Lecture 7 Survey/Poll: method of posing questions to people on the phone, in personal interviews, on written questionnaires, online Question Format: - Open-ended questions: survey question format that allows respondents to anser any way they like (favourite food?) - Close-ended/forced-choice questions: survey question format in which respondents give their opinion by picking the best of two or more options (pepsi? coke?) OPEN-ENDED Pros: - Freedom for participants to respond how they like - Good ecological validity - Restrict participant responses Cons: - tough to quantify - Coding is hard and time consuming Pros: CLOSED - Easy to implement and do stats - Easier to compare results to similar surveys Cons: - - Restrict participant responses Designing questions can be tough Rating Scales: Likert Scale (number/alternatives) - How many numbers? - Anchors? Labels? - What do you actually give as anchors? - Why? - Word choice is important Semantic Differential Format - Osgood: three emotional dimensions: good/bad, high/low, fast/slow Non-Verbal Scale - Child? - Quantify subjective feelings onto a quantitative measure? - "Severe" "very severe" ?? - Not all close-ended/forced-choice questions are scales Leading Question: type of question in a survey/poll that is problematic because its wording encourages one response more than others; weakening its construct validity Double-Barreled Questions: type of question in a survey/opoll that is problematic because it asks two questions in one; weakening its construct validity (do you believe ... )
Negatively Worded Questions: question in survey/poll containing negatively phrased statements, making its wording complicated/confusing; weakening its construct validity Loaded Question ..? Demand Characteristic: any feature of an experiment that might inform participants of the purpose of the study ("participants are perceptive to demand characteristics- "cues which convey and experimental hypothesis- motivated to use these cues to help the experimenter confirm their hypothesis") - Threat to internal validity - Participants might try to help/hurt you - Be the "good participant" - Mess up the results Social Desirability - Inclination of survey participants to respond in a way that presents them in a positive light to others (exaggerate "good/bad" behaviour Hawthorne Effect: tendency of participants to act differently from normal in a research study; because they know they are being observed Evaluation Apprehension: tendency to feel inadequate or to experience unease when one is being observed Minimizing Participant Expectations' Impact on Research Findings - Single-blind study: blind participant to the hypothesis of study - Distractor/filler items: questions/items in a study that have little to do with actual research question Experimenter bias/expectancy effects: intentional/unintentional influence that the experimenter exerts on participants to confirm the hypothesis To Avoid Experimenter Expectancy Effects - Double-blind study: keep everyone blind to hypothesis of study - Computer study: computer run the study, minimizing interactions between the researcher and the participant Interaction Effects: various social components of the r/p interaction affect results 1) Biosocial effect 2) Psychological effect Lazy Participant Response sets (nondifferentiation): shortcut respondents may use to answer items in a long survey, rather than responding to the content of each item
- Acquiescence (yea-saying/nay-saying):