Self-Report Techniques

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Self-Report Techniques

Self report techniques are a group of non-experimental research methods. They involve asking questions via surveys or interviews, so that participants can report on their own thoughts or behaviour.

Questionnaires

A questionnaire is simply a list of questions. They are widely used in psychology research. A study that uses a questionnaire is often called a survey.
Surveys have the benefit of being able to access a lot of participants, as they can be distributed via post or email.

Interviews

Interviews are similar in principle to questionnaire surveys, but they involve a trained researcher asking participants questions face-to-face.
There are two main types: structured and unstructured.

Structured interviews

A structured interview follows a similar format to a questionnaire - the researcher asks a simple list of questions and notes down the responses.

Unstructured interviews

An unstructured interview is more like an everyday conversation.
The interviewer may begin with certain planned questions, but is able to follow these up or ask other questions spontaneously, depending on the participant’s responses.

Surveys

A survey is a list of questions answered by participants. Surveys allow researchers to get a very large sample size, but there is often little depth to the data collected and people may lie.

Surveys

Often, psychologists develop surveys to gather data.
Surveys are lists of questions for research participants to answer. They can be delivered as paper-and-pencil questionnaires, administered electronically, or conducted verbally.
Generally, the survey itself can be completed in a short time.
It's easy to administer surveys, which makes it easy to collect data from a large number of people.
- Surveys allow researchers to gather data from larger samples than they may be able to through other research methods.

Advantages of surveys

By using surveys, we can collect information from a large sample of people.
A larger sample is better able to reflect the actual diversity of the population. This means better generalisability.
Therefore, if our sample is sufficiently large and diverse, we can assume that the data we collect from the survey can be generalised to the larger population with more certainty than the information collected through a case study.

Disadvantages of surveys

But as a greater number of people are involved, we are not able to collect the same depth of information on each person as we could in a case study.
Another potential weakness of surveys is that people don't always give accurate responses.
- They may lie, misremember, or answer questions in a way that they think makes them look good.
- For example, people may report drinking less alcohol than is actually the case.

Strengths and Limitations of Interviews

Here are the strengths and limitations of interviews.

Strengths of interviews

Interviews tend to generate qualitative data, which is in depth and detailed.
Semi-structured interviews can lead to serendipitous findings.
Interviews have validity as a rapport develops between researcher and interviewee.
Interviewer can explain the questions.

Limitations of interviews

Researcher bias – this is a real issue and can be as a result of what the researcher says or simply their body language and general manner.
Demand characteristics & social desirability.
Difficult to analyse.