Research methods

A psychologist investigated whether listening to music while revising affects memory. 20 students learned a list of 30 words in silence and, on another day, a different list with music. Identify the independent variable and the dependent variable.

Write a directional hypothesis for this study.

Identify the experimental design and explain one way the researcher could deal with order effects.

Results (words recalled):

	Silence	Music
Mean	18.4	15.1
Standard deviation	2.1	5.6

What do these results show?

In a follow-up, 12 students were tested in both conditions. 9 did better in silence, 2 did better with music and 1 scored the same. The critical value for N = 11 (one-tailed, p ≤ 0.05) is 2. Calculate S and explain whether the result is significant.

Explain why a 5% significance level is usually used rather than 1%.

The 20 students were volunteers who answered a poster. Explain one limitation of this sampling method.

Identify two ethical issues in this study and explain how the researcher could deal with each.

What level of measurement is 'number of words recalled'? Explain your answer.

A second study will observe how often students check their phones in a library. Design an observational study, referring to behavioural categories, sampling method and inter-observer reliability.

The researcher found a correlation of −0.62 between minutes of phone use and test score. Explain what this shows and why it cannot show causation.

Explain one purpose of peer review.

Explain how the researcher could use content analysis to study students' revision posts on social media.

Discuss whether psychology can be considered a science.