SCMA*2040 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Social Desirability Bias, Field Experiment
Document Summary
Behaviour must be inferred from what the respondent reports. Such inferences can be problematic because what people say and do aren"t always the same thing. Structured observation offers a possible solution by observing the behaviour directly. Structured observation sometimes referred to as systematic observation. Using this method, the researcher formulates explicit rules outlining what behaviours are to be observed and how the observations are to be recorded. Each person in the study is observed for a predetermined period of time following rules set out in a document (observation schedule) Recording incidents means waiting for something to happen and then recording what follows from it. Behaviours can be observed and recorded in either short or long periods of time. Time sampling, essentially when researchers generally sample the times at which they make their observations (time is chosen in advance) Compared with interviews and questionnaires, structured observation provides: Greater precision regarding their timing, duration, and frequency.
