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Observations, Questionnaires and Interviews (Observations (Participant…
Observations, Questionnaires and Interviews
Observations
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Structured observations - where the behaviour categories that are going to be used are defined in advance.
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Non-participant observation - when the researcher observes the study without getting involved in it.
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Controlled observations often take place in a laboratory so the researcher can control the conditions.
Because the study is highly controlled, it is possible to replicate it to check that the results are reliable.
A controlled environment means that extraneous variables can be controlled, so it becomes possible for cause and effect to be established
They will have lower ecological validity than naturalistic observations.
Participants may alter their behaviour if they know they're being observed.
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Naturalistic Observation Involves Making Design Decisions
Naturalistic observations take place in a natural environment, rather than a lab. They can be structured in advance to make sure no behaviours are missed.
Recording Data
If you want qualitative data you could just make written notes. But video or audio recording means that you have a more accurate permanent record.
Categorising Behaviour
You must define the behaviours you aim to observe. For example, if you were going to observe children in a school playground to see how many behave aggressively, you'd have to decide what counts as aggression. This involves giving an operationalised definition. But you have to be careful to not miss out anything important otherwise your definition may not be valid.
Rating Behaviour
The behaviours hat you're interested in may be things that are a matter of degree, so you might need to use a rating scale to classify behaviour. You could put each participant's behaviour into one of several categories. Or you could use a coding system where each participant is given a number to represent how aggressive, which a higher score indicates more aggression. However, you still have to define what kinds of behaviour are included for each number on the scale. Behaviour rated in this way provides qualitative data.
Sampling Behaviour
You have to decide how often and for how long you're going to observe the participants.
Event sampling - this is when you only record particular events that you're interested in and ignore other behaviours.
Advantage - Researchers know exactly what behaviours they're looking for.
Disadvantage - Potentially interesting behaviours could be ignored.
Time-interval sampling - if the behaviours occur over a long time period you might choose to observe for only set time intervals. The time intervals could be chosen randomly.
Advantage - Very convenient for the researchers to carry out.
Disadvantage - If interesting behaviours occur outside the time period they won't be recorded.
Inter-Observer Reliability
Even after you've defined the behaviours you're interested in, you have to make sure that the observers are actually putting each participant in the right category or giving the right rating. This might involve comparing the data from two or more observers to make sure they're giving the same scores.
Questionnaires Need to be Designed Carefully
There are various things you need to consider when designing a questionnaire.
Type of data - whether you want qualitative data and/or quantitative data will affect whether you ask open and/or closed questions
Open questions are questions such as What kinds of music do you like? The participant can reply in any way, and in as much detail as they want. This gives detailed, qualitative information, although it may be hard to analyse, as the participants could give very different answers.
Closed questions limit the answers that can be given. An example of this is Which do you like: Pop, Rock or neither? They give quantitative data that is relatively easy to analyse**, however, less detail is obtained about each participant.
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Double-barreled questions - it's best not to use these, since a person may with to answer differently to each part.
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Complexity - whenever possible, clear English should be used, avoiding jargon. However, if specialist terms are included, they should be clearly defined.
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