PI2 revision & exam scores

Question 1

aim

Answer 1

to investigate whether there’s a correlation between the hours spent revising & exam scores obtained

Question 2

null hypothesis

Answer 2

there’ll be no rel between the hours which students spent revising & raw marks (out of 87) that they obtained

Question 3

non-directional hypothesis

Answer 3

there will be a correlation between the hours spent revising & raw marks out of 87 which students obtained

Question 4

directional hypothesis

Answer 4

there will be a positive correlation between the hours spent revising & raw marks (out of 87) obtained (participants who spend more hours revising will recieve a higher raw mark out of 87)

Question 5

operationalised variables

Answer 5

revision : hours spent revising (rounded to nearest hr)

exam score : raw mark obtained as ps sat same test which was out of 87

Question 6

sampling technique

Answer 6

sample: post 16 psychology students
opportunity sampling: as students left their classroom (after recieving their mark) researcher asked first ones they saw (who were willing to answer)

Question 7

method

Answer 7

• repeated measures - all students were asked the same questions (“how many hours did you spend revising and what was your raw mark (out of 87))
• interview/questionairre ??

Question 8

procedure

Answer 8

1. students sat same psychology exam in same place at same time and recieved their marks on same occasion
2. after recieving their results, students were asked how many hours they spent revising & their raw mark
3. data was recorded in a table & then plotted in a scatter graph to see if there was a correlation

Question 9

findings

Answer 9

a very weak but postitive correlation was found
(it almost looked like there was no correlation on graph)
MEDIAN - 39 and RANGE - 48

Question 10

descriptive statistics

Answer 10

MEDIAN - was used as data was estimates (as students were asked how many hrs they thought they had spend revising 2 nearest hr) & you just look 4 middle no.
ORDINAL - hrs spent revising as don’t know gap as ps idea of an hr may differ
INTERVAL - raw mark obtained as we do know the difference between each value as paper was out of 87

Question 11

inferential test

Answer 11

SPEARMAN’S RANK

• correlation between exam scores & hrs spent revising
• data types is ordinal & interval
• experimental design is repeated measures

Question 12

establishing reliability

Answer 12

• operationalising co-variables & using same questions helped establish reliabilty by making it easier for other researchers to replicate study & get consistent result (as could ask same questions & use same operationalised definitions)
• compared exp to previous research to ensure that similar findings were obtained

Question 13

issues with reliabilty

Answer 13

• participants perception of what constitutes an hour of revision may differ so if repeated findings are unlikely 2 be same
• using raw marks may be problematic if other researchers are looking at students who sat different papers

Question 14

issues with validity

Answer 14

INTERNAL - ps may have lied about hrs spent revising due to SDB, extraneous variables may have affected result (eg: natural intelligence, mood before sitting exam)
POPULATION - ps were from same school & did same subject so can’t be generalised how revision time affects exam scores in other subjects of other students from other schools/ pops

Question 15

establishing validity

Answer 15

INTERNAL - ps sat same party at same time in same room & exam was marked by same teacher - controlling these conditions helped reduced risk of extraneous factors influencing results
ECOLOGICAL - conducting it in field helped mantain EV as ps weren’t forced to revise a certain time, were asked how long they spent revising & how that affected results - more generalisable to real life settings

Question 16

ethics

Answer 16

confedentiality - ensuring that students information was kept private & stored securely
risk of harm - asking students to share their results could be distressing - esp if they felt they spent a long time revising & still didn’t do well

Question 17

dealing with ethical issues

Answer 17

confedentiality - didn’t include the ps name in my report so they couldn’t be idetified & you wouldn’t know who recieved what score
harm - made sure that ps understood they didn’t have to share their results if they found it upsetting to prevent them from feeling pressured or too distressed

Question 18

significant ??

Answer 18

yes because we used SPEARMAN’S RANK & observed value (0.337) was greater than critical value (0.227)
- SO 95% of results (raw mark obtained) was due to co-variable (revision time), 5% or less was due to chance, we accept experimental hypothesis & reject null one