Practical Write Up - Observational Study

Aim

(AO1)

To investigate whether there are differences in the learned helping behaviour of younger and older people

Who were the participants?

An opportunity sample of 20 passengers on the H17 bus on a Thursday morning

Procedure

(AO1)

1. I made a list of behaviour categories including unhelpful and helpful behaviours such as blocking the exit of the bus and giving up their seat

2. Members of the public were then covertly observed for 10 minutes on the bus and instances of helpful and unhelpful behaviours were recorded using the categories

3. Qualitative data was collected by observing the behaviours of 5 passengers for 5 minutes and taking a note of it

Findings

(AO1)

• younger people were more unhelpful than older people

• Theme of rude behaviour such as speaking loudly on the phone

• The calculated chi-square value was 1.19 which is below the critical value of 2.71. This means there was no significant difference in the learned helpful behaviours of older and younger people

Strength of the observational study

(AO3)

I: High ecological validity

J: The observation was naturalistic, whereby the participants did not know they were taking part in the study or that their behaviours were being monitored

E: Therefore their behaviour is more likely to be natural, meaning that the results are representative of the helping behaviours of older and younger people on public transport

Weakness of the observational study

(AO3)

I: However, only one observer was used to gain data for each observation of public transport

J: This may have introduced bias into the observation as the researcher could unconsciously categorise behaviours in a way that suits the experimental hypothesis for example a teen chewing gum may be classified as a rude behaviour when someone else may not think so.

E: Without inter-observer reliability by having multiple observers, the results cannot be deemed accurate

Improvements of the observational study

(AO3)

1. The reliability of results could be improved by having more than one observer. The observers should be trained in the implementation of unhelpful and helpful behaviour categories and then experiment test could be used to assess the level of agreement in the two sets of results. This prevents any subjective bias as to what is a helpful/unhelpful behaviour so the findings on learned helpful behaviours in older and younger people will be more accurate.

2. Since opportunity sampling was used, this may have introduced bias into the sample as is likely only representative of their local area. Therefore a different sampling technique such as stratified sampling could be used to obtain a more diverse sample. Therefore, the results will be generalisable to a wider population.