Personal Investigation (stroop+creativity) Flashcards
What are the operationalised co variables of the study?
Creativity- score on North western creativity scale out of 116.
Stroop effect- time taken to complete stroop test in seconds.
Give an operationalised alternative hypothesis for the study.
There will be a significant relationship between the score on the Northwestern creativity scale and the time taken to complete the stroop test in seconds.
Is the hypothesis directional or non-directional?
Non-directional.
Why did the study use a non-directional hypothesis?
The way in which the stroop test is operationalised varies significantly between studies, therefore, a non-directional hypothesis has been chosen as previous research is not being directly replicated.
Give the null hypothesis of the study.
There will be no significant correlation 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.
Describe the ps of the study.
20 ps from year 13, mix of girls and boys.
What sampling method was used?
Opportunity.
Give 2 advantages of chosen sampling technique.
-It’s less time consuming than other techniques, for example, random sampling. It takes longer as you have to gather a list of everyone’s names and pick sample from that.
-It’s easier to complete than a stratified sample as there are no calculations involved.
Give 2 disadvantages of chosen sampling technique.
-People in the canteen who are asked, may not want to take part. Therefore, it may take longer to produce a sample.
-The sample is likely to be biased as we will likely go up to people we know or people who seem friendly.
Give the step-by-step procedure of the study.
1- First we will collect our sample by asking people around Bilborough College to take part.
2- We will tell them the aim of the study, brief them on the ethics, and have them sign a consent form.
3- Then we explain have the creativity test works.
4- They will complete the creativity test and their result will be recorded in our table.
5- We will explain how to complete the stroop test.
6- Then they will complete the stroop test. We will record how long it takes to complete this (in seconds) using a stopwatch. This will be written on a data table.
7- We will debrief all ps at the end of the study and then get them to sign a consent form.
8- They will be thanked for participating.
Identify an appropriate descriptive statistic that could be used to describe the data.
For creativity co-variable: median and range.
For stroop effect co-variable: mean and standard deviation.
Explain why these descriptive statistics were appropriate.
As creativity is measured on the northwestern creativity scale (0-116), data is ordinal and so we have chosen the median as the most appropriate measure of central tendency for this level of measurement. For measure of dispersion, we used the range which is the most appropriate as the standard deviation cannot be calculated without a mean. As the stroop effect is measured in time to complete the stroop test, this data is ratio so we have chosen the mean. For the measure of dispersion, we chose standard deviation as we already calculated the mean.
Identify an appropriate graphical representation of the data.
Scattergraph
Why is this graphical representation appropriate?
It’s the most appropriate graph as we have conducted a correlation with the co-variables of creativity score+time on the stroop test. These will be plotted on a scattergraph to see the strength of the relationship between creativity and stroop effect.
Give an appropriate inferential statistic to display the data.
Spearman’s rank.
Why is the choice of inferential statistic appropriate?
Spearman’s rank is the most appropriate inferential statistic as we are looking at the relationship between creativity and stroop effect. As all Bilborough students did both the creativity scale and stroop test, the data is related. Lastly the level of measurement is at least ordinal as creativity is measured on a subjective scale, and the stroop effect is measured in time taken in seconds.
What was the median and range on the creativity scale?
Median: 52
Range: 31.4.
What was the mean and standard deviation of stroop time?
Mean: 16.17.
Standard deviation: 8.52.
What is the calculated and critical value of the study?
Calculated value: r=0.0034r3.
Critical value: 0.447.
Results are not significant.
What conclusions can be drawn?
As the calculated value was 0.00343 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.
‘There will be no significant correlation between time spent (in secs) completing a stroop test and the scores on the northwestern creativity scale, any relationship is due to chance.
Identify 2 issues of reliability.
-An issue when planning our research was that 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.
-Another issue in the beginning was that the study was not following a standardised procedure (some did the creativity first, others did the stroop). This was dealt with by deciding that Bilborugh students would do creativity first, then stroop.
How did we establish that the study was reliable?
-We created a set of standardised instructions for all Bilborough students to read, regarding how to complete the creativity scale and stroop test. This ensured all ps had a consistent experience of the study.
-We clearly operationalised the variables of the creativity scale and stroop effect, to ensure that the variables were consistently applied throughout the study.
Identify 2 issues with validity you faced.
-One issue was how to measure creativity. We needed to ensure that 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 (northwestern creativity scale), which allowed us to clearly operationalised creativity.
-Another issue was that when timing the stroop test by hand, the watch wasn’t being stopped accurately enough when the student finished the test. So we decided to use an online stroop test where the student would press stop when they finished. We found this more accurate.
How did we establish our study to be valid?
-We assessed the content validity of our study by asking our psychology teacher to assess whether the way in which we had operationalised creativity and the stroop effect were accurate ways to measure both concepts. She agreed these 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 it, we can say that our study has good construct validity.
Identify 2 ethical issues that concerned you before the study.
-One issue that we may face is a lack of informed consent. This is due to most of our ps being under the age of 18.
-Another issue is lack of confidentially. Data will be gathered from all ps.
Explain how these ethical issues were dealt with.
-To help with informed consent, all ps will be over the age of 16, and be briefed.
-All data will be kept anonymous.
Explain 2 ways that our research could have been improved and why it would have improved it.
-One way we could’ve improved our study is by completing it at the same time of day for all students. All data was gathered at different times so doing it at the same time will increased internal validity.
-Another improvement was gathering a more representative sample by using stratified sampling. All ps were yr13 so gathering a more representative sample will produce more generalisable results.
