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Operationalising I.V's & D.V.'s

Have been given 8 hypotheses with the I.V's & D.V's and have to operationalise them!
I've done 6 of them, but these two have me baffled. I don't seem to be able to get my head around operationalising the D.V.'s.
Can Helen Brownsell, or anyone else help, and also give me an idiot's guide to operationalising (REALLY SIMPLE PLEASE!!).
(I've put a question mark where I'm not sure, or don't know).

1) Social class has a significant effect on I.Q.'s.
I.V = social class (?)
D.V.= I.Q scores (?)
Operational I.V = "people from different environmental backgrounds were given a simple general knowlege test" (?)
Operational D.V. = (?)

2) Stressfull experiences increase the likelyhood of headaches.
I.V = stressfull experiences
D.V.= headaches
Operational I.V. = people experiencing a divorce were assessed (?)
Operational D.V. = (?)

Hope someone out there can understand, and help!
Thanks, Jacquie

Reply 1

HelenBrownsell

Operationalise kind of means define of the word and aspects within the variable. Often the meaning of a word can differ depending on what the psychologist feels. For example, social class - a set of social characteristics common to a group. However, what do you class as social characteristics. Does it involve annual income, career type, housing, education? You need to be specific. Define what social class is and then what makes it up.

IQ can be seen as a measure of intelligence where questions are anwered and the number of correct answers are compared with others and placed on a bell curve. You need to say what the questions test? What makes up intelligence? Does it look at verbal and non-verbal intelligence? Does it look at problem-solving, decision making, comprehension etc?

Be careful as you answered what the operational IV and operational DV is one question.

Operational I.V = "people from different environmental backgrounds were given a simple general knowlege test" (?)

The DV is the simple general knowledge test. All you need in the IV is people from different environmental backgrounds or similar to that.

Stressful events - divorce is fine. It is a stressful event. However, are you going to look at recently divorced, divorced upto 2 years ago, going through divorce (experiencing a divorce) etc. Are you going to look at how long they have been together? Whether they have children? Their financial state? These can all add to the stress so could be confounding variables.

Headaches - pain in the head but not a migrane. How will you define a headache? Is it a sharp pain in the head which lasts more than 10mins but no more than an hour? Or something else? IS the pain under a certain level? What are you going to measure the headaches with? Electrodes in the brain or medical records?

I may have made this more complicated than it has to be. You just have to define the word and be careful to state what kind of things you are going to be testing. The main one is the IQ test as yes it is a general knowledge test but what does it actually test? Also, social class is people from different environmental backgrounds but what type of things place them in this background? Im sorry if I made it worse but ive been doing lots of work today and my brain is a bit fried.

Helen Brownsell

Reply 2

Jacquie

Gosh. Thanks Helen - knew you'd be able to make sense of it for me. I thought I'd linked the IV & DV in together on the first question.(at least I wasn't wrong on that score!).
Also, the second part of our homework was to read about confounding variables. I suspect we will need to be able to at least recognise them for exam purposes?
I didn't realise how specific you have to be in the IV & DV's!
Anyway, the last part of my homework is to work out some kind of revision plan as we've only got just less than 7 weeks left before the exams!
Needless to say, I've not touched that yet. I'm finding it so difficult to think of how to do these questions, I've not dared do anything else.
Will have another look tonight and tomorrow morning, and also, do you know where I could get some more to do for extra practise? I've looked on the s-cool revision website, but there aren't any.

Don't do too much work or you'll end up sad and square- like me!
Probably 'speak' to you tomorrow. Take care, Jacquie

Reply 3

HelenBrownsell

Hello

Unfortunately I had the same problem at A-level. There never seem to be many practice papers. There is only even one printed for each year. Your teacher should have some past papers, if the college did psychology last year. However, I had to go to the AQA website and buy a booklet which contained practice papers and the specifications for psychology.

http://www.aqa.org.uk/public/gce-cat-spr-03.pdf

Thats the web address which contains the publications you can get and the cost. You can get there by using the "publications" option and then clicking on "AS/Advanced GCE, AS/Advanced VCE, GNVQ, Key Skills, FSMQ, VRQ and Other Tests and Examinations catalogue".

Once you have the details you need, you have to print of the "publications order form", fill it in and post it off. They dont take too lond to deliver your booklet.

Im sorry I cant help anymore but I had the same trouble. Remember there are questions in your textbook similar to the ones that will be presented in the exam. Also, revision guides contain some good questions to go by. Even the questions on s-cool give you a clue as to how much you know, even if the style isnt the same.

Helen Brownsell