Qualitative Research & Social Psychology

Qualitative Research & Social Psychology

Introduction

The social psychology deals with the social interactions of the individuals. The behaviour of the humans with each other in social settings reflects their mindset, knowledge, perception and openness in communication. The term “Attitude” in social psychology can be defined as basic expressions of favourability, unfavourability, approval, disapproval, likes and dislikes. The examples would include being against abortion, liking chocolate ice cream or supporting the values of a specific political party (Louise et.al, 2006). There are three main components which derives attitude such as cognitive, affective, and behavioural. The cognitive component is also known as mental component. The cognitive component includes perception and beliefs. Under cognitive component, the perception of the person relating to any object, human, race, group of people, ethnic groups, name and location affects the behaviour of the person to that particular thing. The beliefs also played a crucial role in making the attitude of the person because if a particular object is consider as harmful in general but a particular belief set consider the same particular object as a essential part of life than the believers will also consider the object as a essential part of life. The second component is known as affective component which deals with the emotions of the person. The humans are full of different kind of emotions and the emotional values also influence the attitude of person in the context of social interaction. The person who is emotional attached to the particular object will feel good in the presence of that particular object whether that particular object has any real value or not. The third component is action oriented and known as behavioural component. This can be explained with the example that person “A” try to hang out with his friend whenever he get the chance (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008).

Discussion

There are two kinds of researches which are known qualitative and quantitative research. This report will focus on the qualitative research methods. The qualitative research is a technique of inquiry employed in many different academic disciplines, conventionally in the social sciences, but also used in market research and further contexts. The aim of qualitative researchers is to gather an in-depth understanding of human behaviour and the reasons that govern such behaviour. The qualitative method examines the how and why of decision making. The report will critically analyze the qualitative research methods used for the purpose of exploration of attitudes in the context of social psychology (Daymon & Holloway, 2010).

Qualitative Research Methods

The qualitative research methods include interviews (cognitive interviews), focus group, observations, and sampling.

Interviews

The researchers widely used interviews as a tool in qualitative research. The interviews let the researchers asked the required information from each person interviewed. The primary advantage of the interview is that it enables the research to generate first hand information from the desired respondent. The researchers and theorists claimed that the interviews are very effective because the researcher has an opportunity to know or unfold the characteristics of the ...