Lecture 5: Observational & Survey Methods
10/3/05, 10/5/05
- Observational Research
- Good for developing hypotheses when not much is known about the subject
- Participant Observation
- Problems
- Maintaining your "cover"
- Lack of Control
- Observer Bias
- Participant reactivity?
- Ethics
- lack of informed consent
- invasion of privacy
- Survey Research
- Asking people what they think or do
- Sampling
- Want to represent your population
- Convenience sample
- biased samples
- self-selection?
- Biased selection
- Probability sampling
- random sampling?
- stratified sampling?
- Cluster sample
- Methods
- Interviews
- Phone Survey
- Written survey
- Electronic Survey
- Survey Design
- Open-ended questions
- Closed-ended
- General design issues
- use appropriate time intervals - depends on the issue
- ask demographic questions last
- Define ambiguous terms
- Don’t ask two things in one question
- Avoid negative phrasing
- Avoid leading questions - introduces bias
- Put sensitive/emotional questions at the end
Research
Methods Page
Last updated: 9/30/05