In this research methods in psychology video, we will cover self-report techniques including
questionnaires and interviews and the strengths and weaknesses of each. I will
also talk about open and closed questions and what the differences are between structured,
unstructured and semi-structured interviews. I will finish by telling you how researchers design
questionnaires and interviews. INTRO
Let's define what a self-report technique is, this means a research technique in
which the participant knowingly responds to questions revealing personal information
about themselves. This could be a real-time conversation with a researcher directly,
usually face to face but It could be over the phone or via text message. this is what
we would call an interview. Another option is to have a list of pre-prepared questions that
gets sent to the participants, the participants then fill out the questions and send them back.
This of course is a questionnaire. Open and closed questions
Both questionnaires and interviews can use open or closed questions, an open question is one in
which the participants is able to answer in any way they want, in a questionnaire
there will be a space to write the answer. Open questions give what is known as qualitative data,
this means data in the form of words. A closed question is when the participant has a limited
number of options, For example just yes or no, a series of fixed choices, or points on a scale such
as a likert scale that gives a type of data known as quantitative data, data in the form of numbers.
When the researcher uses closed questions, because of the quantitative data they are able to easily
compare responses between participants and use data analysis. This is harder with open questions
but open questions give participants the freedom to respond how they want, so may lead to more
valid, meaning truthful answers. Of course, often questionnaires and interviews will often have a
combination of both open and closed questions. Designing questionnaires and interviews
When deciding on questions the researcher needs to make sure that they are clear, for example,
they might want to avoid complex scientific terminology that the participants may not
understand. In an interview, the interviewer can reword a question to make it more understandable,
but that's not possible for questionnaires. The researcher needs to be careful not to use
biased questions otherwise known as leading questions; these questions subtly suggest
how the participants should respond, often in a way that will support the researcher's ideas.
The researcher might consider piloting the questionnaire or interview. What this means
is running it with a few participants to check for problems. For example, some of the questions may
not make sense and may need to be changed. This is particularly important with questionnaires
as several thousand might be sent out. Filler questions can be used, these are
questions that wont be used in the data analysis, but in an interview can put the participant at
ease before more difficult questions are asked. in questionnaires, filler questions
can be used to hide the true aims of the study, If there are questions unrelated to what the
researcher is trying to find out, this will make it less likely the participant
will figure out what the researcher is trying to find out, then respond in a
way they feel will help the researcher out, a problem called demand characteristics.
Structured, unstructured and semi-structured interviews
So when considering the interview, its a back and forth series of questions in real time,
the questions can be open or closed or a mix and if its face to face its likely to be recorded by
the interviewer so they can listen to it again. But the researcher has to decide on a structured,
unstructured or semi structured style. So let's consider structured interviews
first. In this case, the researcher will have a full list of questions that are asked in order.
Advantages of this method are you don't need a fully trained interviewer if they are just
asking questions from a list. Also, it's easier to compare interviews because all interviewees
have the same experience. However, because the questions are fixed if the interviewee
says something interesting you can't develop on that point by asking a follow up question.
An unstructured interview is when the interviewer hasn't prepared every question that they're
going to ask, it's a free-flowing informal conversation with a general topic to discuss.
Advantages of this approach are you likely to develop rapport with the participants with a
more informal style, meaning they feel more comfortable
and may be more likely to give you personal information. Using an unstructured interview
means if the interviewee says something interesting you can develop that point.
But with this style of interview, you do need a highly trained interview to do it successfully,
and as every interview is very different it's going to be hard to compare multiple interviews.
A semi structured interview is in between an unstructured and structured interview, a mix
of prepared questions and the ability to ask new ones. You still need a highly trained interviewer
to think of the right questions to ask in the moment, but now you also have fixed questions
you have asked to every participants which you can compare the answers to as well as the ability to
ask new questions to develop unexpected insights Evaluating Self-report techniques
Self report techniques are a useful method for psychologists.
They are easy to replicate by using the same set of questions and the use of open
and closed questions give data that can be analysed with statistics
and the opportunity for participants to give detailed information about their experience.
However they do suffer from bias, especially social desirability bias, as people want to be
seen in the best light, they will often lie in their responses to look good to the researcher.
If we need to compare the interviews with questionnaires, we can say,
Questionnaires don't require a trained interviewer and can just be posted online.
This means they are very cheap to give to large numbers of people, making them particularly good
for data analysis when using closed questions. However problematic questions can't be dealt
with in the moment and participants may not take them seriously compared to an interview. Quite
often participants will just put “yes” to every question, maybe you have done that at some point,
it's such a well known effect it even has a name, aquencese bias. One way of checking for aquencese
bias is asking a similar question later in the questionnaire but phrasing it in the opposite way,
if they have ticked yes for both you can see they are not answering the questionnaire honestly.
So we can evaluate interviews by flipping the evaluations of questionnaires around,
a strength of interviews is the interviewer can re-phrase hard to understand questions,
and build rapport with participants so they take the research seriously.
But negatives include needing a highly trained interviewer to conduct the interview, resulting
in smaller numbers of participants and a higher cost. But an additional problem with interviews is
interviewer effects. We are interested in finding out the participants' honest views, but we can
get very different responses depending on the characteristics of who conducts the interview,
things like gender, ethnicity and personality of the interviewer can all influence the responses.
For example think about the different responses teenagers may give in interviews about sex,
drugs or opnions on old people if the interviewer was the same age and gender,
or much older and the opposite gender. So that was self report techniques,
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