their real thoughts or behaviour, but because everyone could potentially give a different answer, they are more difficult to analyse.

Question 15

Why is it important that there is a lack of bias when writing good questionnaire questions?

Answer 15

Bias – questions should be free of bias. This is because any bias in a question could lead the respondent to be more likely to give a particular answer (a leading question or emotive language). The greatest problem is social desirability bias as participants may give answers to make themselves look more attractive, nicer, more generous etc. rather than being truthful.

Question 16

Why is it important that questions should be clear and unambiguous?

Answer 16

Clarity - questions should be clear and unambiguous i.e. they should be written in a way that the respondent understands what is being asked (i.e. do
not overuse jargon). The use of double negatives reduces clarity (e.g. Are you against banning capital punishment?), as do double barrelled questions (e.g.
Do you suffer from sickness and headaches?)

Question 17

What makes a good questionnaire?

Answer 17

• Writing good questionnaires
  
  • They should contain good questions (above)
  • They should contain filler questions – irrelevant questions to distract participants from the aim of the study. This may reduce demand characteristics.
  • Think carefully about the sequence of questions – start with the easy ones and save the ones that may make people anxious or defensive for when the participant has relaxed.
  • Think carefully about your sampling technique. Questionnaires often use stratified sampling.
  • Test your questionnaire in a pilot study before the main study. This means that the questions can later be refined in response to any difficulties encountered.

Question 18

Why are the design decisions of a questionnaire important?

Answer 18

These design decisions are to make questionnaires objective and systematic ways of doing psychological research (i.e. it makes them a scientific tool) so that the data collected truly reflects what a person actually thinks and/or feels.

Question 19

What are correlations?

Answer 19

• Correlations systematically show how strong a relationship is between two continuous variables (e.g. stress and illness)
  
  • In correlations, the variables are called co-variables
  • Correlations are not technically a research method; it is a method to analyse data

Question 20

What are the coefficients in correlations always between?

Answer 20

• Coefficients are always between -1 and +1. The bigger the number, the stronger the relationship between the co variables.
  
  • • = positive correlation
  • • = negative correlation

Question 21

What is the rule of thumb for the strength of correlation and coefficient?

Answer 21

• Rule of thumb:
  
  • .8 and above = strong correlation
  • around .5-.79 = moderate correlation
  • around .3= weak correlation
  • near 0 = zero correlation

Question 22

How are correlations used in the assessment of reliability and validity?

Answer 22

Correlations are used in the assessment of reliability and validity. The coefficient must be above +.8 for a study to be considered reliable and/or valid. The statistical test would be Spearman’s or Pearson’s

Question 23

What’s the difference between a correlation and an experiment?

Answer 23

In a corelation the experimenter does not control the variables

Question 24

What is the difference between a directional hypothesis and non directional correlational hypothesis?

Answer 24

• Directional states whether there is a positive or negative correlation
• Non directional just states that there is a correlation (not whether it is strong or weak)

Question 25

What are the strengths and weaknesses of correlational research?

Answer 25

Strengths:

• Investigating data trends
• If correlations are significant, further research is justified. If insignificant, likely rules out a causal relationship
• Procedures in correlational research are often replicable, which means findings can be corroborated in the future

Weaknesses:

• The co-variables are only measured and not altered, meaning we can’t conclude one co-variable causes the other
• Can’t assume causal relationships
• Supposed causal link can be due to intervening variables
• Correlations can lack internal and external validity

Question 26

What are the four pieces of information needed when interpreting scattergrams?

Answer 26

• when interpreting a scattergram, four pieces of information are needed
  1. Type of correlation - +, -, or 0
  2. strength of correlation - strong, moderate, weak, zero, moderately strong etc
  3. what the correlation means in plain English - e.g. as height increases, weight increases
  4. any anomalies or a change in direction

Question 27

What is an intervening variable?

Answer 27

Intervening variable - a variable that comes between two other variables, which is used to explain the association between those two other variables. For example, if a positive correlation is found between ice cream sales and violence this may be explained by an intervening variable - heat - which causes the increase in ice cream sales and increase in violence

Question 28

What is curvilinear correlation vs linear correlation?

Answer 28

• Curvilinear correlation - a non-linear relationship between two other variables
• Linear correlation - a systematic relationship between co-variables taht is defined by a straight line

Question 29

What is a correlation coefficient?

Answer 29

Correlation coefficient - a number between -1 and +1 that tells us how closely the co-variables in a correlational analysis are associated

Question 30

What are unstructured observations?

Answer 30

• Unstructured observations
  
  • The researcher records all relevant behaviour but has no system
  • Sometimes used in situations where research has not been previously conducted, such as a piolet study
  • May be too much to record and the behaviours recorded may not be the ones taht are most important or relevant, only the ones most eye-catching

Question 31

What are structured observations?

Answer 31

• Structured observations
  
  • Observational techniques, like all research techniques, aim to be objective and rigorous
  • The two main ways to use structured observations:
    
    • Using behaviour categories
    • Sampling procedures

Question 32

What are behavioural categories and what should they include?

Answer 32

• Behavioural categories
  
  • In order to conduct systematic observations, a researcher needs to break up the stream of behaviour into different behavioural categories. What is needed is operationalism
  • Behavioural categories should:
    
    • Be objective: the observer should not have to make inferences about the behaviour, but should just record explicit actions
    • Cover all possible component behaviours and avoid a ‘waste basket’ category
    • Be mutually exclusive, meaning that you should not have to mark two categories at one time

Question 33

What are sampling procedures?

Answer 33

• Sampling procedures
  
  • In many situations, continuous observation is not possible because there would be too much data to record; therefore there must be a systematic method of sampling observations:
    
    • Event sampling - counting the number of times a certain behaviour (event) occurs in a target individual or individuals, for example counting how many times a person smiles in a 10 minute period
    • Time sampling - recording behaviours in a given time frame. For example, noting what a target individual is doing every 30 seconds or some other time interval, At that time the observer may tick one or more categories from a checklist

Question 34

Interview

Answer 34

a research method or technique that involves a face to face, ‘real time’ interaction with another individual and results in the collection of data

Question 35

questionnaire

Answer 35

data collected through the use of written questions

Question 36

Interviewer bias

Answer 36

The effect of an interviwers expectations, communicated unconsciously, on a respondents behaviour

Question 37

social desirability bias

Answer 37

a distortion in the way people answer questions - they tend to answer questions in such a way that presents themselves in a better light

Question 38

Structured interview

Answer 38

any interview in which the questions are decided in advance

Question 39

Unstructured interview

Answer 39

the interview starts out with some general aims and possibly some questions, and lets the interviewee’s answers guide subsequent questions

Question 40

closed questions

Answer 40

questions that have a predetermined range of answers from which respondents select one. Tend to produce qualitative data - but, for example, Yes/No answers are qualitative. They then can be counted to produce qualitative data

Question 41

Open questions

Answer 41

questions that invite respondents to provide their own answers rather than select one of those provided. Tend to produce qualitative data

Question 42

qualitative data

Answer 42

non numerical data

Question 43

qualitative data

Answer 43

data in numbers

Question 44

co variable

Answer 44

the two measured variables in a correlational analysis. the variables must be continuous

Question 45

continuous variable

Answer 45

a variable that can take on any value within a certain range. Liking football (on a scale of 1-10) is continuous whereas the football team a person supports isn’t. The latter could be arranged in any order

Question 46

correlation

Answer 46

determining the extent of an association between two variables; co-variables may not be linked at all (zero correlation), they may both increase together (positive correlation), or as one co-variable increases , the other decreases (negative correlation)

Question 47

correlation coefficient

Answer 47

a number between -1 and +1 that tells us how closely the co-variables in a correlational analysis are associated

Question 48

curvilinear correlation

Answer 48

a non linear relationship between co-variables

Question 49

Intervening variable

Answer 49

a variable that comes between two other variables, which is used to explain the association between those two variables. For example, if a positive correlation is found between ice cream sales and violence this may be explained by an intervening variable - heat - which causes the increase in ice cream sales and the increase in violence

Question 50

linear correlation

Answer 50

a systematic relationship between co-variables that is defined by a straight line

Question 51

scattergram

Answer 51

a graphical representation of the association (i.e. the correlation) between two sets of scores

Question 52

significance

Answer 52

a statistical term indicating that the research findings are sufficiently strong for us to accept the research hypothesis under test