PSYB01H3 Lecture Notes - Grand Tour, Participant Observation, Inductive Reasoning
Document Summary
Qualitative methods allow psychologists to learn about human behaviour by listening to people or observing their behaviour in a natural setting. Qualitative interviewing: open-ended, relatively unstructured questioning in which interviewer seeks in-depth information about feelings, experiences and perceptions. Participant observation: involves developing sustained relationship with people while they go about normal life. Focus groups: unstructured group interviews where group leaders encourage discussion on topics of interest. Could be paired with participant observations, open-ended, no fixed response. Could take very long (up to 15 hours spread across several sessions) like conversation. Selecting interviewees: random selection rarely used, participants must be screened. Saturation point: when new interviews seem to yield little additional information. Asking questions and recording answers: interviewers must plan main questions around outline of interview topic, tape recorders used so that conversation is not interrupted, very few speak for the public because recorder is soon ignored.
