PSYC 1010 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Sampling Bias

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1010
• Professor: Jennifer Steeves

Document Summary

Consists of a set of written questions that are used to determine attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. You can use telephone, paper/pen, or interview method. Disadvantages: dishonest in responses, not everybody answers (i. e. you can mail out 2000 questionnaires, but only 50 will respond back) * if not enough people return the survey, you should ask whether or not your question is actually valid * Two reasons why the subjects may not return the questionnaire: Circumstances have changed since the question was answered to maybe a week later. Before a study is undertaken, a researcher should first conduct a pilot study. Pilot study: a mini-study to make sure there are no problems in the study. This is done to iron- out any problems before going to the larger subject base. In order to generalize between the sample and population, the sample must be representative of the population. The sample has to be a mini-version of the population.