AQA A-Level Psychology: Research Methods

A psychologist believes that people remember information better when they revise in silence than when they revise with background music. She has access to a class of sixteen-year-old students and the use of two quiet rooms after school.

Design a study using an experiment to investigate whether revising in silence leads to better memory than revising with background music.

In your answer you should include sufficient detail for the study to be carried out, and you should refer to the following:

• the experimental design used and one reason for your choice;
• how the independent variable and dependent variable would be operationalised;
• how the sample would be obtained;
• one way that participants would be protected from harm or otherwise treated ethically;
• how the data would be analysed. [12 marks]

A researcher wants to find out whether there is a relationship between the number of hours per night that adults sleep and their score on a standardised concentration test. He measures both variables for each of fifty office workers and plots the results on a scattergram.

With reference to this investigation, explain one strength and one limitation of using a correlation. [6 marks]

Read the description of a study below and then answer the question that follows.

A teacher carries out a study in two classes. In one class she displays each new vocabulary word on the board for the whole lesson; in the other class she shows each new word only briefly and then removes it. At the end of term she gives both classes the same vocabulary test.

Identify the independent variable and the dependent variable in this study, and explain how the dependent variable could be operationalised. [4 marks]

Look again at the investigation into sleep and concentration described earlier, in which a researcher measured the number of hours per night that fifty adults slept and their score on a standardised concentration test.

Past research suggests that people who sleep more tend to concentrate better.

Write a fully operationalised directional (one-tailed) hypothesis for this investigation. [4 marks]

In the memory study described earlier, the psychologist tested whether revising in silence leads to better recall than revising with background music. To obtain her participants, she simply used the students who were in the class she had access to after school.

Identify the sampling method the psychologist used and explain one limitation of this sampling method. [3 marks]

Before running her full memory study comparing revision in silence with revision with background music, the psychologist decides to carry out a pilot study using a small number of students.

Explain why the psychologist might carry out a pilot study before running the full study. [3 marks]