ocr psychology g541 may 2012 past paper

(Original post by EmW97)
I need help with 10 mark question !
Describe and evaluate one way of measuring the participants aggression in this study.
this 10 mark question has thrown me because its not like the usually 10 marker with the who what where when how etc, it asks you to specifically only describe how you will measure aggression.

(Original post by EmW97)
I need help with 10 mark question !
Describe and evaluate one way of measuring the participants aggression in this study.
this 10 mark question has thrown me because its not like the usually 10 marker with the who what where when how etc, it asks you to specifically only describe how you will measure aggression.

(Original post by EmW97)
I need help with 10 mark question !
Describe and evaluate one way of measuring the participants aggression in this study.
this 10 mark question has thrown me because its not like the usually 10 marker with the who what where when how etc, it asks you to specifically only describe how you will measure aggression.

(Original post by Hiyabecca)
So i looked up the past paper and it states "A psychologist wants to conduct an experiment to investigate if people are more aggressive after watching a violent scene from a clip compared to a non violent-scene. Describe and evaluate one way of measuring the participants aggression in this study"

Therefore as you rightly said, the sample/sampling method is not relevant nor creditworthy here.

Instead focus purely on the actual measure of the DV.

The easiest way to measure this is by using a rating scale.
This would be something along the lines of;

Ten minutes after participants had watched either a violent scene from a video clip or a non violent scene depending on their condition, i would issue a questionnaire consisting of a variety of closed questions gathering quantitative data. A example of a closed question would be;
On a scale of one to ten, how aggressive do you feel? 1(not aggressive) to 10 (very aggressive). Participants would then circle their answer.

A benefit of using a rating scale to measure aggression is that it generates quantitative data, meaning that i could easily compare and analyze the results from each condition (weather the participants watched an aggressive or non aggressive clip) Another benefit of using quantitative data as a way to measure aggression is that it is numerically objective rather than at risk of a bias interpretation which could be potentially a problem if qualitative data was used.

However, participants may perceive the numbers in the rating scale differently, and what would be a 4 to one participant, may be a 6 to another. This therefore lowers the reliability of the results regarding aggressive response to a clip. Additionally, as a rating scale generates quantitative data, no descriptive insight can be gained from this, so no explanation is given as to why a participant selected a certain rating. Therefore, the data regarding participants aggression within the study is numerically significant, but humanly insignificant.


Obviously this is my own answer I've quickly rattled off, however it should be along the right lines.