Case studies are studies with highly detailed knowledge of an individual or small group. They provide invaluable insight into their lives, and provide a level of information that little other methods can. However these would provide extreme difficulty in terms of non-conformist behaviour, as these people tend to be cautious of releasing this kind of information to people for legal reasons. On the other hand there are major disadvantages in case studies. They have the inability to draw cause and affect relationships which are often essential when analyzing the person’s lifestyle. This part of the research may be important in non-conformist behaviour, such as assessing the cause of such behaviour. Further, case studies are impossible to generalize the findings to a wider population.
Longitudinal studies are when studies are conducted over a long period of time. They are often useful for addressing equal and multi finality without having to make assumptions. This may be useful for non-conformist behaviour to observe the effects in adulthood, or look at risk factors in earlier life that may have contributed to such behaviour. However, they require enormous amounts of time and are often quite expensive. Because of this, these studies usually have only a small group of people, which makes it difficult to apply the results to a larger population. Another problem is that participants sometimes drop out of the study, shrinking the sample size even more and decreasing the amount of data collected. In comparison snapshot studies are a lot less time consuming, cheaper and can include a lot more people. Yet they cannot provide data in terms of development as they are only a snapshot of human behaviour.
Experimental research methods manipulate independent variables in order to discover correlations and cause and effect. Laboratory experiments are conducted under highly controlled conditions to minimise confounding variables. The experimental method allows us to draw conclusions with far more certainty than any non-experimental method. If the independent variable is the only thing that is changed, then it must be responsible for any change in the dependent variable. However there are variables that affect a person’s behaviour which the researcher may not be aware of, thus concluding that the independent variables are the result of the behaviour causes huge complications and wrong assumptions. This type of research is often use by behaviourists who dismiss the ‘black box’ and solely rely on variables that can be recorded. This type of experiment wouldn’t work well for non-conformist behaviour as putting young people in a situation which would show this behaviour reliably is near impossible. Another type of experimental research is a field, where they are conducted in real world situations. In these experiments the participants are not usually aware that that they are participating in an experiment, meaning recording behaviour is a lot more valid for interpretation. The independent variable is still manipulated to gain more control over the situation, but nowhere near to the extent that laboratory experiments do causing control over confounding variables a lot harder to do. This type of experiment would provide good data for non-conformist behaviour due to high ecological validity as well as more control over the situation which observation lacks.
There are many ways to gather samples for the research. Opportunity sampling is the use of people who are available at the current time. This would prove useful for recording drunken behaviour, as it would be hard to wait for a group of young people to get drunk before you can observe their behaviour. However these groups are very unrepresentative of all non-conformist young people. Self selected sampling is where people sign up to be subjects through advertisement or volunteering. This would be a lot more ethical as they inform to what the researcher would be doing, but would be very unrepresentative as non-conformists are unlikely not to accept to be observed. Random sampling is a lot more representative, where it takes a sample of the population where every member has an equal amount of chance to be chosen. Random sampling will provide a lot more insight into various different backgrounds and non-conformist behaviour but is very time consuming. Similar to random sampling, stratified sampling provides a lot more representation of a large population, but are a lot more controlled. They consist of the same proportions in the sample as they do in the greater population. And finally snowball sampling is starting with one person related to the topic, for example a binge drinker and from there connecting with friends who also drink. This is very difficult to do with illegal and non-conformist behaviour.
There are many issues associated with research methods. Ethical considerations are highly valued within psychology research. For example informed consent and debriefing reduce ethical problems where the participants know they are being observed or experimented on, but do not know the reasons behind this. These reasons are then explained during the debriefing after the experiment has taken place. However informed consent can often cause demand characteristics, where by the participants know they are part of psychology research act differently to what they think is expected of them.
Overall I would choose observation to research non-conformist behaviour, as even though it is not representative and can cause wrong assumptions. The behaviour that is being studied is so hard to observe in any other situation, for example as an experiment. Observational methods do have ethical issues because they cannot consent to being observed. However as the participants are only being observed and not experimented on, ethical consideration is not as important. I would use opportunity sampling by just recording who was there at the time. Although again it would not be representative, it would however reduce demand characteristics and save time.
