Study guide: Week 3

📋 Course Outline

1. Survey Purposes and Design
2. Question Formats
3. Survey Question Pitfalls
4. Survey Administration
5. Sampling Strategies
6. Alternative Non-Experimental Methods

📖 1. Survey Purposes and Design

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Survey research: Collects responses to understand a research purpose, such as challenges in modern dating or people’s sense of belonging to their ethnic group.

★ Must-know

• 🔄 Survey design involves these stages:
  1. Determining the purpose
  2. Choosing question types
  3. Administering the survey
  4. Considering sampling

Further detail

📌 A pilot study should be conducted before releasing a survey to identify problems in the questionnaire.

💡 Memory Hook

Purpose → questions → administration → sampling

📖 2. Question Formats

★ Must-know

📌 Open-ended questions allow free responses that are more complete and harder to code, whereas close-ended questions offer limited choices that are easier to code but may be simplistic or forced.

• Survey formats include:
  • Categorical questions
  • Visual analogue scales
  • Likert scales

Further detail

• Open-ended questions require more effort from participants, are more suited to smaller or preliminary studies, and are less prone to coding errors than close-ended questions.

• A categorical question can ask whether a respondent is single, married, divorced, or widowed.

• A visual analogue scale asks respondents to mark a position on a line between two endpoints, such as “Not pain at all” and “In a lot of pain.”

💡 Memory Hook

Open-ended gives richer responses; close-ended is easier to code

📖 3. Survey Question Pitfalls

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Social desirability: The tendency to respond in a socially acceptable way rather than report a true opinion.

★ Must-know

📌 Each survey item should address one clearly stated issue and avoid double-barreled questions that ask about two issues at once.

📌 Questionnaires should use unambiguous wording so that response options have a clear meaning.

• Order effects occur when answers to a question are biased by questions that come before it.

📌 Acquiescence is the tendency to agree regardless of question content, and possible solutions include reverse scoring and attention checks.

📌 Question framing should avoid wording that biases results, especially when asking sensitive questions.

Further detail

• Loftus and Palmer (1974), in “Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory,” demonstrated the relevance of wording by comparing verbs such as “smashed,” “bumped,” “collided,” “contacted,” and “hit.” — Loftus, E. F. & Palmer J. C.

💡 Memory Hook

DOASF: Double-barreled, Order, Acquiescence, Social desirability, Framing

📖 4. Survey Administration

📝 Essential Points

• Surveys may be administered:
  • Face-to-face
  • By telephone
  • In written form
  • In computerised formats

📖 5. Sampling Strategies

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Sampling: The process of selecting participants so that the sample can represent the population of interest.
• Stratified random sampling: Represents two or more subsamples in predetermined proportions corresponding to their proportions in the population, such as gender or ethnicity.
• Cluster sampling: Cluster sampling selects groupings from a larger population, such as randomly selecting three of eight factories and surveying everyone in those factories.

★ Must-know

📌 Probability sampling aims to give individuals an equal and independent chance of being selected.

Further detail

• Non-probability convenience sampling selects participants for practical reasons, such as recruiting HP1100 students.

• Simple random sampling can use a random number generator to select participants.

• Multistage sampling randomly selects individuals within selected clusters, such as sampling individuals within each of three selected factories.

💡 Memory Hook

Probability sampling gives selection chances; convenience sampling prioritizes practicality

📖 6. Alternative Non-Experimental Methods

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Observational research: Is conducted in a natural environment with as little disturbance as possible and uses unobtrusive, non-reactive measurement of behavior.
• Archival research: Uses existing data for research, including employment or retrenchment trends, health-related data, crime statistics, and child-directed speech collected in the Talk Together Study (2021).
• Case study: Examines an individual or case involving a phenomenon in depth.

★ Must-know

📌 Observational research still requires clear, specific, and objective measurement of behavior.

Further detail

• Phineas Gage (1823–1860) was a case involving frontal-lobe damage after a railroad accident and subsequent changes in personality, impulsivity, planning, and social relationships.

💡 Memory Hook

Observation records behavior, archival research reuses data, and case studies examine individual cases

📊 Synthesis Tables

Non-Experimental Methods Compared