Design a study task As you know, in Paper 2, you will be asked to design your own study. Using the knowledge you have from Research Methods (Chapter 1) and by covering more than half of the core studies. You should have a better understanding of what are the important elements of a study, and how to design one. Below, you can see three options which are from Past Papers. You will select two of these options, and answer both of them. You will answer them as you would answer the Cambridge questions. These are 10 mark questions. You can see these options below. In addition, you can find the mandatory question which you will need to answer to supplement one of your answers (not both). This question is about naming the strength in your study, and why it’s a strength (on the exam, it may ask about weakness of your study, so think about that as well). I will attach videos and give additional help, which you can find at the end of this document. You can also find a candidate response with feedback. The deadline you can find at the end of this document. THIS WILL COUNT AS AN ASSESSMENT, so please, submit this on time. If you fail to do so, you will get a 0 as an assessment, which may significantly affect your final grade. If AI is detected, you may get a 0 as well, so make sure it is your own work. AI can be used as a tool to help, not something to copy from. OPTION 1 OPTION 2 OPTION 3 MANDATORY QUESTION for ONE of your options Tips for these questions These questions may seem intimidating to some, but they are not as hard as they seem. There is usually no need to overthink or complicate things, but rather keep things simple and to the point. There is a checklist that you should keep in mind when designing your experiment: ● Who: ○ Mention the participants; how many of them? Who are they? What are their relevant features (age, students, occupation)? Write relevant details. For example, if age is an important part of the study, then mention it. ○ Mention (if necessary) the observers and/or actors if you have them in your study; how many observers, why that many? Who are the actors? What will they do? ● What: ○ This is one of the most important parts of your study ○ Here you talk about the Research Methods used; specifically, what kind of study is it? Observational, correlational, experimental? This part is often determined by the question that you get. ○ What are your independent variables and dependent variables? ○ If you have an experimental design, is it going to be independent measures, repeated measures or matched pairs design? ○ Will you collect quantitative data or qualitative? ○ What sampling technique will you use? Opportunity? Volunteer? Random? ○ What are your controls going to be? (e.g. if participants are doing a mental task, what will you control? Sound? Distractions? Time? etc.) ● Where: ○ Refer to the location, where is this being conducted? ○ If it’s a field experiment, where is this being done? It needs to match the aim of the study. If the study is about children, you may want to do a field experiment in a nursery or playground, etc. ● When: ○ Refer to the timeframe. If you have a longitudinal study, how long is it? 2 days? 1 week? 1 month? 17 years and 93 days? ○ If it is a longitudinal study, how often are measurements taken? Everyday? Every few months? ● How? ○ “How” is referring to how you are going to do the things you mentioned in the what section. ○ How are you going to operationalize the independent and dependent variables? (e.g. memory = number of words remembered from a list. Happiness = score from a ‘happiness’ questionnaire. Anger = number of aggressive acts towards others, etc.) ○ How are you allocating the participants to each group? ○ How are you going to implement controls in your study? (e.g. I will control distractions by making sure that all participants are in the same quiet room when they do the experiment) ○ How will you make sure that the study is ethical? If there is deception, how will it look like? And how will you make sure there is not as much psychological harm? If you can cover these points, then you will ensure that you have covered the most important elements of the study. Remember, in the exam, you will not know what kind of study you will get. The scenario will always be different, so you need to adapt. However, for this task, you have a choice out of the 3 (choose 2). Below are links to two videos (one shorter, one longer, that go into more details regarding this question). If you need any help, please contact me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZRGF1Wf-5s - long video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkM68I7516g - short video DEADLINE: Monday 17th, 23:59
