1. Research Methods – Informal (Non-Experimental) & Formal (Experimental)

2. Today’s session You will learn Context and Key words
Outline of the topic syllabus
How psychologists carry out research
To distinguish between the different informal methods of research.
2 Positives and 2 negatives for each informal method.
Studies of social and cognitive psychology
Key words
Naturalistic observation
Controlled/field observation
Content analysis

3. How Research is Conducted!!
Informal Research- observation, interview, survey
Formal Research
Lab Experiment, Field Experiment, Natural Experiment
Further Hypothesis testing and theory development

4. 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??

5. 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

6. WALT…… All be able to complete the starter matching research task
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 words
Controlled/field observation
Content/thematic analysis
Operationalisation
Inter-observer reliability

7. 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)

8. Observation Participant Observations Non-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

9. ACTIVITY- identify the correct types of research with the correct method of research
Participant Observation
FORMAL RESEARCH
Laboratory experiment
Questionnaire
Structured interview
INFORMAL RESEARCH
Field experiment
Semi-structured interview
Natural experiment
Market research/public survey

10. PLENARY ACTIVITY- identify the correct types of research with the correct method of research
Participant Observation
FORMAL RESEARCH
Laboratory experiment
Questionnaire
Structured interview
INFORMAL RESEARCH
Field experiment
Semi-structured interview
Natural experiment
Market research/public survey

11. 12R WALT……….. You will learn Context and Key words
2 Positives and 2 negatives for observation
How to design and plan your observation in groups
Q/A What is the difference between structured and unstructured observation
2. Is a field experiment a formal or informal method?
Studies of social and cognitive psychology
Key words
Ethics, ecological validity,
Experimenter effects, inter-observer reliability

12. Observation Advantages and Disadvantages
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.

13. 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.

14. Makes sense
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.

15. But don’t forget sampling…
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 out
Disadvantages: If interesting behaviours occur outside the time sample they won’t be recorded

16. 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

17. 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.

18. Today’s objectives To complete your observation planning
To have carried out content analysis
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?

19. 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??

20. Today’s objectives
To complete your observation planning and notes on content analysis.
To have carried out content analysis and covered questionnaire design.
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?

21. 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.

22. Task on Content Analysis
Read 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

23. Strengths/weakness of content analysis
Weaknesses
Individual Differences
Great to study emotions and motivation
Can establish what caused the behaviour
Can study rare behaviours in detail
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.

24. Written, face to face or via the internet.
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

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

26. You must think carefully about….
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?

27. 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….

28. You must think carefully about….
Watch
‘questionnaires flv’
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).

29. 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

30. 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.

31. 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!!.

32. Aggression + conformity questionnaire
Q/A
CALM MALE
ANNOY
MALE
ANGRY
AGG
CALM
FEM Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9
Q10
Q11
Q12
Q13
Q14
TOTAL
MEAN

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

34. Q/A
CALM MALE
ANNOY
MALE
ANGRY
AGG MALE
CALM
FEM
AGG Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9
Q10
Q11
Q12
Q13
Q14
TOTAL
MEAN

35. NB:Category results use discrete bars of data not continuous!!
A Bar graph illustrating the number of men and women who gave calm, annoy, angry and aggressive responses to aggressive scenario questions
NB:Category results use discrete bars of data not continuous!!

36. Interviews… Advantages Disadvantages
Structured interviews follow a set of fixed questions that are the same for all participants
Unstructured interviews may have a set of discussion topics but are less constrained about how the conversation goes
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
Social Desirability bias- when the participant wants to please the experimenter or tries to guess the purpose of the research

37. 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.

38. GO!!.....See if you can do this without looking at your sheets.
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.

39. 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 opportunity
Participant informal

40. 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.

41. 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

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