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12 | A2 PSYCHOLOGY: THE STUDENT’S TEXTBOOKmight include Freud’s investigation of Anna O, orthe case of Phineas Gage.The advantages of a case study are that it can beextremely detailed and may provide wonderfullyrich and informative data about the person. Thedisadvantage of course is that generalisabilityis extremely low, as the case of that particularindividual may well be unusual and unrelated tothe rest of the population. Also, as case studiesgather data from the past, the information may notbe very reliable. Memory has an annoying habitof fading over time, and the responses a personmay give regarding their past may not be entirelyaccurate.The observational methodThis is extremely obvious at first glance, anddeceptively simple. It clearly means a methodwhere researchers observe the behaviour of others.You will not be surprised to hear that it is not quitethat simple. There are two main divisions of observationalmethod. Participant observation is wherethe person doing the observing is part of the groupthey are observing. For instance, if observing thebehaviour of a football team, the observer maybe part of that team. Non-participant observation iswhere the observer is not part of the group theyare observing. For instance, an observer may beinvestigating incidences of aggressive behaviour inthe playgrounds of secondary schools. They themselvesare not part of the group of students beingobserved. There are three things to watch out forin the observational method:1. Awareness of the observer: If those beingobserved are aware of the person doing the observingthen their behaviour may change and will notbe natural.2. Behavioural categories: The observer mustdecide what exactly they are looking for in theobservation. These categories can form a checklistfor use during the observation.3. Bias: If the observer is not objective the resultswill be biased. Using multiple observers andcomparing their observations after each sessioncan overcome this problem.Finally, the observational method can be carriedout in two different ways. Having chosen thebehaviour to be observed – for example, aggression– the observer may count how many incidencesof the behaviour occur during a period oftime (time sampling), or may record all incidencesof the behaviour (event sampling).When you think about observationalmethods, consider possible ethicalimplications of these methods. Is it ethicallyacceptable to observe someonewho doesn’t know they are being observed?Is it ethically acceptable to observe groups such aschildren, who may be regarded as ‘vulnerable’?Observational methods vs.observational techniquesObservation can be a method and observation canbe a technique. The observational method is a typeof research in its own right. The observationaltechnique, however, is something that you can usein any type of research. It’s best to think of theobservational technique as a tool that researchersuse and the observational method as a style ofresearch that they undertake. For instance, youmight use the observational technique to count uphow many people on the high street are carryingsales bags after an advertising campaign by a localshop. You are using the technique of observing tomeasure the impact of the campaign in a naturalexperiment.Content analysisContent analysis is a form of observationalmethod, but instead of watching people behave,the researcher analyses the content of a text orfilm. For instance, they may be investigating theuse in newspapers of terms that might be regardedas racist, and how this might have changed overthe years. They would decide on the racist termsSAMPLING OF OBSERVATIONSAdvantagesWEAKNESSES●●Natural settings, so natural behaviours are observed.●●Allows otherwise impossible or hard-to-examplebehaviours (e.g. aggression in children) to beinvestigated.●●Few demand characteristics because the observedare not put into a false situation and may not knowthey are being observed at all.●●Observer bias if researchers don’t remain objective.●●Confounding variables may interfere, making it hardto determine the cause for something happening.●●Small groups are usually observed, making theresults hard to generalise.Extract from A2 Psychology: The Student’s Textbook © Nigel Holt and Rob Lewis ISBN: 9781845901004 www.crownhouse.co.uk
DESIGNING PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS | 13to watch out for and then look through newspapersmarking down how often the terms wereused.Self-report techniquesThese include questionnaires and interviews.Here a participant records or expresses their ownopinions and feelings about something. Bothtechniques have individual strengths and weaknesses,but both share the weakness that they areself-report and so the truthfulness of the answersmay be in question as participants may respond insuch a way as to make themselves appear sociallydesirable.A questionnaire is a list of prewritten questions.These may be ‘closed’, where alternative responsesare offered; or ‘open’, where free responses areoffered; or possibly rank-order, where you arerequired to place things in some kind of order. Theadvantages of questionnaires are that they are acheap way of collecting lots of data while retainingparticipant anonymity. The disadvantages are thatthose who agree to complete the questionnairesmay be doing so because they like to help out,or the topic covered is of interest to them. Thesample may, in this way, be biased. Also, somepeople chosen to complete the questionnaire at‘random’ may decide not to do so, which meansyour random sample is no longer random, as youhave to choose someone else to take part.An interview is like a questionnaire, in that itprovides self-report data drawn directly from aparticipant. Interviews may be ‘structured’, wherethe questions are very organised and rigid; theymay be ‘semi-structured’, where the control andorganisation is less rigid and the interviewer isoffered more flexibility; or they may be ‘unstructured’,where the interview is completely free anduncontrolled. The advantages of the interview arethat it can provide very rich and insightful dataand can be very simple and fast to carry out, withgeneralisable findings if the sample is big enough.The disadvantages are those of the questionnaire.In addition to this, a person may provide quitedifferent responses to the same questions in aninterview on different occasions, thus threateningthe validity of the results.Correlation methodCorrelational analysis lets us see how two variablesare related. For instance, height and shoe size; orability at maths and ability at chess. Just as withobservation, the correlational method is a researchdesign option in its own right, but correlationanalysis can be used with data from any othermethod where appropriate. The analysis providesa statistic called the correlation coefficient, whichvaries from –1 to +1.A correlation coefficient of near to –1 indicates astrong negative correlation, which means as onevariable increases in size the other decreases. Forinstance, the more money you spend, the lessmoney you have to spend. This may not be aperfect negative correlation because we have notaccounted for the amount of money you may beearning, so occasionally spending some moneymay not, in fact, result in a reduction in theamount that remains, if some wages have beenpaid to you.A correlation coefficient of 0 means that there isno relationship at all between the two variables.For instance, there is no relationship between theamount of carrots grown in Israel and the numberof cartoons on the TV between 3 and 4p.m. on aTuesday afternoon.NEGATIVE (LESS THAN 0)A ‘downward slope’ is seen.ZERO CORRELATIONNo slope is seen.POSITIVE (MORE THAN 0) An‘upward slope’ is seen.amount of money left to spend20151050STRONG NEGATIVE CORRELATION++++ + ++ +0 3.75 7.50 11.25 15.00amount of money spentnumber of cartoons on TV20151050ZERO CORRELATION+ ++++ + + +0 3.75 7.50 11.25 15.00amount of carrots grownwetness rating20151050STRONG POSITIVE CORRELATION+ + + ++ + + +0 3.75 7.50 11.25 15.00time spent rainingThe more perfect the line, thecloser to –1 the correlation is.A strong negative correlation isone close to a perfectly straightdownward-sloping line.There seems to be no patternhere.The more perfect the line, thecloser to +1 the correlation is.A strong positive correlation isone close to a perfectly straightupward-sloping line.Extract from A2 Psychology: The Student’s Textbook © Nigel Holt and Rob Lewis ISBN: 9781845901004 www.crownhouse.co.uk
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Nigel Holt and Rob Lewis - Crown House Publishing.

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