Psychology 9990/02 Paper 2 Research Methods - Specimen Paper Notes

Standardization:
- Participants listened to the same monotonous telephone message.
- Participants were given the same doodling task (shading shapes).

Placebo: A placebo is a substance or treatment with no active therapeutic effect, used to control for the expectation effects of a treatment.
Example from Perry et al.: Participants in the placebo group received a pill that they were told would reduce anxiety, but it was actually a sugar pill with no active medication.

(a) Quantitative Data Collection:
- Data was collected on the frequency of helping behavior for different victim types (e.g., cane vs. drunk).
- Researchers recorded the race and gender of the helpers.
- They kept track of how long it took for someone to help.
(b) Strength of Quantitative Data:
- Allows for statistical analysis (e.g., comparing helping rates for different victim characteristics).
- Provides objective measures of helping behavior, reducing potential bias.

Standard Deviation: Measures the dispersion or spread of a set of data points around the mean. It indicates how much individual scores deviate from the average score in a sample. A higher standard deviation indicates greater variability.

(a) Example of Professional-Casual Clothing:
- A button-down shirt and dress pants.
(b) Necessity of Professional-Casual Clothing:
- To avoid influencing participants' perceptions or responses based on the experimenters' attire.
- To present a neutral and unbiased image, reducing the risk of demand characteristics.

Behavioral Measures: Observing and recording participants’ actions or responses.
- Example: Measuring reaction time in a cognitive task. The time taken to respond to a stimulus is the dependent variable.
Self-Report Measures: Collecting data through questionnaires or interviews, where participants report their own thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.
- Example: Using a Likert scale to measure attitudes towards a particular social issue. The attitude score is the dependent variable.
Physiological Measures: Recording bodily responses, such as heart rate, brain activity (EEG, fMRI), or hormone levels.
- Example: Measuring heart rate variability (HRV) to assess stress levels. HRV is the dependent variable.
Performance Measures: Assessing participants’ success or accuracy on a task.
- Example: Counting the number of correctly recalled items in a memory test. The number of items recalled is the dependent variable.
Observation: Observing and recording behaviors in a naturalistic setting.
- Example: Observing the number of times a child engages in cooperative play during recess. The frequency of cooperative play is the dependent variable.

(a) Measuring Funniness:
- Participants could rate each joke on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being "not funny at all" and 7 being "very funny".
(b) Types of Correlation:
- Positive Correlation: As the funniness rating of the joke increases, the activity in the brain region also increases. This means that funnier jokes are associated with higher brain activity in that region.
- Negative Correlation: As the funniness rating of the joke increases, the activity in the brain region decreases. This would imply that funnier jokes are linked to lower brain activity in that region.
- No Correlation: There is no systematic relationship between how funny a person finds a joke and the activity in the brain region.
(c) Ethical Problem with New Study:
- Presenting participants with sad stimuli may cause distress or negative emotional reactions. This could violate the ethical principle of minimizing harm to participants.

(a) Qualitative Data Question:
- "How does using social media make you feel?"
(b) Validity Problem:
- (i) If children lie, the data collected will not accurately represent their actual social media use or experiences. This reduces the validity of the results because the findings do not reflect the truth.
- (ii) Robin could use anonymous questionnaires to encourage more honest answers. Alternatively, they could use questions that are difficult to lie on, or cross-reference the answers with other known data.
(c) Wide Range of Children:
- (i) Robin could sample from multiple schools in different areas or use stratified sampling to ensure representation from various demographic groups.
- (ii) A wide range of children helps to ensure that the findings can be generalized to the broader population of 13-14 year olds, increasing the external validity of the study.

(a) Closed Question:
- (i) "Do you believe that mental health is as important as physical health? (Yes/No)"
- (ii) Closed questions limit the depth of responses and may not capture the complexity of attitudes towards mental health.
(b) Advantages of Interviews:
1. Interviews allow for more detailed and nuanced responses, providing richer qualitative data.
2. Interviewers can clarify questions and probe for more information, leading to a better understanding of participants' attitudes.
(c) Weakness of Opportunity Sampling:
- Opportunity sampling may result in a biased sample that is not representative of the target population, potentially skewing the results and limiting generalizability.

(a) Longitudinal Study Description:
- Dr. Felix would start by recruiting a sample of adults aged 55.
- She would then assess how well these participants cope with their jobs at the beginning of the study.
- This assessment might involve questionnaires, interviews, or performance evaluations.
- Dr. Felix would then follow these participants over a period of 10 years, re-assessing their job coping skills periodically (e.g., every 2 years).
- During each assessment, she would gather data on their job status (whether they stayed in the same job or changed jobs) and their coping mechanisms.
- By comparing the data collected at different time points, Dr. Felix can examine how job coping changes over time for individuals who stayed in the same job versus those who changed jobs.
- She can also identify factors that predict successful or unsuccessful coping with job-related stress during this period.
(b) Strength of Longitudinal Study:
- (i) Studying the participants for an extended period enables researchers to see long-term effects.
- (ii) Studying participants over time enables better understanding of development and change.