Correlations & Meta-analysis (AQA A Level Psychology)

A psychologist reads a review of a meta-analysis confirming the relationship between recreational screen time and academic performance.

What is meant by the term meta-analysis?

A researcher investigated whether there was a correlation between the number of hours slept and how well rested the students felt.

The researcher randomly selected 18 participants from first-year students at the university.

On the day of the study, each student participant was asked, ‘How many hours did you sleep last night?’ They then had to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 how well rested they felt.

The researcher hypothesised that there would be a positive correlation between the two co-variables.

Outline one reason why it was appropriate to conduct a correlation rather than an experiment in this case.

A researcher studying depression wanted to see whether or not there was a relationship between level of self-esteem and negative schema score. She constructed two questionnaires and asked ten people who had been diagnosed with depression to complete them.

One questionnaire measured the participant’s level of self-esteem. A low score (out of 50) indicated low self-esteem.

The other questionnaire measured whether the participant showed evidence of negative schema. A low score (out of 50) indicated evidence of negative schema. The two sets of results for each participant are shown in the table below.

Table 1 Self-esteem score and negative schema score for each patient

Estimate the correlation coefficient most likely to result from analysis of the data in Table 1.

The correlation coefficient would be approximately:

The calculated value of r for a Pearson’s test was +0.42.

Which one of the following scattergrams best represents a correlation coefficient of +0.42?