Lecture 2 - Developmental Methods And Designs

Front 1

Reliability

Back 1

A measure is reliable if it yields consistent information across time and observers.
repeatability: measure similar if repeated at short interval or across observers
Short-term temporal stability: test-retest reliability (r)
Interrater reliability – agreement among same type of informant (2 observers)
Questionnaires: alpha α, degree that items hang together
Observations: kappa κ, percent agreement minus chance agreement

Front 2

Self reports - questionnaires

Back 2

assess self-perceptions, thoughts, feelings, past experiences, evaluations of hypothetical situations.
+quick, inexpensive
+standard –everyone gets the same questions
-participants not able to describe experiences in own words (loss of richness)
-dependent on reading/language ability

Front 3

Self reports - interview (structured and clinical) & structured interviews

Back 3

+great depth in short period
+participants describe experience in own words
-want to please researcher (social desirability)
-dependent on verbal ability
-labor intensive data processing (30m per kid)


Structured and Semi-Structured Interviews
+standard set of questions, comparable across interviewers
…eg… diary study

Front 4

Self-reports Clincal Method

Back 4

interview-relatively unstructured open-ended questions, answer to 1 question determines the next
-variation across interviewers
+responsive to uniqueness of each individual

Front 5

Observation (GENERAL)

Back 5

+Behavior is not inferred
+Not dependent on verbal ability
-observer influence or bias
-some events too rare to observe
-some phenomena are unobservable (e.g., thoughts)

Front 6

Observation: naturalistic

Back 6

watching them go about their day to day activities in their natural context
+ naturalistic/good ecological validity-child observed in real-life context
- no controls – children observed under different environmental conditions won’t have the same opportunity to display certain behaviors

Front 7

Observation: structured observation

Back 7

Observer cues the desired behaviour surreptiously

+controlled lab environment, children have same opportunity to display certain behaviors
- lacks ecological validity b/c lab differs from real-life contexts

Front 8

Case study

Back 8

investigator gathers extensive information about the life of an individual and then tests development hypotheses by analysing the event of their life history
many varying forms of data gathered: interviews with family etc

Drawbacks: cases can't really be compared; findings are not generalizeable

Front 9

ethnography

Back 9

researcher seeks to understand the unique values , traditions, and social processes of a culture or subculture by living with its members and making extensive observations.
-can help understand cultural conflicts
-incredibly subjective - researcher brings their own values to analysis.

Front 10

Validity

Back 10

the extent to which a measuring interment accurately reflects what the researchers intended to measure.

measures what intended to measure
Convergent validity – agreement (r) among different types of informants (e.g., teacher & peer), or among different measures of similar construct
Predictive validity – predicts as expected