Hancock et al. Evaluation

Method

self report method of interviews

lot of data can be collected but take up a lot of time so less participants are involved

Sampling bias

all participants are male so can't generalise to women

volunteer sample so won't represent prisoners who did not volunteer

large sample so lots of data for statistical analysis

Type of data

Ethnocentrism

lots of qualitative data from individual recordings

raw form too detailed and varied to compare directly

each interview transcribed and analysed after to produce quantitative data

study was ethnocentric as was all male Canadian prisoners

Reliability

study reliable as procedure capable of replication and so was linguistic analysis

also had random checks by another researcher so had high level of inter rater reliability

Ethics

Validity

confidential as participants remained unidentified

researchers got informed consent which took into account circumstances of imprisonment

participants given full brief before each interview

good ecological validity as participants interviewed about own crimes which they provide detailed accounts about

interviewing technique designed to avoid leading participants into certain responses

some participants interviewed nearly a decade after their crime

social desirability bias may have reduced validity of responses as wanted to appear remorseful

highly valid measures used to determine psychopathy (PCL-R) and linguistic analysis tools (Wmatrix and DAL) tested for validity and used in other research providing concurrent validity