Practical: Gender differences in obedience

Question 1

What was the aim of the research?

Answer 1

To investigate whether the gender of a teacher has an effect on class obedience.

Question 2

What was the experimental hypothesis?

Answer 2

Students are more likely to obey a male teacher.

Question 3

What was the alternate hypothesis?

Answer 3

Students are more likely to obey a female teacher.

Question 4

What was the null hypothesis?

Answer 4

The gender of the teacher has no effect on students’ obedience.

Question 5

What was our target population?

Answer 5

Students attending further education in the UK.

Question 6

What research method was used?

Answer 6

Self-report method; we used a questionnaire.

Question 7

Who were used in the sample?

Answer 7

28 college students

Question 8

What sampling method was used?

Answer 8

Random

Question 9

What was the content of the questionnaire?

Answer 9

• 9 closed questions
• 1 open question
• 10 filler questions

Question 10

Describe the procedure of the investigation.

Answer 10

• As a class we decided what questions to ask. We decided on 9 closed questions and 1 open question with 10 filler questions
• From these, we constructed our questionnaire
• We then telephoned our ppts and used a standardised script
• We gave each ppt a number to ensure confidentiality and informed them of their right to withdraw
• We then proceeded to ask the questions and recorded the ppts answer on the survey sheet
• The ppts were then asked if they had any questions or concerns and were then thanked for their time
• The data from the relevant questions were recorded on a tally sheet and data from the filler questions were disregarded
• We calculated the mean and the percentage for each piece of data

Question 11

What could we conclude from the investigation?

Answer 11

We had no significant results, meaning that we can accept our null hypothesis.

Question 12

What quantitative data did we get?

Answer 12

Overall 49%

Question 13

Evaluation of our self-report investigation:

Answer 13

• Our sample was representative of our target population, however our sample size was not large enough to generalise to a whole population.
• The self-report method gives a lot of data quickly and is inexpensive, however ppts answers may be subject to bias.
• The use of closed questions made the data easy to analyse, however it may not have allowed ppts to express true opinion.

Question 14

How did we ensure that ethical guidelines were met?

Answer 14

• Confidentiality: no names were used
• Right to withdraw: ppts were told they can withdraw at any time
• Protection from psychological / physical harm: ppts were asked if they have any questions or concerns after the questionnaire