Vignette studies

The Black Oil

I've been reading a few of these for work over the past while, in relation to mental health stigma. There are very few research studies that directly address the clinical population I'm interested in. For the most part it's vignettes that are popping up and within that they tend to fall back on female undergrad psych students. Shocking. :pac:

Anyway, I found this reference from 2004. Measuring mental illness stigma.

I read it (p. 526) a while back and it seems the main advantages with vignettes are they're seen as methodologically sound.

Ever since Star and Phillips, vignettes have enjoyed a very prominent position in research on the stigma of mental illness. There are two major reasons for this popularity. First, vignettes allow the researcher to pre- sent a more elaborate stimulus to respondents than is afforded in measurement approaches that simply ask people about "mental illness," a "psychiatric hospital patient," or a "mental health consumer." Second, vignettes allow the use of random assignment and bring the power of the experimental method to hypothesis testing. Furthermore, because vignettes can be used in survey research, vignette experiments can be administered to randomly selected general population samples and therein achieve somewhat better external validity than is typical of many laboratory experiments that employ college students as subjects.

I was wondering if any has this has changed? I'd guess not as studies from the 2010s are still using the auld vignettes. This is lazy way of asking if here's amore up to date refernence than this.

Valmont

Are the vignettes fictional? I'm thinking that I could write some vignettes of a certain slant to guarantee whatever aggregate response I want.

The Black Oil

Off the top of my head, yes. I'll check when I've access to my files.

Labarbapostiza

The Black Oil wrote: »

For the most part it's vignettes that are popping up and within that they tend to fall back on female undergrad psych students. Shocking. :pac:
.

Are you a sexist?

The Black Oil

No.

It's hard to make much of the topic I'm looking at due to the lack of research - including clinical samples, men, women and also the general population.

Labarbapostiza

The Black Oil wrote: »

No.

Okay, now you've proved the need for the use of vignettes. You are a sexist because you have revealed yourself to be, through making a sexist remark. When questioned directly you then deny yourself to be sexist.

Asked directly, about their feelings towards people with mental health issues, most people will respond with an answer that portrays them as compassionate. Whereas the reality of their behaviour is one of exclusion and persecution.

People with mental health issues often try very hard to hide the stigma (stigma is a Greek word for scar or mark). They're even more likely to answer direct questions untruthfully for fear of persecution.

It's hard to make much of the topic I'm looking at due to the lack of
research - including clinical samples, men, women and also the general
population.

It has been very long that it's been realised that asking people if they're religious or not, directly, the vast majority will lie. But you can get them to tell the truth if you trick them; what did they do last Sunday forthnight. The answers will more closely match church attendance statistics. So. A lot of research may not be that accurate to begin with. Do you strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree, strongly agree.

Valmont

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

You are a sexist because you have revealed yourself to be, through making a sexist remark.

I'm guessing you don't have an undergraduate degree in psychology, judging by your misplaced outrage at The Black Oil's comment.

The vast majority of undergraduate and postgraduate departments and clinical psychology practices in the Western world are composed of a female majority. Lo and behold many psychological experiments are unwittingly ungeneralisable beyond a largely female cohort if the experimenter is using a convenience sample.

Labarbapostiza

Valmont wrote: »

I'm guessing you don't have an undergraduate degree in psychology, judging by your misplaced outrage at The Black Oil's comment.

No, I perfectly understood what he said and why he said it. There are gender imbalances in the study of engineering and psychology. That is either the result of some intrinsic difference in the biology of genders, or it's the result of extrinsic societal forces. Sexism being a good or a bad thing is generally a matter of personal and even societal weltanschauung.

Engineering, where there is a far greater gender imbalance than psychology, would Black Oil make the same quip about male undergrad engineering students. And if the gender balance in psychology were weighted towards males, he wouldn't make the remark either. There is an automatic assumption that women have a lesser insight; a feminised narrow view of reality.

The vast majority of undergraduate and postgraduate departments and clinical
psychology practices in the Western world are composed of a female majority. Lo
and behold many psychological experiments are unwittingly ungeneralisable beyond
a largely female cohort if the experimenter is using a convenience sample.

Would they really be that lazy, stupid, and dishonest, to create research they know to be rubbish. Are we to gauge results that emanated from male dominated facilities by the same possible distortions, or is it just something the silly little women do.

Valmount if I asked you directly whether or not you were a sexist, you'd say you weren't. But less directly.......

Valmont

TheBlackOil, coincidentally I've had to look at this topic for work and I found a systematic review from August 2014 in the Journal of Mental Health examining all of the available mental health literacy questionnaires/measures and their psychometric properties. Would you like the whole reference? Unfortunately the conclusion was that there is no psychometrically sound or well-validated measures of mental health literacy. The original vignette interview by Jorm (from his 1997 and 2005 papers) seems to be the most widely used at any rate.

The Black Oil

That'd be great if you do, thanks.

Valmont wrote: »

Are the vignettes fictional? I'm thinking that I could write some vignettes of a certain slant to guarantee whatever aggregate response I want.

Of the 8-10 I looked at, all were fictional, iirc.