PSYB01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Mass Communication, Environmental Psychology, Confirmation Bias
Document Summary
Quantitative: numeric (or can be converted into numeric, fewer features/variables, larger group. Qualitative: data is text, video, audio, etc. Can summarize text-based data without having to turn it into quantitative data: smaller number of participants or groups, in a case study, data is almost always qualitative. Advantages: naturally occurring as opposed to behaviour in a lab setting (i. e. shape matching, pick words from a collection of letters, readily available (most of the time) Don"t have to have participants come into a lab, or set up a special situation. Makes the process less expensive and easier to do: can yield ideas for future research. Disadvantages: potential for observer bias / confirmation bias. Observer bias anything that causes them to pay more attention to one thing than another. Confirmation bias when you expect to see something in a particular study, you see more of that thing. Observation of behavior in where it occurs naturally.
