PSYC 300 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Convenience Sampling, Cluster Sampling, Snowball Sampling

• School: University of Maryland
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 300
• Professor: Charles Stagnor

Document Summary

Research methods for the behavioral sciences chapter 6. Advantage: allows development of rapport and sense of trust between researcher and participant (leads to motivation for participant to continue in research and to give more honest, open responses) Disadvantage: extremely pricey to conduct face-to-face interviews (telephone surveys more common because they"re cheaper) Unstructured interview interviewer talks freely with person about many topics and conversation flows naturally. Focus group a number of people interviewed at the same time and share ideas with the interviewer and each other. Advantages: can provide in-depth information about particular individual concerns and can produce ideas for future research. Disadvantage: very difficult to adequately train interviewers to ask questions in an unbiased way, hard to quantify responses and objectively. Structured interviews use quantitative fixed-format items. Questions prepared ahead of time (read to respondent) Generally cheaper than interviews and produce more honest responses (especially with sensitive information, like sexual activity/income, because the questionnaire gives the illusion of anonymity)