personal investigation (questionnaire)

Question 1

State the two variables you are assessing

Answer 1

IV- Pet owner / non pet owner

DV stress levels

Question 2

Outline how the IV and DV were operationalised

Answer 2

Pet/Non pet owner operationalised by giving ten pet owners and non pet owners questionnaires on perceived stress.

Level of stress operationalised by recording the total stress score for each participant using the perceive stress scale (PSS)

Question 3

State an operationalised alternative hypothesis:

Answer 3

Participants who own a pet will report lower stress levels on the perceived stress scale (lower score on PSS questionnaire) than those without a pet who will score higher on the perceived stress scale.

Question 4

Identify if your alternative hypothesis is directional or non-directional

Answer 4

directional hypothesis, as we’re predicting the direction of the difference, and saying that those who own a pet will report lower stress levels than those who don’t have a pet.

Question 5

Justify/Explain why you chose to use a directional or non-directional hypothesis:

Answer 5

A directional hypothesis was chosen because evidence suggests that pets can recue stress. This is also made relevant through the use of pet therapy. for example. Or the presence of pets reducing blood pressure in children.

Question 6

State an appropriate null hypothesis

Answer 6

There wont be significant difference in the stress (On PSS) purported by those who owns by those who own pets and those who don’t. Any difference found is due to chance.

Question 7

Type of research method

Answer 7

Questionnaire
Perceived stress scale questionnaire

Question 8

Strengths and weaknesses of the research method

Answer 8

An advantage of using questionnaires is that it’s quick to implement and gather large amounts of data in a short time period. In the research it was easy for researchers to give out questionnaires to pet & non pet owners on perceived stress. In total, gathering the data took 30 minutes, demonstrating its cost efficiency.

A disadvantage of questionnaires is that participants may be untruthful, also susceptible to social desirability bias. Participants may also be embarrassed about being honest about their stress levels and lie to rate their stress levels lower.

Question 9

Type of Research Design

Answer 9

This is an independent group design, as you have two separate groups (pet and non-pet owners)

Question 10

Strengths and weaknesses of the research design

Answer 10

Advantage of independent group design is that you don’t have order effects. As participants only completed the perceived stress questionnaire once, so less likely to complete the questionnaire in a biased way.

One disadvantage of independent group design is that there’ll be high levels of individual differences between pet owners/non-pet owners, which may skew the results. For example (variation of age in the groups could impact stress levels).

Question 11

Identify the sampling method you employed to select your sample

Answer 11

The type of sample used was opportunity sampling.

We may ask people who were available at the time ten pet owners & non pet owners were asked in college on a Monday lunchtime to complete the perceived stress questionnaire.

Question 12

Strengths and weaknesses of the sampling technique

Answer 12

The strength of using opportunity sampling is that it takes away researcher bias as you must use whoever’s available at the time (college on a Monday lunchtime). The researcher couldn’t purposefully select non-pet owners that would score high on the perceived stress to support their hypothesis.

A weakness of opportunity sampling is that it may not be representative of the target population. For example you may get more female pet owners on a Monday lunchtime which would make it difficult to generalise the results to male pet owners.

Question 13

Outline steps to assess reliability and strategies to deal with it

Answer 13

An issue of reliability was that the perceived stress scale created by Cohen, had some inconsistency in the rating scales which could have caused confusion for pet/non-pet owners answering it.

This was dealt with by conducting a pilot study to assess internal reliability and identify if this would be an issue. Also participants reported they were confused by some rating scales. The researchers changed the question wording to ensure the same rating scales were used on all questionnaires to ensure high levels of internal reliability.

Question 14

Outline steps to assess validity and strategies to deal with i

Answer 14

One issue of validity is that there may be social desirability bias as pet owners and non-pet owners may present themselves in a more favourable light by scoring lower on the perceived stress scale.

This was dealt with by ensuring that the questionnaires were anonymous, and the participants were given privacy when completing the perceived stress scale so they’re more likely to be honest and reduce the likelihood of social desirability bias.

One strategy assessing external validity is ensuring concurrent validity. This is established by comparing performance on a new test with a previously established test on the same topic. In this research, the perceived stress scale was utilities by using a standardised measurement designed by Cohen et al.

Question 15

Give a step-by-step description of your procedures

Answer 15

We have decided on our aim and written an alternative/null hypothesis.

We fully operationalised the term stress by using a perceived stress scale which is a standardised measurement design by Cohe

We approached students in the canteen on a Monday lunchtime and ask if they would complete the questionnaire.

We gave the privacy to complete it and return the questionnaire in a ballot box for confidentiality

Once we had a total of ten pet owners and ten non-pet owners, we collated our data

We then carried out descriptive and inferential statistics on the obtained data.

Finally, we compared our observed value from our Mann Whitney U test with our critical value to determine whether we accept/reject our null hypothesis.

Question 16

Identify appropriate descriptive statistics that could be used to describe the data collected

Answer 16

Mean (measure of central tendency), this would be calculated by adding the total stress scores and dividing by ten for each group (pet owners & non-pet owners)

Range (measure of dispersion), this was calculated by taking the lowest stress score from the highest stress score for each group (pet owners & non-pet owners)

Question 17

Explain why your choice of descriptive statistics is appropriate

Answer 17

Mean is the most appropriate measure of central tendency as it’s the most sensitive measure because it considers all the stress scores for each group (pet owners & non-pet owners).

The range is an appropriate measure of dispersion which is useful to identify the distribution of stress scores for each group-pet owners & non-pet owners.

Question 18

Identify an appropriate graphical representation that could be used to describe the data collected:

Answer 18

An appropriate graphical representation would be a bar chart.

Question 19

Explain why your choice of graphical representation is appropriate

Answer 19

A bar chart is good to show comparative data between the perceived stress scores of pet owners & non-pet owners. It’s a sample to construct and easy to interpret easy to compare the mean stress scores of pet owners & non-pet owners

Question 20

Identify an appropriate inferential statistical test that you used to analyse the data collected:

Answer 20

Mann whitney U test

the value of U is = 1.5

The critical value is 27

Question 21

Explain why your choice of inferential statistical test is appropriate

Answer 21

This was a test of difference as you’re comparing perceived stress scores of pet/non-pet owners.

This was an independent group design as there were two groups of ten participants: pet owners & non-pet owners.

Ordinal data as a perceived stress scale of 0-4 was used and the total perceived stress scores could be raked from the lowest-highest for each group (pet/non-pet owners)

Question 22

Summarise your findings (Note the results of graphical representations, descriptive and inferential statistics including observed and critical values):

Answer 22

Mean for PO= 16.5 NPO= 28.9

Range = 17 = 19

Mann whitney U test

the observed value = 1.5

The critical value is 27

Question 23

What conclusion(s) can you draw from these findings?

Answer 23

As the observed value is 1.5 is less than the critical value of 27 at the (<0.05) level of significance. We can then reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative hypothesis and can conclude that there us a difference in received stress scores of pet owners and non pet owners.

Question 24

identify at least two ethical issues and how you dealt with them.

Answer 24

Valid consent as students were the researchers on this project, they were aged between 16-18, so they would need valid consent from an authority figure to participate in the research.

To resolve that issue a letter was sent to parents/guardians to assume consent of students participating in college based project and parents would chose to opt out if they didn’t want their child to participate.

Confidentiality and Privacy As this was a questionnaire there could be concerns that the personal identities could be easily identified via the individual perceived stress scores.

This was solved by ensuring no personal data like name/age/gender were asked of the participants. They were also given privacy to complete the questionnaire and return in a closed ballot box, so it would be impossible to identify who completed each questionnaire.

Question 25

Explain at least three ways in which you could improve your research:

Answer 25

Used a very small sample, ten pet-owners and ten non pet owners, therefore it would be difficult to generalise the findings in a wider context. Also the participants were second year A level students (conducted in March 2023) and many of them have exams so their stress levels would naturally be higher than other students in the college. This could be improved by doing an online questionnaire for all students in the college. Thai would give a more reflective set of data. This would be more useful in identifying trends and patterns in behaviour.

All the questions in the questionnaire were close ended and used a rating scale from 0-4 which doesn’t give the researcher the opportunity to investigate in more depth why people may score high or low in each question. This could be improved by having some open-ended questions which can provide us with qualitative data and give participants an opportunity to provide more personal responses to their perceived stress scores. This could be particularly useful for followup research or an idea for further investigation.

Although participants were given privacy to complete the questionnaire to ensure confidentiality and ensure truthful responses, the canteen was very busy on a Monday lunchtime, so some participants may have felt there was not enough privacy. In the future, a quieter location would be identified to conduct the research such as using some classrooms or participants to complete the questionnaire which could increase the level of privacy.