Research methods: experiments, observations, self-report, correlations

Design a study to investigate students’ experiences of online learning.

In your answer you will gain credit for providing appropriate details of the following:

• the type of self-report technique that will be used, with justification

• an example of one relevant question that could be used to collect qualitative data, with justification

• how you would ensure the ethical treatment of participants

• how content analysis could be used to analyse the qualitative data.

The researcher noticed that a lot of the children who did well on the musical ability test also seemed to do well on the motor skills test.

Suggest how the researcher could use the existing data to investigate the relationship between musical ability and motor skills.

A psychologist conducted a case study of a patient who had difficulty sleeping.

Briefly explain one ethical issue the psychologist would need to consider in this study.

The researcher decided to interview some of the parents about their child’s play.

Explain why the data collected from the interview might have improved upon the data collected from the diaries.

In the interview the researcher collected some qualitative data.

Write one question that could be used in the researcher’s interview that would produce qualitative data.

Identify the type of experiment used in this study. Justify your answer.

A prison officer investigating institutional aggression has devised a questionnaire for prisoners to complete. The questionnaire consists of a series of statements about prison life and the prisoners have to indicate how much they agree with each statement.

One statement in the questionnaire is ‘The noise in the prison is unpleasant’. The response options in the questionnaire are ‘Agree’ and ‘Disagree’.

Suggest how the response options in the questionnaire could be modified to better assess how much prisoners agree with the statement.

A police trainer investigating offender profiling has devised a questionnaire for police officers to complete. The questionnaire consists of a series of statements about offender profiling and the police officers have to indicate how much they agree with each statement.

One statement in the questionnaire is ‘Offender profiling can be helpful in solving crime’. The response options in the questionnaire are ‘Agree’ and ‘Disagree’.

Suggest how the response options in the questionnaire could be modified to better assess how much the police officers agree with the statement.

A social worker investigating nicotine addiction has devised a questionnaire for smokers to complete. The questionnaire consists of a series of statements about smoking, and smokers have to indicate how much they agree with each statement.

One statement in the questionnaire is ‘Holding a cigarette makes me feel calm’. The response options in the questionnaire are ‘Agree’ and ‘Disagree’.

Suggest how the response options in the questionnaire could be modified to better assess how much smokers agree with the statement.

Which two of the following best describe Zimbardo’s prison study?

Shade two boxes only.

A Controlled observation

B Covert observation

C Laboratory experiment

D Natural experiment

E Participant observation

Students self-reported their stress levels on a scale of 1–10.

Explain how this might have affected the validity of the data collected.

Your teacher tells you not to use self-report to measure anxiety levels and tells you to use a different way of measuring anxiety.

Suggest how you could measure the co-variables, time spent swimming and anxiety levels, for your study.

A controlled observation was designed to compare the social behaviours of pre-school children of working parents and pre-school children of stay-at-home parents. The sample consisted of 100 children aged three, who were observed separately. Half of the children had working parents and the other half had stay-at-home parents.

The observation took place in a room which looked like a nursery, with a variety of toys available. In the room, there were four children and one supervising adult. Their behaviour was not recorded.

Each child participant was brought into the room and settled by their parent. The parent then left to sit outside. Each child participant’s behaviour was observed covertly for five minutes while they played in the room.

The observation was conducted in a controlled environment and a standardised script was used when the children and their parents arrived.

Explain why the researcher used a controlled observation and a standardised script in this study.

Identify one limitation of controlled observations.

A new TV programme has been developed to increase positive social behaviours in pre-school children.

There is a proposal to carry out an experiment to compare the effects of the new TV programme and an existing TV programme, on positive social behaviours in pre-school children.

A sample of 500 pre-school children and their parents is available for the experiment. The parents have given consent for their children to take part in this experiment.

The experiment will take place over an 8-week period. Data on the children’s social behaviours will be gathered from the parents using a self-report method.

Design the experiment to investigate whether watching the new TV programme leads to an increase in positive social behaviours in the children, compared with watching the existing TV programme.

In your answer you will gain credit for providing appropriate details of the following:

• the type of experimental design, with justification

• a self-report method of data collection, with justification

• how to control one extraneous variable, with justification as to why this would need to be controlled.

The psychologist claimed to have demonstrated a causal explanation for happiness.

What is meant by a causal explanation? Explain why it was appropriate to claim that there was a causal explanation in this case.

A researcher placed an advert in a university psychology department asking for third year students to participate in a sleep experiment.

Each student had a sleep tracker watch to wear at home for the two-week study. Each morning they were asked to open the sleep tracker app to view their sleep quality data on their mobile phones. The students were unaware that the sleep data they could see on their phones had been manipulated by the researcher. Over the two weeks of the study, each student saw that he or she had had poor sleep quality for seven random nights of the experiment and good sleep quality for the remaining nights.

Every morning, after viewing the sleep data, each student completed a questionnaire about the previous night’s sleep. One of the questions asked the students to rate how well rested they felt, on a scale from 1–10, after the previous night’s sleep. Apart from this, students were asked to continue their normal everyday activities.

Which of the following best describes the experimental method used in this study?

Shade one box only.

A Field experiment

B Laboratory experiment

C Natural experiment

D Quasi-experiment

In a follow-up study, the researcher investigated whether there was a correlation between the number of hours slept and how well rested the students felt.

The researcher randomly selected 18 participants from first-year students at the university.

On the day of the study, each student participant was asked, ‘How many hours did you sleep last night?’ They then had to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 how well rested they felt.

The researcher hypothesised that there would be a positive correlation between the two co-variables.

Outline one reason why it was appropriate to conduct a correlation rather than an experiment in this case.

Studies of attachment often involve naturalistic observations.

Suggest one way in which studies of attachment could be improved by using controlled observations.

A survey of hospital patients has found that a new drug, Zapurpain, is as effective as other pain medication.

Explain one limitation of asking hospital patients to self-report the effectiveness of Zapurpain.

Explain why it would not be appropriate for the researchers to conclude that increased recreational screen time reduces academic performance.

The feedback from one of the schools was that recreational screen time affected pupils’ social interactions. The psychologist decided to investigate this further by using an observation of social interaction during playtime at the school.

Design the observation to investigate pupils’ social interaction in the playground.

In your answer you will be awarded credit for providing appropriate details of:

• type of observation, with justification

• choice of time sampling or event sampling, with justification

• dealing with one relevant ethical issue

• assessing reliability of the data through inter-observer reliability.

A researcher wanted to investigate agoraphobia by studying Patient X. The researcher designed a questionnaire to find out about Patient X’s experiences. However, a colleague suggested that the researcher might do better to conduct a case study.

Explain one or more reasons why it might be better to conduct a case study than a questionnaire.

Design an independent groups experiment that the psychology teacher could conduct.

In your answer you should provide details of:

• the aim of the experiment

• identification and manipulation of variables including details of the task

• controls to minimise the effects of extraneous variables

• data handling and analysis – use of descriptive statistics and/or data presentation.

Justify your design choices.

Outline two non-biological ways of measuring excitement that the student could also use in this situation.

A psychologist wanted to test whether listening to music improves running performance.

The psychologist conducted a study using 10 volunteers from a local gym. The psychologist used a repeated measures design. Half of the participants were assigned to condition A (without music) and half to condition B (with music).

All participants were asked to run 400 metres as fast as they could on a treadmill in the psychology department. All participants were given standardised instructions. All participants wore headphones in both conditions. The psychologist recorded their running times in seconds. The participants returned to the psychology department the following week and repeated the test in the other condition.

Identify the type of experiment used in this study. Shade one box only.

A Laboratory

B Natural

C Quasi

D Research

People’s perception of how they spend their time at the gym is often not very accurate. Some spend more time chatting than on the treadmill. A psychologist decides to observe the actual behaviour of an opportunity sample of gym users at a local gym.

Explain why it is more appropriate for the psychologist to use an observation than a questionnaire in this case.

Design an observational study to investigate how people spend their time at the gym.

In your answer you will be awarded credit for providing appropriate details of:

type of observation with justification

operationalised behavioural categories

use of time and/or event sampling with justification

how reliability of data collection could be assessed.

Explain one problem with the method used to determine the number of miles walked in the week. Suggest an alternative measure that would overcome this problem.