Research methods HW

One problem of using survey methods such as interviews and questionnaires to study people is what they say do and what they actually do may be two different things. For example, in interviews, people may conceal information or lie about their real behaviour in order to please the interviewer, save face or create a better impression of themselves.



Discuss ways to overcoming this problem.

Self-completion questionnaires could be used as it is left with respondents to be picked up later or posted back to the researchers. By doing this, there is no interviewer bias, they are likely to write about what they think.however, there may be problem of low response rate.And to avoided leading phrase such as ''Don`t you agree...''. Try to make the questions mean the same to most of the people.
Most importantly, the standard advice to interviewers is to be non-directive, avoid leading respondents and to allow them to express themselves`s views. Through it would minimise interviewer bias and it is important to establish rapport, a friendly and understanding relationships to be develop in between while at the same time maintaince distance to not to influence respondents own views. It is certainly hard to achieve such stage.However, be non-directive could make respondents feel uneasy as the there is no clear guidance, and high level of unrelevent information.
By participant observation, where researchers jion observers daily life and observe what they say and do. As researchers "go with the flow" rather than forcing the pace and influence people`s behaviours and not disturb their daily.It offered a chance to researcher to discover the meaing of their behaviour and what they actucally do, a high level of validity.However, it was argued people`s behaviour changed as soon as they notice they are been observed. But according to Hargreves`s studies conduct in school, pupils behaved normally after they got familiar to him.
By Non-participant observation where researcher need not participate to observe people`s behaviour, they"hide" and observing behaviour without joining.As there is no direct contact, the observer is less likely to influence the group.But researchers have fewer opportunities for discovering the meaning of their actions which interpretivists emphasised on, and the researchers would tend to interprete the behaviour on their own view.
Structured interviews may be less chance of interviewer bias since it is more formal than other types of interviews, it is straight forward.