Lifestyle Analysis

Relates to whether you’re actually measuring what you planned to measure External & internal validity

Whether results of study can be attributed to different treatments in study For research to claim IV, you need to ensure you’ve controlled everything that could affect results of study

Whether or not results of study can be applied to real world

Examines wether different researchers in same situation would get same/similar results Inter-researcher reliability is a problem in body composition assessment - when people learning to use skin fold calpier technique its difficult to take accurate measurements from correct sites Thus, researchers come up with different & varying values - you can’t claim inter-researcher reliability

Doing same test on different occasions & getting same/similar results Problem comes measuring HR: Can be affected by many factors - temperature, diet, time of day, sleep patterns, etc. If you measure HR on same person in same time of day, but on different days, you could get different measurements

How close your measurement is to ‘gold standard’ or what you’re intending to measure E.g. boxer has actual weight of 100kg & your weighing device shows 100.1kg, that’s accurate However, if it shows 103kg, its inaccurate

When working in research setting, any measurement you take will have some unpredictability Degree of unpredictability relates to amount of precision tool selected for measurement has Precision relates to refinement of measuring process & closely related to reliability

Participants can express their views in their own words Participants can provide info from won’t perspective Unexpected data may come out in interview Body language, tone, pitch of voice & speed of speech can be assessed Researcher can establish rapport with participant & investigate target groups

They require more resources & more time-consuming than using questionnaires Use small sample sizes as interviews time-consuming Participant can take interview off in number of directions Data analysis more difficult & takes longer than using directions Quality of data dependent on quality of questioning & quality of responses

Observations can be ‘here & now’ rather than being dependent on recall Can take place in natural settings rather than research settings Allow for identification of behaviours that may not be apparent to person & may not been discovered through interviews Allow for identification of behaviour that person may not wish to disclose

There’s potential for researcher to misunderstand what they’re seeing Difficult to identify & record correct type of data Hawthorne effect: Person knows they’re subject of research, they may act differently & could invalidate whole project - researcher must be very careful exactly how they approach people in observational research

They’re people-friendly in form designed correctly Opportunity to reduce participant bias Participant can be anonymous Data is structure Usually accessible to most people

Questions can be too complex if form designed incorrectly Control issues No opportunities for probing questions Potential for low response rate