You are going to do a study of the development of teammate behavior on a college hockey team. Describe the research methods you would use and justify why these methods are most effective in this case

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

To study the development of teammate behavior on a college hockey team, one might use a qualitative study because it involves gaining in-depth understanding of human behavior and what governs it. The fact that a college hockey team is a small, focused sample rather than a large random sample makes qualitative research more feasible. Instead of gathering numerative data such as in experimental research, I would use video recordings of games and practices to gather data. Research reports of qualitative research are usually richer and provide more details about the behavior being observed. If my qualitative study revealed specific factors that exist in teammate behavior that could be further studied, I could go on to develop a quantitative research study to take a closer look at those factors.

Alternatively, a longitudinal study could be used because it is the most direct way to identify change and examine development over time. The same individuals on the team can be given self-reports which are questionnaires about people's answers to questions about the topic of interest or, in this case, about teammate behavior. The self-reports can be administered at the both the beginning and the end of the hockey season to determine the level of change that may have occurred. One difficulty with longitudinal studies is participant drop-out. However, in the case of a college team, participants are likely to remain with the team for the entire season.