Questionnaires, Interviews & Observations

All 10 Terms & Definitions

Closed questions

Questions with a fixed set of response options: Likert scales, yes/no items, multiple-choice options. Generate quantitative data suitable for statistical analysis and comparison across large samples. Advantages: easy to score, comparable across respondents, amenable to inferential statistics. Disadvantages: restrict what participants can say, may not capture nuance or unexpected responses, and responses may reflect the available options rather than participants' genuine views.

Open questions

Questions that invite participants to respond freely in their own words, generating qualitative data. Advantages: rich in detail, sensitive to individual variation, can surface unexpected themes. Disadvantages: harder to quantify, time-consuming to analyse, and difficult to compare systematically across respondents. Open questions are typically analysed through thematic analysis or content analysis.

Leading questions

Questions whose wording suggests an expected or desirable answer, biasing responses away from genuine attitudes or experiences. Demonstrated powerfully by Loftus and Palmer (1974): "How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" elicited higher speed estimates than "when they contacted each other." In questionnaire design, avoiding leading questions requires careful neutral wording and piloting with a representative sample.

Structured interview

Every participant is asked the same predetermined questions in the same order, with no deviation. Produces data directly comparable across participants and enables statistical analysis. Advantages: high reliability, standardised across interviewers, easy to analyse. Disadvantage: inflexible — cannot follow up unexpected but potentially important responses.

Semi-structured interview

A topic guide provides predetermined themes and key questions, but the interviewer is free to probe, rephrase, and follow unexpected directions within those topics. The most commonly used interview format in qualitative psychology. Balances comparability across interviews with flexibility to explore individual experience in depth. Analysed typically through thematic analysis or interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).

Unstructured interview

A conversational approach following the participant's lead with minimal predetermined structure. Maximises flexibility and participant direction — valuable for exploratory research or phenomena where the researcher does not yet know what questions to ask. Difficult to analyse systematically or compare across participants. Risk of interviewer bias shaping the conversation.

Naturalistic observation

Observing behaviour in the participant's natural setting without manipulation or intervention. Advantages: high ecological validity — the behaviour observed reflects what people actually do in natural contexts. Disadvantages: no control over extraneous variables, cannot establish causation, observer effects may alter behaviour if participants know they are being watched.

Overt vs covert observation

In overt observation, participants know they are being observed (consent obtained; risk of Hawthorne effect — altering behaviour because of observation awareness). In covert observation, participants are unaware — yielding more natural behaviour but raising ethical concerns about consent. Covert observation in public settings (where no reasonable expectation of privacy exists) is less ethically problematic than in private spaces, but still requires ethical justification.

Participant vs non-participant observation

In non-participant observation, the researcher remains external to the group being observed. In participant observation, the researcher joins the group — taking on a role within it — to observe from the inside (ethnographic approach). Provides access to tacit, informal, and context-dependent knowledge invisible to an outside observer. Risk: going native — over-identifying with the group and losing analytical objectivity.

Inter-observer reliability in observations

Two independent trained observers code the same behaviour and their ratings are compared. Quantified by percentage agreement or Cohen's kappa (κ). High inter-observer reliability (κ ≥ 0.7) indicates that the behavioural categories are clearly defined and consistently applied. Low reliability indicates ambiguous categories or insufficient observer training, both of which undermine the validity of the observational data.