Personal Investigation 1

Question 1

What is the aim of PI 1?

Answer 1

To find out if whether there will be a change in participants attitude to helping behaviour after watching a video clip on helping behaviour

Question 2

Why is the hypothesis non-directional in PI 1? (Justification)

Answer 2

Previous research that has been undertaken in attitudes towards helping behaviour has displayed conflicting or inconsistent findings.

Question 3

State the experimental hypothesis for PI 1.

Answer 3

There will be a difference in participants scores on Nickell’s scale before and after watching video clip on helping behaviour.

Question 4

State the null hypothesis for PI 1?

Answer 4

There will be no difference in participants scores on Nickell’s scale before and after watching a video clip on helping behaviour, any difference will be due to chance.

Question 5

State the independent variable.

Answer 5

Before clip and watching helping behaviour and after clip watched.

Question 6

State the dependant variable

Answer 6

Score measures on Nickell’s attitude to helping in condition A and condition B

Question 7

Confounding variable

Answer 7

1. Isolation may have affected some participants-lack of motivation
2. Some may have previously seen the video- less emotional impact
3. Some may be naturally less helpful

Question 8

Extraneous variables

Answer 8

1. Having to remain in year/class bubbles due to COVID-19 Ps were not allowed to move around school and therefore not gaining any influence from other year groups
2. Time of day- experiment took place before lunch meaning Ps would have been hungry, less engaged

Question 9

Methodology: 1. what type of experiment? 2. What experimental design

Answer 9

1. Lab experiment as it allows us to measure cause and effect, high internal validity, manipulation of variables and allows full replication
2. Repeated measures as matched pairs would have taken too much time in current situation (Covid-19) and we needed participants to complete both conditions (control and experimental) for valid comparison

Question 10

Sample: target population, sampling method

Answer 10

Newport night student from one form class aged 11-12, opportunity sample as it’s cost effective and less time consuming than random. However inevitably bias as the sample is drawn from a specific sub group (students), cannot be generalised, not as representative as random.

Question 11

Descriptive statistic

Answer 11

Median as it’s appropriate for ordinal data and not affected by extreme scores (mean is) but is not as representative as mean as exact values are not reflected in median.

Question 12

Graphical representation

Answer 12

Bar chart - represents non continuous data

Question 13

Inferential statistics and statistical results

Answer 13

Wilcoxon as data is ordinal, design is repeated measures and is a test of difference.
Observed value= 83 critical value= 81 N= 24, accept null reject experimental as level of significance= p

Question 14

3 Findings

Answer 14

1. P’s generally had a higher score in condition B rather than A
2. The range in both conditions was 49
3. The median score for condition A was 69 and condition B 69.5

Question 15

Conclusions

Answer 15

The observed value (83) was greater than the critical value (81) therefore significance is not shown. Null hypothesis rejected alternative rejected. No difference was found on P’s score on NS before and after watching clip

Question 16

Reliability

Answer 16

Interater, to compare findings to another’s findings and the extent to which they agree needed to be +80 or more, we would implement it by once questionnaires complete another person conduct the questions using same measures/tools and compare findings- total number of agreements

Question 17

Validity: issues and assessing

Answer 17

Issue- demand characteristics and social desirability to avoid this we deceived participants by telling them they were completing a study on perception rather than giving them the true aim
Assessing- face validity, concerning whether it measures what it intends to measure ie helping behaviour, ensure our experiment , questions and video clip are relevant

Question 18

2 ethical issues and how they are dealt with

Answer 18

1. Deception- to avoid demand characteristics but Ps were debriefed, given full sums and opportunity to ask questions at the end of the experiment
2. Confidentiality- no names given, Ps given numbers and not easily recognisable