Data Handling: Types, Interpretation & Display of Data (AQA A Level Psychology)

A study into the relationship between recreational screen time and academic achievement was conducted. Students were asked to self-report the number of hours spent watching TV, playing on their mobile phones or video games (daily recreational screen time) and their end-of-year test performances (academic performance).

The results of the study are shown in Figure 2.

Identify the type of graph shown in Figure 2 and explain why this is an appropriate graph to use for the data collected.

A researcher placed an advert in a university psychology department asking for third year students to participate in a sleep experiment. Each student had a sleep tracker watch to wear at home for the two-week study. Each morning they were asked to open the sleep tracker app to view their sleep quality data on their mobile phones. The students were unaware that the sleep data they could see on their phones had been manipulated by the researcher. Over the two weeks of the study, each student saw that he or she had had poor sleep quality for seven random nights of the experiment and good sleep quality for the remaining nights.

Every morning, after viewing the sleep data, each student completed a questionnaire about the previous night’s sleep. One of the questions asked the students to rate how well rested they felt, on a scale from 1–10, after the previous night’s sleep. Apart from this, students were asked to continue their normal everyday activities.

The researcher collected quantitative data about how well rested the students felt.

Explain one strength of collecting quantitative data in this study.

A researcher wants to investigate the effectiveness of physiotherapy in the recovery of stroke patients with brain damage. Carers of stroke patients will be sent questionnaires to produce quantitative data.

Explain one disadvantage of obtaining quantitative data in this study.

A researcher wants to investigate the effectiveness of physiotherapy in the recovery of stroke patients with brain damage. Carers of stroke patients will be sent questionnaires to produce quantitative data.

Write one question that could be used in the researcher’s questionnaire to produce quantitative data and one question that could be used in the researcher’s questionnaire to produce qualitative data

Quantitative question: .............................................................

Qualitative question: ................................................................

In an experiment, researchers arranged for participants to complete a very personal and embarrassing questionnaire in a room with other people. Each participant was tested individually. The other people were confederates of the experimenter.

In condition 1: the confederates completed the questionnaire.

In condition 2: the confederates refused to complete the questionnaire and asked to leave the experiment.

The researchers tested 15 participants in condition 1, and 15 different participants in condition 2.

The researchers recorded the number of participants who completed the questionnaire in each condition.

Identify the type of data in this experiment. Explain your answer.

A researcher wanted to investigate whether there was a relationship between locus of control and resistance to social influence. Before the investigation began, he devised a questionnaire to measure locus of control.

Why would the researcher’s questionnaire produce primary data? Suggest one limitation of primary data.

A controlled observation was designed to compare the social behaviours of pre-school children of working parents and pre-school children of stay-at-home parents. The sample consisted of 100 children aged three, who were observed separately. Half of the children had working parents and the other half had stay-at-home parents.

The observation took place in a room which looked like a nursery, with a variety of toys available. In the room, there were four children and one supervising adult. Their behaviour was not recorded.

Each child participant was brought into the room and settled by their parent. The parent then left to sit outside. Each child participant’s behaviour was observed covertly for five minutes while they played in the room.

The observation was conducted in a controlled environment and a standardised script was used when the children and their parents arrived.

Explain one reason why collecting quantitative data could reduce the validity of this study.

A psychologist wanted to test whether listening to music improves running performance. The psychologist conducted a study using 10 volunteers from a local gym. The psychologist used a repeated measures design.

Half of the participants were assigned to condition A (without music) and half to condition B (with music). All participants were asked to run 400 metres as fast as they could on a treadmill in the psychology department.

All participants were given standardised instructions. All participants wore headphones in both conditions. The psychologist recorded their running times in seconds. The participants returned to the psychology department the following week and repeated the test in the other condition.

Table 1 Mean number of seconds taken to complete the 400m run and the standard deviation for both conditions

Name a more appropriate graph to display the means shown in Table 1.

Suggest appropriate X (horizontal) and Y (vertical) axis labels for your graph choice.

Name of graph:..........................................................................

X axis label:..................................................................................

Y axis label:.................................................................................

A psychologist was interested in finding out whether dream themes differed between males and females, particularly in terms of social interaction. She decided to conduct a pilot study.

Twenty undergraduate students (8 male and 12 female) volunteered for the study. For a six-week period the students were interviewed at 9 am each morning when they arrived at university. Interviewers, who did not know the purpose of the study, carried out and recorded the dream interviews.

The interviews produced qualitative data.

What is meant by qualitative data? Give one strength of collecting qualitative data in this study.

In a study of androgyny, a group of 100 18-year-old students completed a self-report sex-role inventory. The inventory gave two sets of scores: a femininity score and a masculinity score. Each set of scores was on a scale of 0–20, with 0 representing no masculinity or no femininity and 20 representing extreme masculinity or extreme femininity.

The researchers calculated measures of central tendency for the masculinity scores. They found that the mean masculinity score was 10.3, the median masculinity score was 9.5 and the mode masculinity score was 7.

Sketch a graph to show the most likely distribution curve for the masculinity scores in his study. Label the axes of your graph and mark on it the positions of the mean, median and mode.

What sort of distribution does your graph show?

A researcher wanted to see whether cognitive behaviour therapy was an effective treatment for depression. Twenty depressed patients who had all recently completed a course of cognitive behaviour therapy were involved in the investigation. From their employment records, the researcher kept a record of the number of absences from work each patient had in the year following their treatment. This was compared with the number of absences from work each patient had in the year prior to their treatment.

Those patients who had fewer absences from work in the year following their treatment than in the year prior to their treatment were classified as ‘improved’ (+).Those patients who had more absences were classified as ‘deteriorated’ (-). Those patients who had the same number of absences were classified as ‘neither’ (0).

The investigation above is based on secondary data.

In what ways would the use of primary data have improved this investigation?

In a study of antisocial activity and social background, researchers interviewed 100 children aged 14 years. They then classified each child according to their level of antisocial activity.

They concluded that 26 were ‘very antisocial’, 40 were ‘mildly antisocial', and 34 were ‘not antisocial’. The researchers found that the majority of the ‘very antisocial’ children attended Crayford secondary school, whereas most of the other two groups of children attended another local school.

What level of measurement is being used in this study?

Explain one limitation of the level of measurement you have identified in your previous answer.

Researchers were interested in the spatial awareness skills of motorists. They decided to investigate a possible relationship between different aspects of spatial awareness. Motorists who had between ten and twelve years of driving experience and held a clean driving licence with no penalty points were asked to complete two sets of tasks.

Set 1: To follow a series of instructions and using a map, to identify various locations correctly. This provided a map reading score for each motorist with a maximum score of 20.

Set 2: To complete a series of practical driving tasks accurately. This involved tasks such as driving between cones, driving within lines and parking inside designated spaces. Each motorist was observed completing the Set 2 tasks by a single trained observer who rated each performance by giving the driver a rating out of 10.

The following results were obtained.

Table 1: The map reading scores and driver ratings of motorists

Identify a suitable graphical display for the data in Table 1 and briefly explain why this display would be appropriate.

Using the data in Table 1, comment on the relationship between the map reading scores and the driver rating scores of the participants.