Designing research

Read the following information.

Identify the independent variable and the dependent variable in this study.

Independent variable

Dependent variable

Different factors can affect the accuracy of memory.

Which factor did the researcher investigate in this study?

Shade one box.

Identify one extraneous variable that could have affected the results of this study.

Outline how the researcher could have controlled the extraneous variable you have identified.

Extraneous variable

The results of the study are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 The number of objects participants correctly recalled in each group

Calculate the ratio of the total number of objects correctly recalled in Group A compared to Group B.

Write this ratio in its simplest form.

Research findings show that different types of praise can affect learning. You have been asked to carry out an experiment to test these findings.

You will use two groups of 17-year-olds who have booked 20 lessons at a local driving school.

In Group 1 the driving instructor will praise students’ effort during lessons.

In Group 2 the driving instructor will praise students’ driving ability during lessons.

All students will complete a driving test after their 20th lesson.

Imagine you carry out the experiment using the method that has been described.

Identify the following information:

• the experimental design and the type of experiment you will be using

• one ethical issue you will need to consider and how you will deal with this

• the results you will expect to find from your experiment.

In which one of the following sampling methods does every member of the target population have an equal chance of being selected?

Shade one box.

Read the following description of a study.

Write a suitable null hypothesis for the described study of conformity.

Give one conclusion the psychologist could draw from the described study of conformity.

Use the results to explain your answer.

Asch used a very similar procedure to the one described.

Briefly evaluate Asch’s study of conformity.

Researchers wanted to compare the use of different scanning techniques to identify brain functioning.

In the study, there were 40 participants who had experienced a recent brain injury. All of the participants had a CT scan and a PET scan of their brains.

The researchers recorded how many different areas of damage they identified using each scanning method.

Results are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 The total number of different areas of damage identified using CT and PET brain scans

Which is the correct ratio for the number of different areas of damage identified using CT scans compared to the number of different areas of damage identified using PET scans?

Shade one box.

The PET scans showed 50% more areas of damage than the CT scans did.

Write 50% as a fraction.

Calculate the mean number of areas of damage that were identified per participant when CT scans were used.

Show your workings.

Name the experimental design being used in the described study of scanning techniques.

Discuss why the researchers may have found the results they did.

Use your knowledge of CT scans and PET scans.

Hebb’s theory of learning and neuronal growth suggests that repeating the same task allows us to develop stronger cell assemblies.

You have been asked to conduct an experiment to investigate Hebb’s theory. You need to do this without the use of brain-scanning techniques.

In your answer, outline the following information:

• a description of the task you will use

• an appropriate hypothesis for your experiment

• the sampling method you will use and a description of how you will carry this out.

Read the following information.

Table 2 shows the results from the study.

Table 2 The number of times the distance was correctly estimated within one metre by participants viewing familiar and unfamiliar objects

Identify the dependent variable in this study.

The psychologist claimed that the results of this study allowed conclusions to be drawn about the influence of past experience on perception.

Outline one conclusion that the psychologist could draw.

You have been asked to investigate the effect of emotion on perception.

Explain how you would design an experiment to do this.

You need to include the following information in your answer:

• what you would ask the participants to do and what data you would collect

• the experimental design you would choose and why this would be suitable

• the results you would expect to find from your experiment including both conditions of the independent variable.

Read the following information.

Write a suitable alternative hypothesis for this study.

Identify one extraneous variable that might affect the results of this experiment.

The bar chart in Figure 1 shows the number of people who visited Waterlake Park in the 7 days before and after the introduction of the DinoCatch app.

State the number of people who visited the park on the Tuesday (Tu) after the DinoCatch app was introduced.

Outline two conclusions that can be drawn from the data in the bar chart.

At the end of the 14-day study, the researcher interviewed 10 participants about their experiences of using the DinoCatch app. She wanted to find out if there was a correlation between time spent outdoors and improvement of mood.

She asked the participants how many hours they had spent outdoors playing DinoCatch during the 7-day period after the app was released. She also asked participants to rate how much their mood had improved on a scale of 0–10.

A rating of 0 meant that their mood had not improved at all.

A rating of 10 meant that their mood had improved a lot.

The results are shown in Table 3.

Table 3 Number of hours playing DinoCatch and mood improvement rating

Use the graph paper to sketch a scatter diagram to show the results given in Table 3

Provide a suitable title for your scatter diagram and a label for the x axis.

Estimate the mood improvement rating for someone who played the app for 20 hours.

Use the results from the study to help you.

The researcher concluded that playing DinoCatch caused participants’ mood to improve.

Suggest why the researcher is not correct to draw this conclusion.

Explain what is meant by the psychological term ‘sample’.

Name one sampling method that psychologists might use in their research.

A psychologist carried out a study to see if there was any variation in the recall of events between people who speak different languages.

The psychologist used an opportunity sample to gather participants who were either English speakers or non-English speakers. The participants were shown video clips of people breaking a window. Sometimes they broke it on purpose and sometimes it was an accident.

When the participants were asked to write down what they had seen, the non-English speakers were less accurate in their recall of the clips that showed accidental behaviour.

Identify the independent variable in the described study.

Briefly evaluate the described study carried out by the psychologist.

A researcher wanted to investigate the effect of context on the accuracy of memory.

Describe how she could design a laboratory experiment to do this.

You need to include the following information in your answer:

• a task that she could ask participants to carry out and a description of the data she would collect

• what the conditions of the independent variable would be

• one extraneous variable that could affect the results and how the researcher could control this variable.

The researcher considered different experimental designs when planning her experiment.

Identify and explain one strength and one weakness of an independent groups design.

Write your answers in the correct spaces provided.

Read the following information.

Identify what the independent variable and dependent variable would be in your experiment.

Write your answers in the correct spaces provided.

Independent variable

Dependent variable

The target population for your experiment is Year 8 students at a local school.

There are 100 Year 8 students at this school.

Describe how you could select 20 participants for your experiment using random sampling.

Read the following information.

Identify the type of experiment used in this study.

Shade one box only.

Identify the experimental design used in this study.

Shade one box only.

Read the following information.

Explain one weakness of using a stratified sample when conducting research.

The responses of participants to Question 1 of the questionnaire are shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Responses of participants to Question 1: ‘Do you think your progress in lessons is positively affected by the amount of time you spend doing independent study?’

Calculate the percentage of participants who responded YES.

State your answer using two significant figures and show your workings.

Participants were also asked to estimate the amount of time they spent working and chatting to friends during a typical 70 minute study lesson.

The mean estimates for 30 participants are shown in Table 3.

Table 3 Mean estimated amount of time spent working and chatting to friends during a typical 70 minute study lesson for 30 participants.

What is the ratio of time spent working compared to time spent chatting to friends ?

Write this ratio in its simplest form.

Read the following information.

Identify two ethical issues that researchers should consider in observation studies.

Sketch a frequency table the researcher and their assistant can use to collect information about the types of learning activity participants do during study lessons.

Include two categories of behaviour about types of learning activity in your frequency table.

Do not include ‘chatting to friends’ and ‘completing work’ as categories of behaviour.

The psychologist and their assistant had high interobserver reliability in their observation study.

Define what is meant by ‘interobserver reliability’ in observational research.

From the results of the observation, the researcher realised that students spent more time chatting to friends during study lessons than they had estimated on the questionnaire.

Briefly evaluate the use of questionnaires in psychological research.

In your answer, refer to the questionnaires about the use of study lessons that the sixth form students had filled in.

Read the following information.

Outline one strength and one weakness of using correlations in psychological research.

Participants were asked to rate their confidence levels on a scale.

The scale went from 1 (low) to 5 (high).

Participants used a similar scale to rate how likely they are to say something when they see someone dropping litter.

The results are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Ratings for participants’ confidence and the likelihood of saying something when witnessing littering.

Use the results in Table 1 to sketch a suitable graph to show the ratings for participants’ confidence and the likelihood of them saying something when witnessing littering.

Also include in your answer:

a label for the Y axis

a scale for both axes

a suitable title for your graph.

The researchers who carried out the described questionnaire would like you to do a follow-up study.

The participants who took part in the questionnaire have also agreed to be participants for your study.

You are also able to use the ratings they gave themselves for the different personality traits.

Describe how you would design a field experiment to find out more about how personality affects whether people would say something when witnessing anti-social behaviour.

In your answer include:

• a description of the procedure you would use

• what your dependent variable would be.

Write a suitable alternative hypothesis for Yuki’s study of emoticons.

Describe the results of Yuki’s study of emoticons.

Suggest a possible conclusion that can be drawn from his results.

Justify your answer.

The ‘One day at a time’ research study asked people with a diagnosed mental health problem to regularly answer the question ‘What did you find difficult to deal with today?’

On 6 days, spread throughout the year, people were asked to write about their day.

An analysis of the answers was carried out and the difficulties most commonly mentioned by the participants were identified.

Many participants mentioned more than one of these common difficulties.

The results are shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Difficulties most commonly mentioned by females and males.

One result is missing from Table 2.

Which of the following is the most likely estimate of the missing result?

Use the results from the rest of the table to help with your decision.

The questionnaire was answered by 671 females.

What percentage of females mentioned experiencing stigma about their mental health problem as a difficulty they had to deal with in their day?

State your answer using three significant figures and show your workings.

The researchers wanted to use the real-life stories they had collected to encourage other people. The participants’ answers were made available on the internet for anyone to read.

Identify one ethical issue that the researchers carrying out the questionnaire needed to consider.

Describe how the ‘One day at a time’ researchers could have dealt with the ethical issue you have identified.

Outline one strength of using questionnaires to carry out psychological research.

Imagine you have been asked to carry out a follow up study to the ‘One day at a time’ research.

One of the individual effects of having a mental health problem is the negative impact on physical wellbeing.

The researchers have asked you to find out more about how the negative impact on physical wellbeing affects people with a mental health problem.

You have decided to carry out your study by doing a questionnaire. You plan to use opportunity sampling to select your participants.

In your answer:

• explain how you will select your opportunity sample

• write one question that will help you to collect relevant quantitative data

• write one question that will help you to collect relevant qualitative data.

Write your answers in the correct spaces provided.

How you will select your opportunity sample

Question for collecting quantitative data

Question for collecting qualitative data

You have been asked to investigate the effect of interference on the accuracy of memory.

Describe how you would design an experiment to do this.

You need to include:

• what participants would be asked to do

• a suitable hypothesis for your experiment

• the results that you expect to find.

Which one of the following is most likely to achieve a representative sample?

Shade one box.

Read the following information.

Identify the dependent variable and both conditions of the independent variable in this experiment.

Write your answers in the correct spaces provided.

Dependent variable

Independent variable

Figure 1 Bar chart to show the number of participants who did and did not clean their desk in the smell and no smell groups.

The results of this experiment are shown in Figure 1.

Use this information to complete the table below.

33.3% of participants cleaned their desk in the no smell group.

Calculate the percentage of participants who cleaned their desk in the smell group.

Use the information from Question 22.2.

Show your workings.

State whether the environmental cue of smell did or did not influence participant behaviour in this experiment.

Use the data in Figure 1 to explain your answer.

Name the experimental design used by the psychologist in this study.

Explain your answer.

Experimental design

Explain your answer

Explain one weakness of using the experimental design you named in Question 22.5

Researchers carried out a study into the effectiveness of antidepressant medications. 150 people took part in their study.

The target population for the study were patients from the Good Health Medical Centre in London. They had all been diagnosed with unipolar depression within the past 6 months and were aged between 25 and 42 years of age.

Explain how researchers would select a random sample from this target population.

Identify one strength and one weakness of random sampling.

Figure 1 Bar graph to show the total number of participants who felt their mood improved a lot, a little or did not improve at all within two weeks of starting a course of antidepressants.

Complete Table 2 using the information from the bar graph.

Table 2 Total number of participants who felt their mood improved a lot, a little or did not improve at all within two weeks of starting a course of antidepressants.

Calculate the percentage of participants who stated that their mood improved ‘ a little

Show your workings.

Read the following information.

Calculate what fraction of the photos shown to each participant were fake.

The researcher had to choose the order in which to show a set of five photos.

Describe how the researcher could have used randomisation to decide the order.

You have been asked to compare the effects of using different learning styles to revise the structure of the brain. Describe how you would design an experiment to do this.

You need to include:

• the tasks participants would be asked to do to revise the structure of the brain using a verbaliser and a visualiser learning style

• one example of a standardised procedure that you would use and a justification for why this should be used

• one ethical consideration you would need to address and how you would deal with this.

Read the following information.

Identify the independent variable in this experiment.

Identify the dependent variable in this experiment.

Write a null hypothesis that the researcher can use in this experiment.

Table 2: Total number of days missed by 190 Year 9 students in the early and late start conditions.

Table 2 shows the total number of days missed by 190 Year 9 students in the early and late start conditions.

Calculate the mean number of days missed by students in the late start condition.

Show your workings.

The mean for the early start condition was 1.4

Use this mean and your calculated mean from question 22.4 to sketch a suitable graph to show the mean number of days missed by each student in the early and late start conditions.

Label the axes and provide a suitable title for your graph.

The researcher used a repeated measures experimental design. He also used counterbalancing.

Explain why researchers often use counterbalancing with a repeated measures experimental design.

This study is an example of a field experiment.

Evaluate the use of field experiments in psychological research.

The psychologist wanted to interview a sample of the students in his experiment to find out how they felt about starting school earlier and later in the day. He thought about using either opportunity or systematic sampling to get his sample of students.

Outline both opportunity and systematic sampling.

Compare the use of these sampling methods using your knowledge of their strengths and/or weaknesses.

You have been asked to research the effectiveness of self-management programmes as an intervention for addiction.

Explain how you would use interviews to do this research.

You need to include the following information in your answer:

• who your target population would be

• what your sampling method would be and how you would select your sample using this method

• an appropriate interview question you could use in your research.

Anonymity means that a person cannot be identified and the information they share cannot be connected to them. Self-management programmes for addiction usually allow the people who attend them to be anonymous.

People often do not want to take part in research if their identity is going to be revealed.

Identify an appropriate way of dealing with the ethical issue of anonymity in the research you described in 21.1.

You have been asked to investigate the effect of context on the accuracy of memory.

Describe how you would design an experiment to do this.

You need to include the following information in your answer:

• what you would ask participants to do and what data you would collect

• one extraneous variable that could affect your results and how you could control it

• the results you would expect to find from your experiment.

Outline what is meant by independent groups and repeated measures.

Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of both of these types of experimental design.

Read the following information.

Total score: ______

Outline one strength of using a stratified sample when conducting research.

Give a definition of both qualitative and quantitative data.

Quantitative data

When collecting information about mental well-being, explain why collecting qualitative data rather than quantitative data may increase the validity of the data collected by the researcher.

Read the following information.

Table 3: The average daily exercise and mental well-being score for each participant

Identify the mode for the average daily exercise scores shown in Table 3.

Calculate the median for the average mental well-being scores shown in Table 3.

Use the graph paper to sketch a scatter diagram to show the results shown in Table 3.

Provide a suitable title and labels for your diagram.

Identify the type of correlation the researcher has found between exercise and mental well-being.

Shade one box only.

You have been asked to design an experiment to investigate the effect of anonymity on conformity.

In your answer outline the following information:

• what your independent and dependent variables would be

• one thing you would do to standardise your procedure and why this would benefit your research

• the results you would expect to find from your experiment.

When carrying out the experiment you have outlined in your answer to Question 02.1 you should consider ethical issues.

Identify two ethical issues that you would need to consider.

Suggest one appropriate way of dealing with each of the issues you identify.

Ethical issue one

Ethical issue two

Researchers used an online questionnaire to investigate a possible link between the amount of time spent on social media and depression. Only people who regularly spend at least nine hours a day on social media were asked to complete the questionnaire. Fifty questionnaires were completed and returned. One of the questions asked participants if they thought that their sleep patterns were affected by spending time on social media. Table 3 shows the results.

Table 3 Responses of participants to the question: ‘Do you think your sleep patterns are affected by the amount of time you spend on social media sites?’

Calculate the percentage of participants who said their sleep patterns were affected.

Show your workings.

‘Changes in sleep patterns’ is listed in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) as a symptom of unipolar depression.

Identify two other symptoms of unipolar depression listed in the ICD.

The researchers used opportunity sampling to select the participants who answered the questionnaire.

Explain one weakness of using opportunity sampling in psychological research.

You have been asked to investigate the effect of motivation on perception. Explain how you would design an experiment to do this.

You need to include the following information in your answer:

• the experimental design you would choose and why this would be suitable

• what you would ask the participants to do and what data you would collect

• the results you would expect to find from your experiment.

Read the following information.

Write a suitable hypothesis for this study.

What is meant by an ‘extraneous variable’?

Identify one extraneous variable the researcher needs to consider and suggest how this variable may affect the results if she does not deal with it.

Describe and evaluate Von Frisch’s bee study. In your description include the method used, the results obtained and a conclusion drawn.

Write a suitable alternative hypothesis for Von Frisch’s bee study.

What is meant by quantitative and qualitative data?

A researcher is studying bees to investigate animal communication. Give one example of quantitative data that the researcher might collect.

Quantitative data

Example of quantitative data