A Non-Participant Observation Of Mobile Phone Use Flashcards
State the variables that are being assessed (mobile phone)
IV - gender (male or female)
DV - the number of mobile phone interactions (in three minutes)
State an operationalised alternative hypothesis (mobile phone)
There will be a significant difference between males and females in the number of phone interactions including making a phone call, interacting but not making a call, holding the phone without interacting
This is a non-directional hypothesis as there is very little research available on the topic of mobile phone use and gender differences
State an appropriate null hypothesis (mobile phone)
There will be no significant difference between males and females in the number of phone interactions including making a call, interacting but not making a call and holding the phone without interacting
Identify the main characteristics of the sample (mobile phone)
Cannot identify main characteristics as a non-participant observation, participants is whoever is available
Mix of genders, age and ethnicity
Identify the sampling method and the advantages and disadvantages of it (mobile phone)
Event sampling has been used as a sample can be created as an event happens in the real world
+ high ecological validity as in natural environment
+ no demand characteristics as participants unaware they are in a study
- low internal validity - hard to replicate as lack of control of environment
- uncontrolled extraneous variables
Give the procedures of the investigation (mobile phone)
- Put signs up in the local area to pre-warn participants about an observation that will be occurring
- Sit in the sixth-form canteen during a lunch time when it is busy to carry out the covert non-participant observation
- Use a tally chart on my phone to record the number of events taking place in the 3 minute time of a randomly selected participant
Identify an appropriate descriptive statistics and why (mobile phone)
A mode has been selected as nominal data is being used as data is placed into categories with no relative numerical value
Identify an appropriate graphical representation and why (mobile phone)
A bar chart has been used as nominal non-continuous discrete categories have been used which need to be separated
Identify an appropriate inferential statistic and why (mobile phone)
A Chi-Squared test has been used as it was a test of difference between the experimental groups and the control group. The experiment produced nominal data that was from an independent measures design
What were the findings (mobile phone)
The calculated value of X2 was 4.601. This critical value was 5.990 because this was a one tailed test and we are looking for a significance value of 0.05. The value of X2 is lower than the critical value, the result is significant and we must accept the null hypothesis
What conclusions can be drawn from these findings (mobile phone)
The findings show that there was no significant difference between males and females in the number of phone interactions
Identify issues of reliability in the research (mobile phone)
- operationalisation of variables as this was an observation there was no control over IV or DV
- another issue was measuring those who had their phone on the table or were on their phone for the entire 3 minutes
How was the research reliable (mobile phone)
- all participants were observed for the same amount of time
- they observations took part at the same time on the same day so extraneous variables were relatively similar
Identify issues with validity (mobile phone)
- as an observation was carried out their was no control the variables or extraneous variables
- researcher bias as participants picked by researcher
How was the study valid (mobile phone)
High external validity and high mundane realism as participants in natural environment
