Personal investigation 1 Flashcards
(24 cards)
State operationalised co-variables
Creativity: score on Northwestern creativity scale (out of 116)
Stroop effect: time taken to complete stroop test (seconds)
Operationalised alternative hypothesis
There will be a significant relationship between the score on the Northwestern creativity scale and time taken to complete stroop test (in seconds)
Identify, is hypothesis directional or non directional?
non directional
Why have you chosen this type of hypothesis?
The way in which the stroop test is operationalised varies significantly between studies, therefore I have chosen to do a non directional hypothesis as we are not directly replicating previous research.
What will your null hypothesis be?
There will be no significant relationship between the time spent (in seconds) completing a stroop test and the scores on the Northwestern creativity scale. Any relationship will be due to chance.
Identify the main characteristics of your sample group and hypothesis and make a link to your co variables
Number: 30 students from Bilborough College
Gender: 15 boys, 15 girls
Other significant features: from Year 12 and Year 13. Ages 16-18
Identify your sampling technique
Opportunity sample
Explain two advantages of your choice of sampling technique
-Easier technique than random because you don’t need a sampling frame. This would be difficult to select randomly from everyone in bilb college
-Less time consuming than stratified as we do not need to place people into categories, this would be difficult with all the people
Explain two limitations of your choice of sampling technique
-Just because people are available does not mean they are willing not every student in Bilborough canteen will say yes to taking part
-Inevitably biased because sample is drawn from small part of college and therefore unlikely to be representative of all Bilborough college or population in general
Description of procedures
-Firstly we collected ps through opportunity sampling. Asked them to take part. Presented them with briefing statement and gained consent. Read instructions to ps outlining creativity test and stroop test.
-Next we gave ps the NW creativity test. Then we recorded their scores (1_116) on a data collection table
-Next we gave ps the stoop task, timing how long it took each p to complete and recorded times in s on data collection table.
-Finally we gave ps a debrief of aims and hypotheses of the study.
Descriptive statistics used to describe data collected
For creativity co-variable: median +range
For stroop effect co-variable: mean + SD
Explain why your choice of descriptive statistic is appropriate to each variable
As creativity is measured on NW creativity scale (1-116), this days is ordinal and therefore I have chosen the median as the most appropriate measure of central tendency for this level of measurement. For measure of dispersion, as I have used the median, the most appropriate measure is the range as I cannot calculate SD without a mean.
As the stroop effect is measured as time taken to complete stroop test in seconds, this data is ratio and therefore I have chosen the mean as the most appropriate measure of central tendency for this level of measurement. For measure of dispersion I have chosen SD as I have already collected the mean and can use SD in my calculations.
Graphical representation
Scattergraph
Explain why your choice of graphical representation is appropriate.
A scatter graph is the most appropriate graph as I have conducted a correlation with co-variables of creativity score and time on stroop task. These will be plotted on a scatter graph to see the strength of the relationsj between creativity and stroop effect.
Identify appropriate inferential statistic to display data collected
Spearman’s rank
Explain why your choice of inferential statistic is appropriate and link
Spearman’s rank is the most appropriate inferential test as I am looking at the relationship between creativity and stroop effect
As all the Bilborough students did the creativity scale and the stroop test, the data is related.
Lastly the level of measurement for my data is at least ordinal as creativity is measured on a subjective scale 1-116 and the stroop effect is measured as time taken in seconds.
Summarise findings
r= -0.4208
What conclusions can you draw from these findings with link to variables
As the calculated value was -0.4208 which is less than the critical value of 0.447 the findings are not significant.
At p<_0.05 therefore the null hypothesis was accepted that there will be no significant relationship between the time spent in seconds completing a stroop test and the scores on the NW creativity scale. Any relationship will be due to chance.
Identify two issues of reliability and how they were dealt with
-During the pilot the issue we faced was that the study was not following a standardised procedure, in that some of us did the creativity questionnaire first and some of us in the group did the stroop test first. We dealt with this by deciding as a group that Bilborough students would do the creativity questionnaire first and then the stroop test.
-One issue when planning our research was the timing of the stroop test was not consistent between the researchers in our group. We dealt with this by using an online version of the stroop test that timed the completion of the test to avoid inconsistencies between researchers
explain how you established your research was reliable
We created a set of standardised instructions for all Bilb college students to read regarding how to complete the creativity scale and stroop test. This ensured all students had a consistent experience of the study.
we clearly operationalised variables of creativity (NW creativity scale) and stroop effect (completion of stroop test) to ensure that variables were consistently applied throughout study
identify at least two issues of reliability
- how to measure creativity. we needed to ensure we were accurately measuring something that can be defined in a few ways. TO DEAL WITH THIS we decided to use an established creativity questionnaire (NWCS) which allowed us to clearly operationalised variables creativity.
Another issue of validity we faced was that when timing the stroop test by hand we weren’t stopping the watch accurately enough when the student finished the test. TO DEAL WITH THIS: we decided to use an online stroop test where the student would presss stop when they had finished reading the words. we found this more accurately measured the time taken to complete the stroop
how did you establish your research to be valid
•We established our research was valid by assesssing the content validity of our correlational study. We did this by asking our psychology teacher to assess whether the way in which we had operationalised creativity (NWCS) and stroop effect (time taken to complete stroop test) was accurate ways to measure both of these concepts, she agreed that these measures were accurate, therefore the correlation could be said to have good content validity
•The stroop effect is a well established psychological phenomenon and by using the stroop test to measure this we can say our study has good construct validity
two ethical issues you were concerned about before hand
•lack of informed consent given to bilb students as it is importany each one was able to give fully informed consent
• potentially issue of privacy so bilb students could remain anonymous identities not found from research
two ways to improve research
•standardising location. take all students to same quiet room to ensure they had no distractions around them, this would reduce extraneous variables and therefore improve validity
•do research together to ensure we explain research in same way and same order of instructions to ensure study is standardised, improving reliability
