Imagine that some researchers are interested in college students' self-reports about their reactions to various stressful situations. Rather than simply asking the students to recall various stressful situations and their reactions to them, the researchers want to reduce the time between the students' self-reports about the situations and the actual situations themselves. Describe two methods

Question

that have been developed by social psychologists that could serve this purpose.

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The textbook describes three such methods: interval-contingent, signal-contingent, and
event-contingent. Using the interval-contingent method, the researchers would have the
students report their experiences at regular intervals, such as once a day. Using the
signal-contingent method, the researchers would ask the students to report their
experiences as soon as possible after being signaled to do so, as with a beeper. Using
the event-contingent method, the researchers would ask the students to report on a
designated set of events as soon as possible after such events occurred? for example,
the students might be asked to report their experiences as soon as possible after being
confronted with a stressful situation.