Exam 8: Data Collection Methods

An advantage of personally administered questionnaires is that questions can be clarified.

Thematic Apperception Tests (TAT)call for the respondent to weave a story around a picture that is shown.

"Don't you think that in these days of escalating costs of living,employees should be given good pay raises?"

Face-to-face interviews are best suited at the exploratory stages of research when the researcher tries to get a handle on concepts or the situational factors.

Word association techniques,such as asking the respondent to quickly associate a word- say,work-with the first thing that comes to mind,are often used to get at the true attitudes and feelings.

Whereas panels meet for a one-time group session,focus groups meet more than once.

The main advantage of a dynamic panel is that it offers a good and sensitive measurement of the changes that take place between two points in time.

The hypotheses of a study provide a good starting point for designing a questionnaire.

When conducting interviews,it is unethical that the researcher makes written notes as the interviews are taking place,or as soon as the interview is terminated.

Instead of phrasing all questions positively,it is advisable to include some negatively worded questions as well,so the tendency in respondents to mechanically circle the points toward one end of the scale is minimized.