Personal Investigation 1

Question 1

What is the IV of our study?

Answer 1

Age of participants

Question 2

What is the DV of our study?

Answer 2

Time that ppt slept over a period of 7 days in minutes and seconds

Question 3

Is our Hypothesis directional or Non-directional?

Answer 3

Directional

Question 4

Explain why our study is directional or non-directional

Answer 4

It’s directional as there is a large amount of evidence pointing towards sleep quality decreasing with age

Question 5

Which research method did our study use?

Answer 5

Its a Quasi-experiment

Question 6

Which experimental design did our study use?

Answer 6

Independent group design

Question 7

Justify why we used the experimental design that we selected

Answer 7

As our IV is age , participants were split into 2 groups C1 (young) and C2 (older) so ppts were split into independent groups

Question 8

Which sampling method was used

Answer 8

Voulnteer sampling

Question 9

What are 2 strengths of our sampling technique?

Answer 9

We have the chance to gather a representative sample due to the nature of the technique being volunteer

Its convenient for us as due to our circumstance , we dont have a lot of time/resources

Question 10

What are two weaknesses of the sampling technique we selected

Answer 10

We may get ppts who display volunteer bias due to the type of ppt that self-selected sampling gathers

We may not gather a sufficient enough sample size for the study to take place if not enough people come forward

Question 11

Which descriptive statistics were used in our study?

Answer 11

The mean of hours slept

Standard deviation

Question 12

Why are our descriptive statistics appropriate for our study?

Answer 12

Mean would be used to see an average of hours and minutes slept over a period of 7 days

Standard deviation will show us the spread of data so we can find consistencies and outliers

Question 13

Which graphical representation did we use ?

Answer 13

A bar chart

Question 14

Why is our graphical representation apropriate?

Answer 14

We are using ratio data (time slept in hrs and minutes) and we want to see the difference between 2 conditions

Question 15

Which inferential statistic was selected?

Answer 15

Mann Whitney U Test

Question 16

Why was the inferential statistic used appropriate?

Answer 16

Because it was a test of difference , with independent groups and Ratio data was used

Question 17

What were 2 issues of reliability that we ran into during our study?

Answer 17

Inter-rater relablity may be an issue , due to the study using self-report technqiues , an example of this would be a ppt recording their time slept diffrently to another ppt

Another issue may be the studies external reliabilty , for example , its linked to the uk therfore we could not compare it to another country

Question 18

How did we deal with the 2 issues of relability?

Answer 18

We dealt with the issue of inter-rater reliability by creating a standardised pamplet which was given to all ppts , that included clear instructions on how to record data

We would find it hard to deal with the issue of external relability , so we made sure to mention in the debrief how this study cant be generated to the wider world

Question 19

What were two issues of validity that we encountered during our study?

Answer 19

Situational variables, specifically if the ppts sleep environment would hinder the amount of sleep they got in hrs and minutes

Participants variables such as ilness that could effect the amount of time slept in hrs and minutes

Question 20

How did we deal with the 2 issues of validity in our study?

Answer 20

We asked ppts in our brief if they had a negative sleep environment , if they did , we didnt record their data

Similarly we asked ppts in our brief if they had any ilnesses that would hinder there sleep , if they did , we didnt record their data

Question 21

What are two ethical issues we ran into?

Answer 21

Potential for psychological harm as ppts may be caused Anxiety from having to record their time slept in hrs and minutes

Ppts may be concerned about remaining confidential as the study requires some personal information to be recorded (e.g Age)

Question 22

How did we deal with these ethical issues?

Answer 22

We dealt the potential for psychological harm by reminding the ppts of there right to withdraw at anytime , most notably during the brief and also it was offered during the debrief

We also dealt with the issue of confidentiality by only recording data absolutely necessary data (age and time slept in hrs and minutes) , we never gathered more senstive data such as names

Question 23

Whats two ways we could improve our research?

Answer 23

We would use a larger and wider sample, we would gather more ppts for our study , this would lead to more generalisable results

We would record a longer period of time , for example a month instead of 7 days

Question 24

What is the aim of our study?

Answer 24

To investigate the effect of age on time slept