Self-report techniques

Self-report technique

Any method where a person is asked to state or explain their own feelings, opinions behaviours or thoughts related to a given topic.

Interview

A ‘live’ encounter (face-to-face or on the phone) where one person asks a set of questions to assess an interviewee’s thoughts and/or experiences.

The questions may be pre-set (structured) or may develop as the interview goes along (unstructured)

Questionnaire

A set of written questions used to assess a person’s thoughts and/or experience

Open questions

Does not have a fixed range of answers.

Respondents are free to answer how they wish.

Produce qualitative data that may be hard to analyse - wide range of different responses

Closed questions

Fixed number of responses e.g. yes, no, rating on a scale of 1-10

Produces quantitative data. Easy to analyse but may lack depth and detail associated with open questions

Structured interviews

Pre-determined set of questions that are asked in a fixed order.

Like a questionnaire but in real time. Face-to-face or over the phone.

Unstructured interviews

Like a conversation.

No set questions.

Free-flowing interaction with a general aim that a topic will be discussed.

Interviewee encouraged to expand their answers.

Semi-structured interviews

Similar to a job interview

List of questions worked out in advance.

Interviewers are free to ask follow-up questions

S Questionnaires

Cost-effective.

Gather lots of data quickly

Can be done with no researcher present.

Straightforward to analyse the data particularly if there are closed questions.

Able to make comparisons using graphs, charts and statistical tests

W Questionnaires

May not always be truthful.

People may want to present themselves in a good way and this can influence their answers. Known as social desirability bias.

Produce response bias, where respondents favour a kind of response e.g. ticking ‘yes’ or selecting the same end of a rating scale.

Respondents do the questions too quickly and fail to properly read the questions.

S Structured interviews

Easy to replicate due to standardisation

Reduces differences between interviewers

W Structured interviews

Hard for interviewers to deviate from the topic or explain the questions.

May limit richness of the collected data as well as limit unexpected information

S Unstructured interviews

More flexibility.

Interviewer can follow up points to gain insight of the interviewee’s view.

W Unstructured interviews

May lead to interviewer bias.

Hard to analyse the data and draw conclusions

Interviewer may have to go through a lot of irrelevant information.

Interviewees may lie for social desirability.