Personal Investigation 1 Flashcards
What is the IV of our study?
Age of participants
What is the DV of our study?
Time that ppt slept over a period of 7 days in minutes and seconds
Is our Hypothesis directional or Non-directional?
Directional
Explain why our study is directional or non-directional
It’s directional as there is a large amount of evidence pointing towards sleep quality decreasing with age
Which research method did our study use?
Its a Quasi-experiment
Which experimental design did our study use?
Independent group design
Justify why we used the experimental design that we selected
As our IV is age , participants were split into 2 groups C1 (young) and C2 (older) so ppts were split into independent groups
Which sampling method was used
Voulnteer sampling
What are 2 strengths of our sampling technique?
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
What are two weaknesses of the sampling technique we selected
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
Which descriptive statistics were used in our study?
The mean of hours slept
Standard deviation
Why are our descriptive statistics appropriate for our study?
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
Which graphical representation did we use ?
A bar chart
Why is our graphical representation apropriate?
We are using ratio data (time slept in hrs and minutes) and we want to see the difference between 2 conditions
Which inferential statistic was selected?
Mann Whitney U Test
Why was the inferential statistic used appropriate?
Because it was a test of difference , with independent groups and Ratio data was used
What were 2 issues of reliability that we ran into during our study?
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
How did we deal with the 2 issues of relability?
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
What were two issues of validity that we encountered during our study?
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
How did we deal with the 2 issues of validity in our study?
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
What are two ethical issues we ran into?
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)
How did we deal with these ethical issues?
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
Whats two ways we could improve our research?
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
What is the aim of our study?
To investigate the effect of age on time slept
