14. Practical

Question 1

What is our social study’s aim?

Answer 1

To investigate if there is a difference in perceived obedience between men and women based in their responses to certain social situations.

(It is perceived obedience, as we are only asking about obedience, not seeing if they will be obedient).

Question 2

What is our studies alternative directional hypothesis?

Answer 2

Female participants will have higher levels of perceived obedience than make participants.

Question 3

What is our studies null hypothesis?

Answer 3

There will be no difference in perceived obedience between male and female participants.

Question 4

What’s the operationalised IV?

Answer 4

The gender of the participant filling out the questionnaire being male or female.

Question 5

What’s the operationalised DV?

Answer 5

The perceived obedience from 1 being very unlikely to 5 being very likely.

Question 6

How will qualitative data be gathered?

Answer 6

-Qualitative data will be gathered by asking participants to complete one open question in their own words.
-This method is used to detect underlying attitudes people may have without directly asking them a question.
-Then thematic analysis will be conducted to generate codes and themes.

Question 7

How will quantitative data be gathered?

Answer 7

-We asked 9 closed questions with a likert scale ranging from 1, very unlikely, to 5, very likely.
-We included 1 reversed order question in order to avoid response bias aswell as 2 filler questions.

Question 8

What is the research design data collection method?

Answer 8

Independent groups design through a self-report questionnaire.

Question 9

What sampling was used?

Answer 9

Opportunity sampling from ages 16 to 60 who were friends and family of students from SHS.

Question 10

What was our practicals procedure?

Answer 10

1. For our practical, we began to create questions based on obedience and the participants signed a consent form.
2. We then drafted a set of questions and created a pilot using three participants to test the objectivity and reliability for our questions.
3. From this we then changed and adapted the questions and sent it to 24 participants (12 male and 12 female).
4. We then selected the 10 most recent male responses and the 10 most recent female responses to remove researcher bias
5. We then calculated total scores for the 10 most recent males and females by adding their scores on the quantitative questions once we removed the scores for the two filler questions and reversed the scores on the reverse scoring question.
6. We then calculated the mean, median, mode, range and standard deviation for the male and female quantitative data.
7. We then conducted thematic analysis on both the male and female data from our 1 qualitative open question by deciding themes and codes for each.

Question 11

What was the mean perceived obedience score for males?

Answer 11

21.8

Question 12

What was the standard deviation of the males?

Answer 12

4.47

Question 13

What was the mean perceived obedience for females?

Answer 13

18.6

Question 14

What was the standard deviation of the females?

Answer 14

3.77

Question 15

What did our social practical conclude?

Answer 15

-From our quantitative data males (21.8) have a higher perceived obedience than females (18.6).
-Although, the male data has a higher standard deviation (4.47) than the female data (3.77) which means there is a greater dispersion from the mean and this could suggest that the male groups had greater individual differences.

Question 16

What improvement could be made to our social psychology practical investigation?

Answer 16

-We could improve this study by gathering a range of participants, as opposed to just friends and family of Surbiton High School, we could have approached members within United Learning Schools Trust (which Surbiton is a part of). This would improve generalisability of the results as it would provide more variation in participants meaning they would be more representative of the target population of men and women.

Question 17

What is a strength of our practical in terms of generalisability?

Answer 17

High generalisability as both males and females are used from a range of ages (16-60) and backgrounds, so it can be applied to a large target population.

Question 18

What is a strength of our practical in terms of reliablity?

Answer 18

The questions and procedure are standardised so that the study can be repeated to find consistent results which increases the reliability as the study can be repeated in order to ensure accurate results.

Question 19

What is a strength of our practical in terms of validity?

Answer 19

High internal validity as extraneous variables were controlled so only the IV (gender) affects the DV (perceived obedience).

Question 20

What is a strength of our practical in terms of ethics?

Answer 20

The questionnaire follows ethical guidelines as the participants are kept anonymous and they have the right to withdraw at any time, and received a debrief.

Question 21

What is a weakness of our practical in terms of generalisability?

Answer 21

Low generalisability as opportunity sampling was used. Only friends and family of 12D psychology students who are available for the study participated, meaning results cannot be generalised to the wider population.

Question 22

What is a weakness of our practical in terms of reliability?

Answer 22

-Low reliability as some of the forms were sent last minute through some other way than email (eg text messages).
-This could mean the procedure is not standardised making the results less reliable.

Question 23

What is a weakness of our practical in terms of validity?

Answer 23

The study has poor external validity due to the fact that it’s measuring perceived obedience through a self report questionnaire, which doesn’t allow situational factors to influence participants behaviour towards obedience.