Research Methods – Informal (Non-Experimental) & Formal

(Experimental)

Today’s sessionYou will learn Context and Key words

Outline of the topic syllabusHow psychologists carry out researchTo distinguish between the different informal methods of research.2 Positives and 2 negatives for each informal method.

Studies of social and cognitive psychology

Key wordsNaturalistic observationControlled/field observationContent analysis

How Research is Conducted!!

Informal Research- observation, interview, survey

Formal ResearchLab Experiment, Field Experiment, Natural

Experiment

Further Hypothesis testing and theory development

Lets play….. What Am I??Instructions:Allocated around the room are cards with different

types of research. Your task is to carefully listen to different statements I will read out that relate to these methods (Experiment, Interview, Observation, Questionnaire) and move to the research method card you think matches the statement.

Do you understand??How many of the 8 statements can you get correct??

From the table below identify which relate to observation, interview, questionnaire and experiment

1.I am used when people don’t know they are being studied and can be used to plan formal research

2.All the variables have to be controlled to allow for the research to be repeated with different participants.

3.This can be carried out face to face, given out randomly or posted to different people.

4. I am an informal method of research where one participant is asked questions.

5. A problem with this method is not all people return them

6. With this method the data is recorded in categories o a raw data sheet

7. I am a formal method of research but carry out research in natural environments

8. I am an informal method of research where questions can be structured or unstructured

WALT……YOU WILL CONTEXT AND KEYWORDS

•All be able to complete the starter matching research task•Most of you will understand the different informal methods in terms of their advantages/disadvantages•Some of you will be able to successfully plan your observation study ready for implementation.

Studies of social and cognitive psychology

Key wordsControlled/field observationContent/thematic analysisOperationalisationInter-observer reliability

Observation

• Unstructured/naturalistic Observation– Researchers just record what’s going on– Qualitative data collected (observer opinions)

• Controlled Observations/Structured Observation– Coding scheme is used to record behaviour– Quantitative data collected (numbers only)

Observation

• Participant Observations– when the researcher participates in the activity in

an overt way (their presence is obvious to the other participants).

• Non-Participant Observations– the researcher observes the activity without

getting involved in it. This is a covert technique (their presence is unknown to the participants

ACTIVITY- identify the correct types of research with the correct method of research

Types of research Method of researchParticipant Observation FORMAL RESEARCHLaboratory experiment

Questionnaire

Structured interview INFORMAL RESEARCHField experiment

Semi-structured interview

Natural experimentMarket research/public survey

PLENARY ACTIVITY- identify the correct types of research with the correct method of research

Types of research Method of researchParticipant Observation FORMAL RESEARCHLaboratory experiment

Questionnaire

Structured interview INFORMAL RESEARCHField experiment

Semi-structured interview

Natural experimentMarket research/public survey

12R WALT………..You will learn Context and Key words

2 Positives and 2 negatives for observationHow to design and plan your observation in groups

Q/A What is the difference between structured and unstructured observation2. Is a field experiment a formal or informal method?

Studies of social and cognitive psychology

Key wordsEthics, ecological validity,Experimenter effects, inter-observer reliability

Observation Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages Observational studies

therefore tend to be high in ecological validity as there is no intervention and if the observer remains undetected the method avoids problems with experimenter effects.

Disadvantages observational studies are

difficult to replicate. Problems of mis-

interpretation and missing recording behaviour during the observation.

Ethical issues- deception and lack of informed consent.

Categorising behaviour…

You must define the behaviours that 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 accounts for

aggression.

This involves an operationalised definition (i.e. some specific, observable behaviours). You might say that “aggression is any physical act made with the intention of harming another person – i.e. punching and kicking etc”. But you have to be careful not to miss out anything important otherwise your definition may not be valid i.e. aggression can also be verbal.

Rating behaviour…

The behaviours that you are interested in may be things that are a matter of degree, you might need to use a rating scale to classify behaviour. You could put each participants behaviour into one of several categories e.g. not aggressive, mildly aggressive or very aggressive. Or you could use a coding system where each participant is given a number e.g. between 1 and 10 to represent how aggressive they are, where a higher score indicates more aggression. However you still have to define what kinds of behaviour are included for each number on the scale e.g. 5 being pushing and 10 being kicking and punching more than once. Behaviour rated in this way provides quantitative data in the form of numbers.

Makes sense

Sampling behaviour…

You have to decide how often and how long you’re going to observe the participants. Event sampling – this is when you only record particular events that your interested in (e.g. aggression shown by the children) and ignore other behaviours.

Advantages: Researchers know what behaviour they are looking for

Disadvantages: Potentially interesting behaviours could be ignored

Time – interval sampling – if the behaviours occur over a long period of time you might choose to observe for only set time intervals e.g. the first 10 minutes of every hour. The time intervals could be chosen randomly.

Advantages: Very convenient for the researchers to carry outDisadvantages: If interesting behaviours occur outside the time

sample they won’t be recorded

But don’t forget sampling…

Oh yes…finally then with observation you must remember to

Have INTER-OBSERVER RELIABILITY.That means having more then one observer watching

people but using the same recording sheet.Do I hear you ask WHYYYYY????? Well the answer is that it will make your study valid and give it a sense of reliability.

You know what they say………2 brains are better than one……..a bit like mine!!

BRAINS

Ideas for observations!! 1. observing the car park to see how many

males/females reverse park or forward park. 2. observe the food choices of students at

break in the cafe 3. observe aggression in the playground in

the lower years. 4. observe students reaction to invading their

personal space. 5. observe gender conformity on the doors in

H block at break time.

Today’s objectives1. To complete your observation

planning 2. To have carried out content

analysis3. To complete RM booklet on

content analysis and questionnaires.

STARTER: What is it called when you choose a particular behaviour to observe? Why is it important to

have more than 1 researcher observing?

Group Work- Observation

• Time to think about carrying out an observation. In small groups start to plan what observation you would like to do and use the planning format below to help you:

• Who is in your gp? What will you be observing? How will you record your data?Event/Time Sampling. When will you record your data? What will your behavioural categories look like? Where will you stand to observe? Do you have inter-observer reliability??

Today’s objectives1. To complete your observation

planning and notes on content analysis.

2. To have carried out content analysis and covered questionnaire design.

3. To complete RM booklet on sampling in questionnaires.STARTER: How does a structured

observation differ from an unstructured? Give one strength and

one weakness of doing an observation?

CONTENT ANALYSIS

• A content analysis involves analysis of newspapers, books, interview transcriptions.

• It involves picking out THEMES from the text and put similar themes into categories eg: statements related to gender, age, race.

Task on Content AnalysisRead a selection of children’s books and pick out

key themes such as:

• 1. What the story is about• 2. How are males/females presented• 3. Whether characters are presented in a

stereotypic way eg: all girls wear pink and like dolls; all boys play rough games

• 4.Then divide your categories into Themes eg: Cinderella is a love story but has themes on jealousy and poverty

Strengths/weakness of content analysis

Strengths• Individual Differences• Great to study emotions

and motivation• Can establish what caused

the behaviour• Can study rare behaviours

in detail

Weaknesses• Not Scientific (I.e. its hard to

statistically prove anything)• Can’t really generalise• Reliability - how one person

views the report/data may be different from someone else

• Validity - the language is ambiguous and may be misinterpreted.

Questionnaires…

Advantages Practical – can collect a

large amount of information quickly and relatively cheaply

Not time consuming to deliver

Disadvantages Bad questions – leading or

unclear questions can be a problem

Biased samples – some people are more likely to respond to questionnaires, which could make a sample unrepresentative

Self report – people often want to present themselves in a good light. What they sat and what they actually think could be two completely different things making the results unreliable

Ethics – confidentiality can be a problem, especially around sensitive issues

Written, face to face or via the internet.

Type of data…

Whether you want qualitative data and/or quantative data will affect whether you ask open and/or closed questions.

a) Open questions are questions such as What kind 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 difficult answers.b) Closed questions limit the answers that could be given, e.g.

which do you like: pop, rock or neither? They give quantitative data that is relatively easy to analyse – e.g. you can say

exactly how many people liked each type of music. However, less detail is obtained about each participant.

Questionnaires need to be designed carefully. There are various things you need to consider when designing a questionnaire for a survey.

Ambiguity…

You have to avoid questions and answers which are not clearly defined, e.g. Do you listen to music frequently? What is meant here by “frequently”? – Once a day, once a week?

You must think carefully

about….

Double – barrelled questions…

It’s best not to use these, since the participant may want to answer differently to each part. For example, Do you agree that modern music is not as good as the music from the 1960’s and that there should be more guitar – based music in the charts?

You must think carefully

about….

Leading questions…

These are questions that lead the participant towards a particular answers, e.g. How old was the boy in the distance? They might have seen an older person, but by saying “boy” you’re leading them to describe the person as young. You’re also leading them to think that the person was male, but they might not have been sure. (It’s really important to avoid leading questions in eyewitness testimony).

You must think carefully

about….

Watch‘questionnaires flv’

Sampling in Questionnaires With questionnaire survey design the best forms of

sampling are: Opportunity sampling- approaching whoever is

available when you hand out the questionnaire. Strength- access to lots of people Weakness- can be biased as depends on time of

day and location. Random sampling- this will occur when you know

who/where you will be sampling. Names are put into a hat and picked at random

Strength-everyone has an equal chance to be picked

Weakness- only targeting a specific population, experimenter bias

Practical task- lets try an experiment on conformity and aggression!

• 1. Please complete the questionnaire and rate how you would react in the scenarios stated.

• 2. Photocopy your answers sheet ready to give out to 2 participants (1 male/ 1 female).

• Aim 1: To investigate how aggressive male and females were to different scenarios

• Aim 2: To investigate how conformist males and females were to pre-answered questions on aggression.

AGGRESSION + CONFORMITY QUESTIONNAIRE

• Please hand-out the questionnaire to a male and female participant.

• Get them to think about each question and make them tick an answer using a coloured pen.

• Thank them at the end and explain the study was to see how aggressive and conformist they are. Tell them they can have access to the results at the end of the study. Bring the results to class!!.

Aggression + conformity questionnaireQ/A CALM

MALEANNOYMALE

ANGRYMALE

AGG MALE

CALMFEM

ANNOYFEM

ANGRYFEM

AGGFEM

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Q5

Q6

Q7

Q8

Q9

Q10

Q11

Q12

Q13

Q14

TOTAL

MEAN

A Bar graph illustrating the number of men and women who gave calm, annoy, angry and aggressive responses to aggressive

scenario questions

CALM ANNOY

ANGRYAGGRESSIVE

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

MALEFEMALE

Q/A CALM MALE

ANNOY MALE

ANGRYMALE

AGG MALE

CALMFEM

ANNOYFEM

ANGRYFEM

AGGFEM

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Q5

Q6

Q7

Q8

Q9

Q10

Q11

Q12

Q13

Q14

TOTAL

MEAN

A Bar graph illustrating the number of men and women who gave calm, annoy, angry and aggressive

responses to aggressive scenario questions

CALM ANNOY ANGRY AGGRESSIVE 2.6

3.5

5.2

1.6

2.63

5.7

3.5

0.8

MALE FEMALE NB:Category results use

discrete bars of data not

continuous!!

Interviews…

Advantages Rich data – can get detailed

information as there are not as many constraints as with a questionnaire. Unstructured provide richer information than structured interviews

Pilot study – interviews are a useful way to get information before a study

Disadvantages Self report – can be

unreliable and affected by social desirability bias

Impractical – conducting interviews can be time consuming and requires skilled interviewers

Ethics – confidentiality can be a problem especially around sensitive issues

Structured interviews follow a set of fixed questions that are the same for all participantsUnstructured interviews may have a set of discussion topics but are less constrained about how the conversation goes

Social Desirability bias- when the participant wants to please the experimenter or tries to guess the purpose of the

research

Sampling in Interviews

With interviews the sampling methods tend to be the same as with questionnaire.

Opportunity sampling- can be used to access people who are available to do your interview

Random sampling- put the names of pre-chosen participants in a hat and draw a few people out to be interviewed.

PLENARY

• Turn to the person next to you and explain 2 things that you have learned today.

• Then swap around!!!.....GO!!.....See if you can

do this without looking at your sheets.

Starter- circle the words that relate to questionnaire and observation

Structured hawthorne open validity

deception double-barrelled closed

Unstructured categories correlation field

leading case-study laboratory ambiguous

Inter-observer attrition-rate opportunityParticipant informal

CASE STUDY METHOD!!

‘This method uses one single target person and studies aspects such as their IQ, brain imaging, personality, behaviour and physical health using a range of

different observational, experimental methods’

Sampling: only one

person being studied.

Already been

Identified from their

needs.

Weakness of Case Study

• A problem with this method is that it is often necessary to use recollection of past events (self report method) and this evidence may be unreliable’

• This method of research allows for a great amount of qualitative detail and data to be collected

‘ This method has a weakness in that the results from a single person should not be generalised to the general population’