Lesson activity: practical activities for research methods

This resource contains ideas for relevant and engaging practical activities which can be either incorporated into your teaching of the research methods section of the psychology specification, or your students can follow independently.

Activity 1: investigating short term memory

Research suggests that Short Term Memory (STM) cannot hold very much information. You are going to design and carry out an experiment to see whether the capacity of STM differs between two groups: A-level students and older people.

Tasks

Generate a hypothesis for this study. Justify the direction of your hypothesis. Identify the IV and DV in this experiment.

Materials

Participants

Decide upon and justify your choice of participants for the two conditions (the two age groups). Identify and justify your sampling method.

Ethical issues

Before you collect your data, identify and address any relevant ethical issues which may arise from the study you have designed. For example, consider how participants will be debriefed afterwards.

Results

Once you have collected your results, produce a summary table which includes appropriate measures of central tendency. Also generate an appropriate graphical display. Ensure these are appropriately labelled and have a title.

Ask another student to interpret your table and graph for the rest of the class.

Activity 2: investigating handedness

Research suggests that around 10% of the population are left handed or 'sinistral'.

You are going to design a study to compare two types of A-level student. You are aiming to see whether left handedness is more common in some subject groups, such as art students or geographers.

Tasks

Consider whether you will carry out an observation – eg by counting the number of left handers and right handers from within lessons you attend, or whether you will use a verbal survey of students in the common room.

Materials

Describe any materials needed for your chosen method. Remember, if someone wanted to replicate your study they would need to know exactly what you did.

Participants

Describe and justify your choice of the A-level subject groups you have chosen for this investigation. Include information about the size of the sample in each condition.

Ethical issues

Consider and compare at least two ethical issues associated with each method before deciding which one you will use. How, for example, would you gain consent from students you are observing? How would you gain consent from a verbal survey?

Identify and justify the type of data (level of measurement) you will collect (will it be nominal, ordinal or interval?).

Consider two potential methodological variables associated the use of your chosen method. For example, are demand characteristics likely to be a problem?

Results

Once you have collected your data, summarise it into a correctly labelled pie chart for each of the subject group you measured (eg artists and geographers). Do your findings reflect 10% left handedness in both groups?

References

In order to practise the skill of reference writing, find three references for studies which have investigated handedness. Include them here in an academically accepted format.

Hint: look at the reference section of an academic text book. What do you notice about their order and format?

Activity 3: investigating gender stereotyping

It has been suggested by some researchers that males and females are often gender stereotyped by others when it comes to their expected and/or perceived roles and behaviours. Your task is to investigate whether gender stereotyping occurs in product marketing aimed at children.

Tasks

Generate a suitable aim and hypothesis for your study. Justify your choice of a directional or non-directional hypothesis.

Decide upon a specific age range for the children targeted by your chosen media source.

Materials

In pairs, decide upon an appropriate working definition of stereotyping for your study. In other words, clearly 'operationalise' the concept you will measure.

You might decide to measure:

• the number of times that boys or girls interact with particular toys
• how often certain colours are used to promote toys for girls and boys
• the type of words used to promote toys for girls and boys
• the actions associated with certain toys (physical or passive).

Well operationalised definitions make it much easier to identify your IV and DV.

Results

Once you have collected your data, summarise it into a correctly labelled graph and present your findings to the rest of the class in a five minute presentation.

Ask your peers for questions about your investigation and answer one or two of these.

Discussions

Research findings are an important tool for informing social change.

In two or three paragraphs, discuss the possible social and/or developmental implications of your findings.

Activity 4: investigating aggression

Researchers have come up with theories to try and explain why people become aggressive. One explanation is to do with 'nurture'. That is, we learn to be aggressive from environmental influences such as computer games.

Tasks

Your aim is to compare the perceived level of aggression in games designed for two different age groups: those under 12 and those over 18 years of age.

Materials

In a small group, generate the names of six computer games intended for play by individuals over the age of 18 and six games which are intended for children under 12. Randomly select three games from the 'over 18' list and three from the 'under 12' list. Produce a random list of these six games.

How and why would random selection be used to produce the list?

Selection of game raters

Select an equal number of male and female students aged eighteen or over. Their job will be to rate the games for levels of aggression. Explain and justify your choice of game raters. For example, why would you need a balance of males and female raters?

Procedure

Ask the raters to give each game on the list a rating for aggression from 1 to 10 (where 1 = no aggression and 10 = high levels of aggression).

Calculate an appropriate measure of central tendency for each 'over 18s' game and each 'under 12s' game.

Results

Carry out an 'eyeball test' to see which set of games appears to have the highest levels of aggression. The ones designed for under 12s or over 18s?

Which statistical test would you use if you wanted to see whether there were significantly different levels of aggression in games for older and younger people? Justify your choice of test.

Discussion

In a paragraph or two, explain the methodological and ethical issues arising when asking people to rate levels of aggression in computer games.

Explain the possible implication of your findings relative to theories of aggression.

Activity 5: investigating age and sleep patterns

Research has shown that the human body clock is very important in determining sleep and wake patterns. Your task will be to design a study to investigate the relationship between age and sleep duration.

Tasks

Generate an appropriate directional hypothesis for this correlational study.

Design a response sheet for people to complete in order to record the amount of time they sleep over a number of nights. You will need to consider how many nights, which days of the week and how they are to record their sleep (eg minutes/hours/clock times). Justify your choices.

What other information will you need on this sheet to enable you carry out the study? For example, how will you record the age of your participants?

Participants

In terms of sampling, who will be your target population and what type of sampling will you use? Justify your choices. Decide upon and operationalise the age groups you hope to measure. You should aim to include a wide age range and therefore address the ethical requirements associated with these, particularly with regard to any participants under 16 years of age.

Results

Once you have collected your data, produce a suitable scattergraph to show the relationship between age and sleep duration.

Do the results appear to support your predictions? Justify your answer.

Which statistical test would you use to look for a significant relationship between age and sleep duration? Why would you choose to use this test?

Discussions

In two or three paragraphs, and as part of the 'Discussion' section of a psychological investigation, briefly consider the possible methodological implications of your findings, particularly with regard to confounding variables within the study.

References

In order to practise the skill of reference writing, find three references for studies which have investigated sleep. Include them here in an academically accepted format.

Hint: look at the reference section of an academic text book. What do you notice about their order and format?

Activity 6: investigating cognitive psychology

The Cognitive Approach in psychology places a great deal of importance on the influence of higher thought processes on decision making and behaviour.

Task

Your task is to design and carry out a study to investigate the possible influence of expectation and perceptual bias on decision making processes.

Participants will simply be asked to rate the suitability of someone who has applied for a particular (named) job. Think carefully what this could be.

Materials

You should produce a short and credible education/career summary for a fictitious individual. This could include a list of their GCSE results, A-levels, degree details and work experience. You may decide not to include all of these depending on the job vacancy you have chosen to use.

People often have preconceptions regarding ability and a person’s age or gender, so look at one of these factors. If you choose age, then produce two identical versions of the CV differing only in terms of the persons specific age. The applicant's name could be an extraneous variable in this study. How will you control this EV?

Participants

Identify and justify an appropriate participant sample and sampling method.

Procedure

Half of the participants should see the 'young' CV version, and be asked to rate the suitability of the person for the vacancy. You will need to devise a suitable rating scale for this and a clear set of instructions for participants to follow.

The remaining participants will rate the 'older' candidate.

Identify, explain and justify the experimental design used in your study. Is it repeated measures, independent groups or matched pairs? Would it have been possible to use a different design to the one you have used? Explain your answer.

Results

Summarise your findings using descriptive statistics, perhaps a table and a graph.

Discussion

In two or three paragraphs, explain the implications of your findings with regard to any age bias you may or may not have found.

Activity 7: investigating stress

People often report feeling high levels of stress at certain points in their lives. Students, for example, often feel stressed in the run up to examinations.

Task

Your task is to devise a self-report measure to try and find the possible reasons for examination stress in AS/A Level students or GCSE students.

Procedure

You should devise a questionnaire asking students to list and briefly describe possible reasons for examination stress in students.

Ethical issues

You should emphasise in your brief that their answers may not necessarily be a reflection of their own stressors and that their answers will be confidential and anonymous. Write a set of ethically sound procedures to explain how this will be achieved.

Participants

Decide upon a sample of students. Informed consent must be addressed. If you decide to sample GCSE students, for example, you must first (and also) gain consent from parents or those in loco parentis. Explain why and how this will be done and evidenced.

Results

Identify and justify whether the students responses will generate qualitative or quantitative data. Identify one strength and one weakness of the data type you have collected in this investigation.

From the answers given, think about how you could summarise these to generate a suitable graph. This could include identifying types or categories of stressor. You could then calculate the percentage of students who identified these as potential stressors.

Ask another student (who was not involved with your investigation) to interpret and describe the results using your graph. This will tell you whether your graph is a clear summary of your results.

Discussion

Write two or three paragraphs to consider the implications of your findings. This might, for example, be ways of helping to reduce examination stress.

Activity 8: investigating social development

It has often been suggested that small animals, including humans, are born with certain physical features (such as large eyes) that encourage others to take care of them.

Task

You will design a study to see whether babies look cuter when their eyes are open compared to when their eyes are closed.

Materials

You will need two photographs – one of you as a baby/toddler with your eyes wide open and one of you at a similar age with your eyes closed. If you are creative, you could use the same photograph manipulated in a photographic software programme.

Only the face should be visible. Explain the methodological reasons for using the same photograph and two other controls you consider relevant to this investigation.

These might, for example, include a justification of the size of the photograph or whether it is in colour or black and white.

Ethical issues

Explain the ethical reasons for using photos of yourself in this study.

Procedure

You will then ask people to rate the cuteness of the 'two' babies using an independent groups (unrelated) design. How will you allocate people to the 'open eyes' and 'closed eyes' conditions? Justify your answer.

Devise a suitable 'cuteness' rating scale for this study. Justify how long you will give participants to rate the photograph. Explain why participants will not be given unlimited time to give their ratings. Generate an appropriate set of instructions, a brief and debrief for use in this study.

Results

Produce an appropriate graph from the data collected. Which statistical test would be appropriate for analysing this data? Justify your choice. Explain whether the test you have chosen is parametric or non-parametric.

Abstract

Produce an abstract (summary) which could be used when writing up this study. Try to keep this to a maximum of 200 words, but include reference to: the aim of the study, theory behind the study, how it was tested, participants, summary of findings and a conclusion.

Activity 9: investigating food preference

Many theories have been offered to explain food preference in humans; some of which are biological, others due to environmental influence. For example, it is said that more people are now choosing to eat vegetarian diets than ever before.

Task

You will carry out a study to record:

1. Whether more males or females are vegetarians
2. How long the males and female participants have been vegetarian (in an attempt to identify which gender has been a vegetarian the longest)

Sampling

Participants in this study should be over 16 years of age. Explain why.

Design your study to gain participants using volunteer sampling. How will you achieve this? Outline the main methodological problems arising from using a volunteer sampling method for this investigation. Outline and justify a better way of sampling in this study which could contribute to more valid results.

Procedure

Decide whether this will take the form of written responses to a simple questionnaire or a verbal survey of participants. Design and justify your materials accordingly.

Whichever method you choose, you should plan and produce an appropriate set of procedures for your investigation. This way, you will know exactly what you intend to do and/or say to participants and what they have to do/say during the investigation.

A 'Procedures' section, when written up, would normally be:

• written in the past tense
• include all steps and 'verbatim' instructions (find out what does this means)
• written in the third person.

So although you must plan this ahead prospectively, you must write this up afterwards retrospectively. Try doing this by writing up your 'Procedure' in this way.

Results

Identify and justify the type of data you will collect in each part of the study.

Produce a summary of your findings using appropriate descriptive statistics.

Include a written conclusion of your findings.

Ethical issues

Eating behaviour can be a sensitive topic for some people. Perhaps their diet is governed by illness or other personal factors. Outline at least two ways in which you will ensure that your participants are not placed in a position of psychological discomfort by taking part in your study.

Activity 10: investigating food preference

When psychologists design studies, they have to consider the validity of their research. That is, are they really measuring what they set out to measure?

Task

You will be considering issues of validity in this exercise when you attempt to design the materials for a study intending to measure social influence. Obedience is one form of social influence; conformity is another.

Materials

In small groups, collect and agree upon ten celebrity faces for use in this investigation. What will you need to consider when choosing the faces for this study? Perhaps how well known the person is or their gender.

Explain how these and other factors might impact upon the validity of your study.

You will need to duplicate these photographs. One set of the faces will remain 'whole', whilst the other set should only show the eyes of the same celebrities.

Validity

One way of testing validity is through 'face validity'. In this case, the researchers would be asking whether the measure looks, at face value, as though it measures obedience.

The class should therefore look at all of the questions generated and explain whether the questions designed to test obedience actually look as though they do this.

What if one of the questions reads 'Your neighbour asks you to move her dustbin? Do you?' or 'All of your friends make a noise in the library, do you join in?'

Are these valid measures of obedience or something else? Justify your answer.

If such questions were to be used in a study, how would the participant's responses be recorded? Would it be through yes/no answers or some other measure? Describe and justify way of measuring obedience other than through yes/no responses.

Identify and explain at least two potential methodological issues which might arise in such a study of obedience.

Identify and explain at least two ethical issues which might arise. One of these should relate to confidentiality.

As an alternative task, you could start to look around your school, supermarkets etc for posters/signs which encourage obedience. Categorise the techniques used, eg obedience through fear, and consider which technique is more likely to cause obedience in the real world.

Activity 11: investigating holism v reductionism

One of many important debates in psychology is that of Holism versus Reductionism. In Cognitive Psychology, for example, this can be seen in theories of face recognition. The holistic view would argue that we need to see a whole face in order to identify it. The reductionist view argues that single features alone are sufficient.

Task

You will carry out an investigation to test holism and reductionism in face recognition.

Materials

In small groups, collect and agree upon ten celebrity faces for use in this investigation. What will you need to consider when choosing the faces for this study? Perhaps how well known the person is or their gender.

Explain how these and other factors might impact upon the validity of your study.

You will need to duplicate these photographs. One set of the faces will remain 'whole', whilst the other set should only show the eyes of the same celebrities.

Design/participants

Using an independent groups (unrelated) design, randomly allocate 10 people to Condition 1 (whole face) and 10 people to Condition 2 (eyes only). Explain why the independent groups design would be used. Could you use a different design in this study?

Procedure

The participants simply have to name the celebrity. You will time them using a stopwatch to see how long it takes to name all ten celebrities in each condition (whole or eyes). Devise a suitable system for accurately recording total reaction time.

Carry out a pilot study with two or three people prior to the main study in order to test and improve the procedure and/or materials. You may, for example, have to consider what you will do if the participant answers incorrectly, or takes a long time to answer.

Results

Produce a summary table and graph to summarise the findings from your study. Which side of the debate seems to be supported? Explain your answer.

Name and justify an appropriate parametric test which could be used to analyse your data. Name and justify the use of an alternative non-parametric test.

Activity 12: investigating honesty

Some researchers believe that when we are being truthful, our eyes look to the left, but it we are not being honest, we gaze to the right and that this process is reversed for left handed people. Other researchers are not so sure.

Task

Your task is to design two ways in which this could be tested.

Design 1

Design an observational study which could be carried out in a sixth form setting using stratified sampling.

You will need to describe:

• how the researcher could consistently determine gaze direction
• the questions asked in order to elicit truthful and non-truthful answers
• the type of observation undertaken and why
• the ethical issues associated with a study of this nature
• how the stratified sample would be achieved.

Design 2

Design a second experiment in which eye gaze direction could be measured through the use of more physiological means such as an EOG (look online for this).

You will need to describe:

• the ethical issues associated with a study of this nature and how they differ from the observation study described above
• an appropriate brief and debrief and how these might differ from those given in the observation study described above
• the type of experiment undertaken and why. For example, would this be a lab experiment or a field experiment, and why?

References

In order to practise the skill of reference writing, find three references for studies which have investigated this topic. Include them here in an academically accepted format.

Hint: look at the reference section of an academic text book. What do you notice about their order and format?

Activity 13: investigating reliability

When psychologists design studies, they have to consider the reliability (consistency) of their findings. That is, if someone else were to carry out the same study, would they get the same or very similar results?

Task

The Psychology teacher should select a 4 or 6 mark memory question from a past Psychology examination paper. Students will be answering and then double marking this. The mark scheme should be kept confidential at this point.

Procedure

Students should then consider and devise a system whereby they are each randomly allocated an identification number. This will replace their names on their answer to the question they are about to answer. Justify this in terms of appropriate ethical and/or methodological issues.

In silence, students should then write their answer to the question set. An appropriate time limit should be set for this task. Students should consider what this should be and base their decision on the amount of time you would normally expect to allocate to 4 (or 6) mark question.

The answer papers should then be randomly allocated to other members of the class for marking according to the mark scheme.

This process should be done twice. This will allow you to consider inter-marker reliability regarding the marking of the students answers.

As a possible control of potential EVs, explain why it is important to ensure that the second marker does not know or see the mark awarded by the first marker. Describe how this could be achieved.

Results

The two marks awarded to each anonymous student should then be examined. What would you expect to find if the marking is reliable? Briefly outline the results and what these mean in terms of inter-marker reliability.

Explain how inter-marker reliability could be checked statistically.

Produce an appropriate graphical display of the findings.

Evaluation

As a potential discussion/improvement point, briefly explain why the answers might have been better word processed than hand written.