PSYC107- EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Y 2023 - 2024
Lesson4: Survey and Interviews
PROFESSOR: SIR BENJAMIN HERNANDEZ
Alternatives to Experimentation:
Survey and Interviews
SURVEY RESEARCH
 Survey research obtains data about
opinions, attitudes, preferences, and
behaviours using questionnaires or
interviews.
 The survey approach allows researchers to
study private experience, which cannot be
directly observed
ADVANTAGES OF THE SURVEY APPROACH
 We can efficiently collect large amounts of
data.
 Anonymous surveys can increase the
accuracy of answers to sensitive questions
 Surveys can allow us to draw inferences
about the causes of behaviour and can
complement laboratory and field
experiments.
MOST IMPORTANT LIMITATION OF THE
SURVEY APPROACH
 The survey approach does not allow us to
test hypotheses about causal relationships
because we do not manipulate
Independent variables and control
extraneous variables.
 Therefore surveys are low in manipulation
of antecedents. However, they can be low or
high in imposition of units
 Survey are usually written or face to face
CONSTRUCTING SURVEYS
What are the major steps in constructing
surveys?
1. Identify specific research objectives. If you
want to measure peoples’ beliefs about
animal research, you need to figure out
which specific part of animal research you
wish to ask about.
S.
TRANSCRIBED BY: GACILAN, ALTHEA
2. Decide on the degree of imposition of units
(degree of response restriction). Do you
want low (can say or write they want) or
high (must answer yes or no) imposition of
units?
3. Decide how you will analyze the survey
data. This depends upon the imposition of
units. High imposition needs statistics, low
uses qualitative methods.
MAJOR QUESTION TYPES
 Closed questions (structured questions)
can be answered using a limited number of
alternatives and have a high imposition of
units.
For example,
“how do you feel about the job our
president is doing? Answer either very
good, good, fair, or poor.”
 Open-ended questions (open questions)
require that participants respond with more
than a yes or 1-10 rating and have a low
imposition of units.
For example,
“Why did you choose your major?”
DIFFICULTY WITH QUESTIONS
Many questions on surveys have problems in
how they were written. They can be ambiguous,
too complex or double barreled.
 Ambiguous - people don’t understand what
the question is asking. For instance, the
question, Have you ever considered the
idea of abortion?
 Too complex - use a double negative in a
sentence or a word whose meaning is
difficult to understand. “I don’t usually
dislike not being alone.”
 Double barreled - two ideas are present in
the question. Do you feel the country is
going in the right direction and the
president is doing a good job?
 How do researchers analyze data from each
question type?
 The number or percent of responses can be
reported for closed questions.
 Open-ended questions can be analyzed
using content analysis, like Yepez’s
INTERSECT, in which responses are
assigned to categories using objective rules.
MEASURING RESPONSES
Nominal Scale
- Simplest level of measurement is a nominal
scale. A nominal scale assigns items to two
or more distinct categories that can be
named using a shared feature, but does not
measure their magnitude. True, false, male,
female
For example, you can sort professors into exciting
and dull categories
Ordinal Scale
- An ordinal scale measures the magnitude of
the dependent variable using ranks, but
does not assign precise values.
For example, ask a subject to list his favorite soda
from favorite to lease favorite. You don’t really
know how much he likes his third ranked soda.
Interval Scale
 An interval scale measures the magnitude
of the DV using equal intervals between
values with no absolute zero point.
For example, Fahrenheit or Centigrade
temperatures, and Sarnoff and Zimbardo’s (1961)
0-100 scale. Zero temperature is not a true zero,
true zero is when there is a total absence of
something. How much do you like this
professor, 0 = not at all, 1 = very little, 2= a little,
3= like him, 4 = like him a lot
Ratio Scale
 A Ratio Scale measures the magnitude of
the dependent variable using equal intervals
between values and an absolute zero. This
scale allows us to state that a 2-meter board
is twice as long as a 1-meter board.
For example, distance in meters, time in seconds
WHICH TO CHOOSE?
 Ordinal gives you more information than
nominal. So knowing which candidate came
in first, second etc (ordinal) is more
informative than just knowing who won and
who lost (nominal). But get more
information knowing percentage of people
who voted for each (ratio scale).
HOW SHOULD WE SELECT MEASUREMENT
SCALES?
 The best type of scale depends on the
variable you are studying and the level of
precision you desire. Marital status would
be nominal, years married would be ratio.
 Since psychological variables like traits,
attitudes, and preferences represent a
continuous dimension. Each individual can
fall at any point along the dimension, such
as high sociability or low sociability.
Different scales can be used to measure
continuous dimensions including interval,
or ratio.
 When working with variables like sociability,
psychologists often select the highest scale
possible since it provides more information
and allows analysis using more powerful
statistics.
IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS FOR SURVEY
ITEMS
 Subjects decide to refuse to answer surveys
during the start or first few questions
 Engage subjects from the start by asking
interesting questions they will not mind
answering.
The first survey question should be:
1. Relevant to the survey’s central topic
2. Easy to answer
3. Interesting
4. Answerable by most respondents
5. Closed format (so they can’t say “I don’t
know”
 WHAT IS RESPONSE STYLE?
 Response styles are tendencies to respond
to questions or test items without regard to
their actual wording.
 People differ in their willingness to answer,
position preference, and yea-saying and
nay-saying
WILLINGNESS TO ANSWER
 Is the tendency to guess or omit items when
unsure. If you tell subjects that there are no
right answers may be more responses.
POSITION PREFERENCE
 Is selecting answer based on its position.
For example, students choosing “c” on
multiple-choice exams. Or consistently
answering “true” without reading the
question because all the other statements
were “true”
MANIFEST CONTENT
Philippines
 Is the plain meaning of the words printed
on the page.
 While we expect subjects to respond to the
manifest content of questionnaires, they
may ignore it when answering questions
about their feelings or attitudes. Subjects
may just say “yes” to everything rather than
pay attention to the question
Yea-saying and nay-saying?
 Yea-saying is agreeing with an item
regardless of its manifest content
 Nay-saying is disagreeing with an item
regardless of its manifest content.
To control for this, must mix up questions with
some needed a “no” response and some needing a
“yes” response.
Example:
1. I am happy most of the time
2. I enjoy being with other people
3. When I can, I avoid noisy place
CONTEXT EFFECTS
 Context effects are changes in question
interpretation due to their position within a
survey.
 This problem is especially likely when two
questions are related and not separated by
buffer items (unrelated questions).
Example of context effects
- You want people to rate Miley Cyrus on
this scale:
Nice -------------- Nasty
- If this item appeared right under
another item asking the person to rate
Kerry Washington as:
Not sexy -------------- Sexy
 The subject might rate Miley Cyrus
according to the “sexy” question that
appeared before it. To control for this you
put a buffer question in between, like,
- Are the Koch brothers:
Kind --------------- Cruel
COLLECTING SURVEY DATA
Social Desirability Response Set
The social desirability response set is
representing ourselves in a socially appropriate
fashion when responding to a question’s latent
content (underlying meaning). It is when a subject
responds to a question in a way to make himself
look good in the experimenter’s eyes
for example, a question may ask whether you are
able to get along with loud-mouthed obnoxious
people. The person responds “yes” to be more
likeable
Social Desirability Scale
There are scales available to show if a person has
high social desirability. If he does, you may not be
able to use his data in your analyses. For instance,
the Marlow-Crowne Social Desirability Scale.
Collecting Survey Data
 Written questionnaires
 Mail surveys
 Telephone surveys
Interviews
 Internet surveys
 Interviews
 Focus groups
Written questionnaires
 Keep instructions simple and clear
 Control for reactivity by giving privacy
 Keep anonymous
 If questions can be embarrassing, be
prepared to minimize discomfort by giving
privacy, not looking at their responses,
assuring anonymity
Mail
 Always include a cover letter that is polite
 Include a stamped envelope for return
 Response rates are between 45% to 75%
 If possible, include a small gift
 Keep track of those who do not return it;
consider a second mailing.
 When nonreturn rate is high, this
compromises your results (perhaps only
those interested in the topic returned it,
volunteer bias)
Computer and Internet
 Can use programs such as
surveymonkey.com and
surveygizmo.com
 Allows for easier collection and analyses
 Less concern with social desirability, feels
more anonymous
 Allow for larger pool of collection data
 Cannot tell if person takes survey multiple
times
Telephone
 Large scale telephone surveys use random
digit dialing, not a phone book to make
calls.
 Allows for a wider sample
 Response rate for phone surveys is 60 to
90%
 Caller ID allows more people to refuse to
answer call.
 Male telephone interviewers are more
effective than females.
 Most expensive and time consuming
method
 Female interviewers tend to be more
successful than male
 Must be able to establish a rapport
 Best results come when interviewer matches
therespondent on race, physical
appearance, socioeconomic status.
 Will interview be structured or unstructured
STRUCTURESD AND UNSTRUCTURED
INTERVIEW
 In structured interviews, questions are
asked the same way each time. It is read
from a script. This provides more usable,
quantifiable data.
 In unstructured interviews, the interviewer
can explore interesting topics as they arise.
These data may not be usable for content
analysis.
Focus Groups
 Small groups of people with similar
characteristics, all women, or all teachers.
 The interviewer is called the facilitator
 Facilitator guides the group through a
discussion of specific issues.
 Are usually open-ended questions
 SAMPLING
Sample and Population
 Sampling is deciding who will fill out your
survey.
 A population consists of all people, animals,
or objects that share at least one
characteristic. For instance, all
undergraduate students, all senior citizens.
 A sample is a subset of the population of
interest. Data collected from the sample can
be used to draw inferences about
the population.
Generalizability
 How accurately we can generalize our
findings from a given sample to a
population depends upon its
representativeness.
 Representativeness is how closely the
sample mirrors the larger population.
How closely the sample responses reflect
what we would obtain if we could sample
the entire population.
 There are 2 sampling approaches,
probability sampling and nonprobability
sampling
PROBABILITY SAMPLING
 Probability sampling- selecting subjects in
such a way that the odds of their being in
the study are known or can be calculated. If
target population is all undergraduate
students in city college, we could get a
count from city records, then we would
know the odds of any one person being in
the study.
 Researcher must use an unbiased method of
choosing the participants, such as flipping a
count, taking names out of a hat, using a
table of random numbers. This is called
random selection.
ADVANTAGE OF PROBABILITY SAMPLING
1. A probability sample is more likely to
represent the population (external
validity) than a nonprobability sample.
2. We know the exact odds of members of
the population being included in our
sample. This tells us whom the sample
represents.
MAIN PROBABILITY SAMPLING METHODS
The four main probability sampling methods are:
1. Simple Random Sampling – a portion of
the whole sample is selected in a
random way (close your eyes and pick
out 20 names from all the names if need
20 people in your study)
2. Systematic Random Sampling – list all
the people in the population in unbiased
way and take every nth one.
3. Stratified Random Sampling- randomly
sampling from people in each subgroup
in the same proportions as they exist in
the population. If school is made up of
70% female and 30 % male, then want
your sample to also be 70% female and
30% male.
4. Cluster Sampling – sample entire
clusters or naturally occurring groups
that exist in the population. Randomly
select from clusters that already exist,
such as zip codes and survey everyone
in that zip code. Only works if the
cluster is similar to the rest of the
population. Used when the population is
very large.
 NON PROBABILITY SAMPLING

 Probability sampling is best, but can’t

always be used. Most studies are actually
done using nonprobability sampling. Here
subjects are not chosen at random.

MAIN NONPROBABILITY SAMPLING

The four main nonprobability sampling methods

include:

1. Quota Sampling- Researcher has quotas

she must fill for her data, needs 50
white and black men to answer
questions. Doesn’t matter how they are
selected, as long as you fill quota. Goes
to Iona College and gets first 50 white
and black men that she sees to fill out
her surveys.

2. Convenience Sampling – using groups

that happen to be available, your class,
your choir group. Is commonly used.
Also called accidental sampling

3. Purposive Sampling – selecting a

sample who are needed for the purpose
of a study. If purpose of study is to
compare freshman to seniors on
psychology comprehension, then this is
purposive sampling.

4. Snowball Sampling- researcher locates a

few people who fit the sample criterion
and asks them to locate additional
individuals. If want to sample men who
are sports enthusiasts, then you locate a
few, an ask them to give the survey to
some of their friends who are also
sports enthusiasts..