In one line: A self-report method collects data by asking people about themselves. It is the only way to reach what cannot be seen: thoughts, feelings and opinions.
You can watch a friend before an exam and see her tapping her pen.
You cannot see how worried she is, what she is telling herself, or how well she slept.
For that, you have to ask her.
Two ways of asking
- A survey (questionnaire): written questions, the same for everyone, answered by many people.
- An interview: questions asked in a conversation, with one person at a time or with a small group.
What people tell a researcher about themselves is called self-reported data. In psychology, survey and questionnaire mean the same thing.
Both ways of asking are class practicals: your class runs one survey, and one interview or focus group.
Remember: A survey reaches many people. An interview goes deep.
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Key idea: A survey asks many people the same written questions. The type of question decides the type of data you get.
A survey can be filled in on paper, online or face to face. Take a survey of how stressed students in your year feel before exams.
Three types of question
Closed questions
A fixed set of answers to choose from.
"Did you sleep well last night? Yes / No"
Quick to answer and easy to count, so the data are numbers. But people cannot explain.
Open questions
People answer in their own words.
"What worries you most about exams?"
Rich detail, but slower to analyse.
Likert scale
A rating of how much you agree, or how often something happens.
"I feel calm before a test: strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree."
It turns an attitude into a number.
Closed · Open · Scale
Wording matters: A leading question pushes people towards one answer. "How stressful do you find exams?" assumes they are stressful.
Neutral wording: "How do you feel before exams?"
Trying the questions on a few people first, a pilot, shows up problems like this.
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Key idea: Interviews differ in how fixed the questions are: fully fixed, partly fixed, or hardly fixed at all.
Four kinds of interview
Structured interview
The same questions, in the same order, for everyone, read from a prepared list: an interview schedule.
Easy to compare and to run with many people. It can feel impersonal, and people cannot raise what matters to them.
Semi-structured interview
Open questions are prepared in advance, but the interviewer can change the order, skip some and add follow-up questions.
Flexible, and people answer freely. Answers are harder to compare.
Unstructured interview
Like a guided conversation. Only the topic and the time are fixed, and it starts from one or two open questions.
Closest to what the person really thinks. Hard to do with many people, and hard to analyse.
Focus group
A group interview. About six to ten people discuss a topic, led by a facilitator.
The talk feels natural and one comment sparks another. But strong voices can take over, and people may just agree with the group: conformity.
Fixed · Flexible · Free · In a group
For exam stress, a focus group of seven students would show what they have in common. A semi-structured interview with one student would show her own story in depth.
How to tell them apart: Same questions, same order: structured.
Prepared questions, free order, follow-ups: semi-structured.
A topic and a conversation: unstructured.
Key idea: A good interview is planned before, handled carefully during, and worked on afterwards.
Three stages
Before
Write an interview guide: the open questions you will ask.
Pilot it on one person.
Choose who to interview, get their informed consent, and train the interviewer.
During
Record the interview, with permission, so that the interviewer can listen instead of writing.
Stay neutral. A nod, a frown or a leading question can steer the answers: these are interviewer effects.
After
Type up the recording word for word: a transcript.
Read it for ideas that keep coming back and group them into themes.
Debrief the person, and keep their answers confidential.
Before · During · After
A focus group has a plan of its own.
Engagement questions get people talking: "What is exam season like for you?" Exploration questions go to the heart of the topic: "What do you do when the stress gets too much?" An exit question checks that nothing was missed: "Is there anything else?"
The chairs go in a circle, so that everyone can see everyone else.
Exam tip: These steps are what you write when you describe your own interview or focus group: the type, the questions, and how the answers were recorded.
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Key idea: Self-report reaches what cannot be observed. It only works if people can, and will, tell the truth.
Strengths
- The only way to reach thoughts, feelings and opinions
- Anonymous answers make honesty easier
Limits
- People may not know or remember their own behaviour
- People bend the truth to look good
Each method has a price
Surveys
Gain: cheap and quick, with a large sample.
Cost: fixed questions, with no follow-up. A leading question biases every answer.
Interviews
Gain: rich detail in people's own words, with follow-up questions.
Cost: slow, with small samples, and the interviewer can influence the answers.
Focus groups
Gain: natural talk, with several people at once.
Cost: strong voices, conformity, and less privacy.
Survey · Interview · Focus group
Three biases keep coming up.
Social desirability bias (answering to look good) and recall bias (misremembering) come from the person who answers.
Interviewer bias comes from the person who asks.
How researchers reduce them: Make the answers anonymous. Use neutral, open questions.
Pilot the questions, and train the interviewer to react in the same way to every answer.
How this is asked: Two of the four class practicals are on this page: the interview or focus group, and the survey. The most direct question asks you to describe how you used one of them, with its aim and procedure, for 4 marks.
Your class practicals
- Your class runs four small studies of its own, called class practicals.
- They are an experiment, an interview, an observation and a survey.
- Paper 2 asks about the ones your class ran.
- Keep a short note of each: aim, what you did, who took part, what you found, and the ethics.
Four moves, four short paragraphs
- The type (semi-structured interview, focus group, survey) and its aim.
- Who took part and how they were chosen.
- The questions: what kind, with one example.
- How the answers were recorded, and what was done with them.
The trap: what people said, not what you did: "Most students said they were stressed" is a finding.
The question asks for the method: the type, the questions and how you recorded the answers.
Your class practical was a focus group. Seven students from your year sat in a circle for 25 minutes and talked about how they manage stress before exams. One member of your class led the discussion from a list of five open questions, and the discussion was recorded on a phone with everyone's permission. Describe how you used an interview or focus group in your class practical and its aim and procedure.
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