7.1: Correlational studies

Question 1

A team of researchers used a stress scale to measure the amount of stress that individual workers at a factory experienced and the number of days they were off sick over a 6 month period. The researchers found that as the amount of stress increased, the number of days absent also increased.

Outline one strength and one weakness of using correlational research to investigate the effects of stress on health (4 marks)

Answer 1

One strength is that a correlational study would be ethical

Question 2

A team of researchers used a stress scale to measure the amount of stress that individual workers at a factory experienced and the number of days they were off sick over a 6 month period. The researchers found that as the amount of stress increased, the number of days absent also increased.

Outline one strength and one weakness of using correlational research to investigate the effects of stress on health (4 marks).
One strength is that a correlational study would be ethical, why?

Answer 2

One strength is that a correlational study would be ethical, because it would not be possible to deliberately subject participants to stress to see the effect on their health, as would be necessary with an experiment

Question 3

A team of researchers used a stress scale to measure the amount of stress that individual workers at a factory experienced and the number of days they were off sick over a 6 month period. The researchers found that as the amount of stress increased, the number of days absent also increased.

Outline one strength and one weakness of using correlational research to investigate the effects of stress on health (4 marks).
One strength is that a correlational study would be ethical, because it would not be possible to deliberately subject participants to stress to see the effect on their health, as would be necessary with an experiment.

One weakness of correlation

Answer 3

One weakness of correlation would be that causality cannot be established

Question 4

A team of researchers used a stress scale to measure the amount of stress that individual workers at a factory experienced and the number of days they were off sick over a 6 month period. The researchers found that as the amount of stress increased, the number of days absent also increased.

Outline one strength and one weakness of using correlational research to investigate the effects of stress on health (4 marks).
One strength is that a correlational study would be ethical, because it would not be possible to deliberately subject participants to stress to see the effect on their health, as would be necessary with an experiment.

One weakness of correlation would be that causality cannot be established, why?

Answer 4

One weakness of correlation would be that causality cannot be established, because the study is not performed under controlled conditions and so the effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable cannot be seen