practical

Question 1

Aim of the practical

Answer 1

The aim is to see if males and females perceive themselves to be more obedient

Question 2

What are the hypotheses?

Answer 2

1. Alternative hypothesis - there will be a perceived difference in levels of obedience between males and females (non-directional hypothesis (two-tailed))
2. Null hypothesis - there will be no difference in perceived levels of obedience between males and females. Any difference is due to chance.

Question 3

What is the independent variable?

Answer 3

Gender

Question 4

What is the dependent variable?

Answer 4

Obedience

Question 5

What sampling technique are you going to use? Why have you chosen that sampling technique?

Answer 5

Opportunity - people who are available at the time and fit the criteria. This was chosen because it’s time and cost effective

Question 6

What were the ethical guidelines followed?

Answer 6

1. We will use ppts that are 16+ so they can give their consent to take in the questionnaire.
2. Ppts will be told that they have the right to withdraw from the study (in the brief and debrief)
3. To maintain confidentiality no names are to be taken, just their gender and age.

Question 7

How many ppts were there?

Answer 7

44 ppts: 22 females and 22 males ranging from 16 to 54 years.

Question 8

What equipment did you need/use?

Answer 8

Timer as the questionnaire only lasts up to 10 minutes to be completed.
A questionnaire sheet where all the questions were for the ppts.
Debrief sheet to be used at the end explaining what the investigation was about.

Question 9

What questions were used in the questionnaire (open/closed)?

Answer 9

Both open and close ended questions were included.

Question 10

What did each question consist of?

Answer 10

For each question, a likely scale was included from 7 (most likely) down to 1 (least likely) which helps collect quantitative data and an open ended question asking why the ppt had chosen the number above, which collected qualitative data.

Question 11

What was the procedure (step by step)?

Answer 11

Each ppt was approached to participate and once they were chosen, they had been given a standardised instruction.
This standardised instruction stated that each ppt will have up to 10 minutes to answer all of the 5 questions and a reason why. It also stated that they have the right to withdraw at any point in time.
They gave consent and then completed the 10 minute questionnaire nd at the end, they were given a debrief which went through the aim and had the opportunity to ask questions.

Question 12

What were the ethical issues about this practical?

Answer 12

All ppts went through a standardised procedure, meaning all ppts got the same treatment, given the same questions and standardised instructions.
Each ppt was given the right to withdraw at any time.
All of their personal information (except gender and age) was confidential.
A debrief was given at the end which let the ppt be aware about the aim.
In this research, deception was used at the start as some ppts may go along with gender norms and lie about this answer. The use of deception was necessary to ensure the validity of the data.

Question 13

What are the descriptive statistics of the results? What does this tell us?

Answer 13

The results for this investigation are significant. The mean score for males is 26 and for females it’s 30. This shows that males are perceived less obedience than females. The median for males is 26 and for females 30.5, the mode is 26 for males and 31 for females and range is 20 for males and 12 for females. It is noticeable that the range is higher for males than females.

Question 14

What was used to show graphical representation?

Answer 14

A bar chart was drawn to show how gender may change perceived obedience.

Question 15

What was used to analyse qualitative data? Were the findings consistent?

Answer 15

To analyse qualitative data, thematic analysis was used. All the overall findings showed consistency.

Question 16

What were the themes identified?

Answer 16

Males and females were worried about the consequences of their behaviour if they did not follow the rules (they didn’t want to get told off/worried about getting fined if they rebelled).
Males were more likely to obey when given the instructions by a person of authority.
Males and females would be more likely to follow instructions if their actions were more likely to have an impact on other people through politeness (e.g. leaving a mess in a cafe or talking too loudly on the train).
Males are more likely to think about why they need to obey and if they didn’t understand why then they were not likely to obey (e.g. not touching the glass at the zoo as it could harm/cause distress for the animals)

Question 17

What did the results show?

Answer 17

The results show that both genders were obedient where there was high authoritative figures.

Question 18

Are the results significant? What hypothesis is rejected and accepted?

Answer 18

The results are significant and therefore I am going to accept the alternative hypothesis and reject the null hypothesis.

Question 19

What are the strengths of this practical?

Answer 19

• one strength of this practical is in terms of reliability. this means that the practical could be replicated/repeated to test of the consistency of results. all ppts that had taken part went through the same procedure, meaning they all had the same questions to answer within the same time and were given the same instructions.
• one strength of this practical is in terms of validity. this means that the practical tested what it claims to be testing. for example, after the questionnaire was complete by each ppt, they were given a self-report where questions were asked to each ppt directly.

Question 20

what are the weaknesses of this practical?

Answer 20

• one weakness of this practical is in terms of generalisability. this tells us that we are not able to apply the results to the wider population or other situations. in this practical, opportunity sampling was used as it was time and cost effective. however, this could be a biased sample and ppts could share the same characteristics, making it less representative to the public
• one weakness can also be in terms of the type of data being gathered. qualitative data was gathered which means that it is subjective and open to interpretation, which also lacks validity

Question 21

what are improvements for the practical?

Answer 21

• ## one improvement to make in this practical is the use of *pilot study**. this is when many psychologists try out a draft version of an experiment they are planning to run with a smaller sample. the ai of this is to iron out any problems and clarify anything that might be concerning so that the actual experiment goes as smoothly as possible