Self-report

Self-report

1. A self report is any method which involves asking a participant about their feelings, attitudes, beliefs and so on.

   • Examples of self reports are questionnaires and interviews but note that self reports are often used as a way of gaining participants responses in observational studies and experiments.

2. Questionnaires and interviews

   • Questionnaires are a type of self report method which consist of a set of questions usually in a highly structured written form.
   • Questionnaires can contain both open questions and closed questions and participants record their own answers.
   • Interviews are a type of spoken questionnaire where the interviewer records the responses. Interviews can be structured whereby there is a predetermined set of questions or unstructured whereby no questions are decided in advance.

3. Strengths

   • The main strength of self-report methods are that they are allowing participants to describe their own experiences rather than inferring this from observing participants.
     • Questionnaires and interviews are often able to study large samples of people fairly easy and quickly. They are able to examine a large number of variables and can ask people to reveal behaviour and feelings which have been experienced in real situations.

4. Weaknesses

   • Participants may not respond truthfully, either because they cannot remember or because they wish to present themselves in a socially acceptable manner.
   • Social desirability bias can be a big problem with self report measures as participants often answer in a way to portray themselves in a good light.
   • Questions are not always clear and we do not know if the respondent has really understood the question we would not be collecting valid data
   • If questionnaires are sent out via email or through tutor groups, response rate can be very low.
   • Questions can often be leading. They may be unwittingly forcing the respondent to give a particular reply.
   • Questions can often be leading. That is, they may be unwittingly forcing the respondent to give a particular reply.
     • Psychologists often carry out semi-structured interviews which consist of some pre-determined questions and followed up with further questions which allow the respondent to develop their answers.

5. Open and closed questions

   • Closed questions provide a limited choice. E.g. a participant's age or their favourite season.
     • Closed questions provide quantitative data which is easy to analyse.
       • However these questions do not allow the participant to give such in-depth insights.
   • Open questions are questions which invite the respondent to provide their own answers.
     • Although these type of questions are more difficult to analyse they can produce more in-depth qualitative data relating to what the participant actually thinks rather than being restricted by categories.
   • Fixed choice questions
     • Phrased so that the respondent has to make a fixed choice answer usually 'yes' or 'no'.
       • This type of questionnaire is easy to measure and quantify. It also forces a participant to not choose a middle option
         • However respondents may not feel that their desired response is available and of course the answers are not in-depth.

6. Rating Scales

   • One of the most common rating scales is the Likert scale. A statement is used and the participant decides how strongly they agree or disagree with the statements. For example the participant decides whether they strongly agree/ agree/ undecided/ disagree/ strongly disagree with something.
     • A strength of Likert type scales is that they can give us an idea about how strongly a participant feels about something. This therefore gives more detail than a simple yes no answer.
       • A further strength is that the data are quantitative data which are easy to analyse statistically.
     • A weakness of Likert scales is there is a tendency for people to respond towards the middle of the scale perhaps to make them look less extreme.
       • Participants may provide the answers that they feel they should and as the data is quantitative it does not provide in depth replies.

7. Reliability

   • There are a number of ways to improve the reliability of self-report techniques. E.g. ambiguous questions could be clarified or in the case of interviews the interviewers could be given training.
   • Reliabilty of self-report measures can be be assessed using the split half method. This involves splitting a test into two and having the same participant doing both halves of the test. If the two halves of the test provide similar results this would suggest that the test has internal reliability.

8. Validity

   • Questionnaires are said to often lack validity for a number of reasons. Participants may lie; give answers that are desired and so on. It is argued that qualitative data is more valid than quantitative data.
   • A way of assessing the validity of self report measures is to compare the results of the self report with another self report on the same topic. (This is called concurrent validity).
     • Leading questions could be avoided, open questions could be added to allow respondents to expand upon their replies and confidentiality could be reinforced to allow respondents to give more truthful responses.

9. Sampling

   • Opportunity sampling
     • Taking the sample from people who are available at the time the study is carried out and fit the criteria your are looking for.
     • Can produce a biased sample as it is easy for the researcher to choose people from their own social and cultural group.
       • Participants may decline to take part and therefore the participants chosen may be an even more biased sample as those participants responding may be a particular type of person.
     • Easy in terms of time and therefore money. For example the researcher may use friends, family or colleagues
   • One of the most important issues about any type of method is how representative of the population the results are.
   • The population is the group of people from whom the sample is drawn.
   • Volunteer sampling
     • Participants becoming part of a study because they volunteer when asked or in response to an advert.
     • Useful as it is quick and relatively easy to do. It can also reach a wide variety of participants.
     • Type of participants who volunteers may not be representative of the target population for a number of reasons.
   • Random Sampling
     • This involves identifying everyone in the target population and then selecting the number of participants you need in a way that gives everyone in the population an equal chance of being picked.
     • Best technique for providing an unbiased representative sample of a target population.
     • Can be very time consuming and is often impossible to carry out