design your own study

Question 1

in the question

Answer 1

-design an EXPERIMENT
-devise a measure-think of own way to measure DV
-ordinal level of measurement

Question 2

answering question-design

Answer 2

design-• Experimental Design
• Independent groups
• Repeated measures
• Matched pairs

• E.g. For my experiment I will be using a matched pairs design and participant will be matched on a base workplace happiness score gained via a 10-point rating scale.
Participants with the two higher scores will be paired and so on. This will reduce the impact of participant variables such as existing level of happiness on the results and increase the validity of the findings.

variables-• Variables
• IV = Two plants on desks in personal workspace vs. No plants
• DV = Happiness rating (ordinal level of measurement).

• E.g. There will be two levels of IV in my study. The first will be made up of participants who are given two plants to put in their regular work space for the duration of the study and the second will be made up of participants who will not be given any plants for their workspace for the duration of the study. The DV will be their happiness rating at the end of the study compared to their rating at the start.

-control-• Controls
• Pre-existing happiness levels controlled in experimental design
• Environmental controls.
• Plants should all be the same.
• Noise pollution in the work space.
• Lighting
• Temperature
• E.g. Aside from the participant variable of happiness that is being controlled by the matched pairs design, I would also control environmental factors in the office workspace which could act as extraneous variables. For example I would make sure that the temperature in the office is consistent at 20°C, as a room that is too hot or too cold could negatively impact mood.

Question 3

materials and apparatus

Answer 3

• A set of plants.
• A self devised instrument for measuring mood.
• Must produce data at the ordinal level.
• A rating scale would be most appropriate here range from 1-10
• E.g. For my study I will need a a way of measuring mood. This will be a questionnaire on which the participants will be able to rate their mood on a scale of 1-10, where 1 = very unhappy and 10= very happy. The questionnaire will include items such as:
“How do you feel when you are on your way to work”, and “how do you feel when you are sat at your desk”.

Question 4

data analysis

Answer 4

• Descriptive statistics
• Measures of central tendency
• Mean, median, mode
• Measures of Dispersion
• Range, standard deviation
• Inferential statistics
• Test of difference | ordinal level| related design (or not if you chose a different experimental design)
E.g. Further analysis will be conducted through the median and the range. These are appropriate for an ordinal level of data and will help to further analyse in terms of central values and spread.
Furthermore I will use a Wilcoxon’s T-Test to analyse the significance of my findings. This is because I am conducted a test of difference, using ordinal data and an related design.

Question 5

general points

Answer 5

• Read the question
• Stick to the bullet points and don’t waffle.
• Justify your choices answers
• It is ok to use the bullet points as subheadings
• You must answer all the bullet points in order to have a chance of getting into the top band of marks