Questionnaires, Psychological Tests, and Fieldwork

Questionnaires

• Definition: Survey self-report collection and analysis of experiences or opinions of participants who have been asked questions.
• Likert-type Scale: Often used in questionnaires.
  • Easy to replicate and score.
  • May be open to bias, as participants may try to represent themselves in a particular way.

Psychological Tests

• Definition: A type of assessment used to evaluate various aspects, such as emotions, cognitions, or behaviors.
  • Examples: Personality tests, intelligence assessments.

Fieldwork - Advantages

• Information on sensitive topics can be obtained.
• A large amount of quantitative data can be gathered using questionnaires.
• Participant anonymity in questionnaires can reduce dishonest or biased answers.
• Rich qualitative responses can be obtained in participants' own words.
• Fieldwork can be used when it would be impossible or unethical to investigate by controlled experiment methods.

Fieldwork - Limitations

• Observed behavior is subjective and open to interpretation and bias by the researcher.
• Prone to social desirability bias, where participants respond in a way that they think they should respond.
• Qualitative data can be difficult to summarize and time-consuming.
• Minimal control over extraneous variables, and results may not be replicable.
• Ethical concerns with the lack of informed consent in some cases.