practical investigation

Question 1

what is the aim of your social practical investigation?

Answer 1

to investigate whether males or females perceive themselves to be more obedient

Question 2

state the two-tailed alternative hypothesis of your social practical investigation

Answer 2

there will be a significant difference in the perceptions of obedience (measured by questionnaire) between males and females.

Question 3

state the null hypothesis of your social practical investigation

Answer 3

there will be no significant difference in the perceptions of obedience (measured by questionnaire) between males and females.

Question 4

social practical - considered ethics

Answer 4

ethics were upheld through
- informed consent
- right to withdraw at any time throughout the study
- no deception
- confidentiality

Question 5

social practical - method

Answer 5

self-report method weas used through our questionnaire from google forms

Question 7

social practical - sample

Answer 7

using opporunity sampling we gathered 21 participants (7 male and 14 female) aged 16-18 from CoP

Question 8

social practical - procedure

Answer 8

• participants were asked to complete a consent form (which specified their right to withdraw and confidentiality)
• then asked to complete the obedience questionnaire with qualitative and quantitative questions (2 open questions with 8 various closed questions)
• finally participants were fully debriefed with all the information and why they completed the questionnaire

Question 9

social practical - findings (quantitative data)

Answer 9

question - how many times this week have you been obedient?
- the mean for females was 5.6 and the mean for males was 5.1
- the mean for females was higher but not by a significant amount (0.5)
- therefore there was no signficant difference found between how many times males and females wer obedient

question - on a scale of 1-10 how obedient are you?
the range of males was 5 and the range of females was 3
- this presents that males had a wider spread of how obedient they perceive themselves and had a higher variability than females
- whilst the distribution of females answering this question was much smaller
the mode of females was 8 and the mode of males was 7
- this presents females perceive themselves as more obedient than males perceive themselves

question - do you feel in control of your own actions?
- 64.29% of females said no compared to 42.86% oif males said no
- this presents that females are less in control of their own actions

Question 10

social practical - findings (qualitative data)

Question 11

social practical - conclusions

Answer 11

• both males and females perceive males to be less obedient and females perceive females to be more obedient
• no significant difference between how obedient they are (gender may not be a valid reason for who’s more obedient)
• both males and females have similar views on the way they would obey/act towards an authority figure
• females feel less in control of their own actions

Question 12

social practical - strengths

Answer 12

P: a strenth of our social practical is that we used the self-report which had a standardised procedure

E: all participants answered the same 10 questions on whether males or females perceive themselves to be more obedient and followed the procedure in the same way.

T: therefore our research is reliable and can be replicated by other researchers to check for consistent results on gender differences in perception of obedience

P: a strength of our study is that we used the self report method that is ethical

E: this is because guidelines such as informed consent and confidentiality were upheld in our self-report as participants had completed a consent form and had the right to withdraw at any point in the study on gender differences in perceptions of obedience

T: this means our study was ethical and didnt cause pps physical or psychological harm, meaning it can be replicated without any ethical considerations

Question 13

social practical - weaknesses

Answer 13

P - social desirability bias

E - for example pps might think that society expected them to be obedient, so they could have lied to how obedient they are when answering the questions on gender differences in perceptions of obedience

T - this reduces the validity of the study beacuse we would not find out about actual gender differences in perceptions of obedience

P - low generalisability

E - our sample had only 21 pps consisting of 7 males and 14 females

T - our sample cant be generalised as it is not representative of the target pop, meaning our findings about gender diff in pereptions of obedience are’t useful

Question 14

social practical - improvements

Answer 14

P - change the sample to make it generalisable

E - e.g. 100 participants could be gathered (rather than 21) and to increase the age range from 16-18 years old.

T- this would make the sample/results more generalisable, so we can find out about perceptiosn of obedience between males and females and presume that this behaviour would apply to other people aged between 16-30 (so representative)

P - use a different type of sampling

E - use random sampling instead of opportunity

T - lack of bias as opp sampling may have caused researcher bias as we used whoever was available and convenient and this may cause our study about perceptions of obedience between males and females to be unrepresentative