7.2: Pilot studies Flashcards
A psychologist was reading an article about typical dream themes in adults.
The psychologist was interested in finding out whether dream themes differed between males and females, particularly in terms of social interaction. She decided to conduct a pilot study. Twenty undergraduate students (8 male and 12 female) volunteered for the study. For a six-week period the students were interviewed at 9 am each morning when they arrived at university. Interviewers, who did not know the purpose of the study, carried out and recorded the dream interviews.
What is meant by a pilot study? Explain one possible reason why the psychologist decided to conduct a pilot study for this investigation (3 marks)
Pilot studies are small-scale investigations conducted before research
A psychologist was reading an article about typical dream themes in adults.
The psychologist was interested in finding out whether dream themes differed between males and females, particularly in terms of social interaction. She decided to conduct a pilot study. Twenty undergraduate students (8 male and 12 female) volunteered for the study. For a six-week period the students were interviewed at 9 am each morning when they arrived at university. Interviewers, who did not know the purpose of the study, carried out and recorded the dream interviews.
What is meant by a pilot study? Explain one possible reason why the psychologist decided to conduct a pilot study for this investigation (3 marks).
Pilot studies are small-scale investigations conducted before research.
One possible reason why the psychologist decided to conduct a pilot study for this investigation
One possible reason why the psychologist decided to conduct a pilot study for this investigation is to identify whether there needed to be any modifications in the design
A psychologist was reading an article about typical dream themes in adults.
The psychologist was interested in finding out whether dream themes differed between males and females, particularly in terms of social interaction. She decided to conduct a pilot study. Twenty undergraduate students (8 male and 12 female) volunteered for the study. For a six-week period the students were interviewed at 9 am each morning when they arrived at university. Interviewers, who did not know the purpose of the study, carried out and recorded the dream interviews.
What is meant by a pilot study? Explain one possible reason why the psychologist decided to conduct a pilot study for this investigation (3 marks).
Pilot studies are small-scale investigations conducted before research.
One possible reason why the psychologist decided to conduct a pilot study for this investigation is to identify whether there needed to be any modifications in the design.
Example
For example, whether the interview questions were sufficiently relevant to dream content
Explain one role of peer review in validating research (3 marks)
One role of peer review in validating research is to validate the quality and relevance of research.
This is because peer review involves specialists in the relevant field (objective and unknown to the researcher), whose role is to read and assess the quality of work, in particular ensuring that the formulation of hypotheses, the methodology chosen and statistical tests used for analysing the data are appropriate and that the conclusions drawn are correct
