When responding to at least two of your classmates, discuss if both methods have a role in psychology research.

 

First peer below.

When doing my annotated bibliographies every single one of my sources utilized self-report to obtain data and they all mentioned how using self-report was a limitation in their research.  In my opinion self-report is an excellent way to obtain information for research however since it relies heavily on participants' participation and honesty, I think it is difficult trusting the results obtained through self-report. When it comes to experimental design, I think researchers sometimes manipulate the design in order to produce results they want which is why I believe researchers like Diener did not think it is the best method of design for valid research (Diener et.al 2022). 

A strength of self-report as said before is that it is an easy way to obtain information from your participants, and you are able to gauge better what your participant is feeling by directly asking them versus having to observe. Now a major limitation that comes from self-report is some participants may not be completely honest because they may want to seem socially desirable or they may have a fear of embarrassment from their answers. A strength of behavioral observation is that you are able to witness the experiment and are able to take notes of what is happening. Now that comes with a downside, emotions are something that is hard to observe since people express their emotions differently, while one person may frown when they are feeling sadness another may have no expression at all. When participants are being honest, self-report is a great tool to use in said situation.   

 

Second peer below.

Self-report and experimental design both play a big part in psychological research. Self-report is when the participants of a study report their own findings. More specifically, "self-report is any test, measure, or survey that relies on an individual's own report of their symptoms, behaviors, beliefs, or attitudes. Self-report data is gathered typically in paper-and-pencil or electronic format or sometimes through an interview" (Salters, 2023). I believe self-report had many advantages in the world of research. Self-report is often inexpensive and due to being dependent on other peoples work, the information is gathered rather quickly and efficiently. As stated, "primary advantages of self-reporting is that it can be easy to obtain. It is also an important way that clinicians diagnose their patients—by asking questions. Those making the self-report are usually familiar with filling out questionnaires. For research, it is inexpensive and can reach many more test subjects than could be analyzed by observation or other method" (Salters, 2023). Although, self-report has advantages I believe the disadvantages weigh more. These disadvantages are found mainly in the subjects honesty, introspective ability, interpretation of questions, rating scales, response bias, and sampling bias (Salters, 2023). 

The experimental design is a reliable and valid method to obtain results. "Experimental design is the process of carrying out research in an objective and controlled fashion so that precision is maximized and specific conclusions can be drawn regarding a hypothesis statement. Generally, the purpose is to establish the effect that a factor or independent variable has on a dependent variable" (Bell, 2009). I believe this method is efficient in obtaining reliable and valid information as well as maximizing these findings by allowing potential generalization. I also believe through this method one can minimize limitations and potential bias. 

When looking into self-report and behavioral observations it is hard to not compare the two. As I stated, earlier self-report has its strengths in being easily obtained and inexpensive but also has its fair-share of drawbacks that mainly revolve around bias. Behavioral observation is a very popular method and can be very reliable. As stated, behavior observation has "direct nature" (Hints, 2004). "behavioral observation is particularly well suited for everyday life settings and can provide a systematic record of behavior that can be used in preliminary evaluation, intervention planning and design, the documentation of changes over time, and as part of a multimethod-multisource evaluation that integrates other forms of assessment" (Hintze, 2004). One of the drawbacks/limitations is that it is a longer process, it does well I'm measuring changes over time but that time has to be waited.