Hey everyone,
I'm going to leave the term 1 holiday set without a list of good answers until I have more responses for this - it would be great to see more people tackling this one now that everyone is on holidays. However, I am going to move ahead and post the Term 2 holiday set (I will be creating a 2nd set for this holiday based on requests - upload date will be sooner the quicker people are to respond to this one and the term 1 one).
Term 2 Holiday Set
Brianna conducts an experiment comparing measures of retention. First, she creates 2 lists of nonsense syllables using a random generator. She creates a survey in the following way: List 1 is copied to a page requesting for participants to memorise these nonsense syllables, then the next page of the survey contains nonsense syllables from both list 1 and 2 and participants are asked to select which ones were in the previous list. The syllables from list 1 are then presented to the participants again, with the page after asking participants to list the syllables in a short answer box. Finally, Brianna duplicates the survey, except that in the new copy participants complete the short answer question before the multiple choice question.
The surveys are then shared on Facebook and in Brianna’s school’s study room
Link to the survey here in case that description has lost anyone
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeT3TgbPJ6F31IM1i3SEUMu8ScmQNKcZU9sj4vUJsEqFNDliw/viewform?usp=sf_link
1. What results are expected? (1) Why? (2)
2. Identify the independent and dependent variables (2)
3. What form of sampling has been used? (1) Explain if the sample is likely to be representative of all students at Brianna’s school (2)
4. What is the purpose of the second survey? (2)
5. Identify the aim of this experiment (1)
6. The standard deviation for the multiple choice results was calculated to be 2.7 and the standard deviation for the short answer results was calculated to be 3.1. What does this mean? (2)
7. Why is information about the survey presented before any of the questions? (3)
8. Aside from any limitations introduced by sampling, explain two limitations of this experiment (5)
9. Explain one ethical concern for this experiment (2)
10. How could the results of participants answering the first survey and participants answering the second survey be compared? (2)
1/ More words will be correctly remembered in the multiple choice section rather than recalled in the short answer question. This is because recognition is being employed when identifying words in the multiple choice section which is a superior method of retrieval than recall (the short answer section), because of the presence of retrieval cues which assist the location of information.
2/ IV: whether words are recalled or recognised
DV: Number of words correctly remembered
3.Convenience, it is not representative because not all of the population has an equal chance of participating, additionally the survey is open to the general public (by being posted on Facebook), so individuals who are not part of the population are free to take part in the experiment.
4. Counterbalancing, because the experimental design being used is repeated measures, the experiment is susceptible to the extraneous variable the order effect, where participants may have superior or inferior memory ability due to the fact that they are exposed to both conditions. By counterbalancing the order of which half the sample undertakes the experiment, the order effect is limited.
5.To determine if recognition is a superior method of retrieval than recall.
6.This means that for the recognition condition, on average the scores varied by 2.7 from the mean, and for the recall condition the scores varied by 3.1 around the mean. This indicates that the recall condition had greater variation than the recognition condition.
7. To adhere to the ethical guideline of informed consent. So that Briana can obtain written consent from the participants (or the parents/guardians of participants who are under the age of consent). Where they are informed of the true nature of the study, and their rights of confidentiality and withdrawal.
8.
-The validity of the experiment is determined by participant's honesty:
Because the survey is structured in a way that participants are free to go back to the original word list there is a possibility that they may be dishonest and their results could display that they performed better (than they would have in a more monitored experiment). This may explain the high standard deviation value for the recall experiment (higher than the recognition experiment).As that some participants could have pasted the words into the short answer box and thus performed higher than average, and therefore varied greatly from the mean. This could be rectified in the future by designing the survey in a way that the participants cannot go back to the original word list and nor can they copy the words.
Non standardised procedures:
Because there is no time constraints on the experiment, there is a lack of standardisation between participants with regard to the factor of how long they are exposed to the word list. Because according to the multistore model of memory, it is theorised that short term memory duration can be manipulated through the process of rehearsal. Participants who take the test for longer may practice maintenance or elaborative rehearsal to retain the words for longer, and this then creates a lack of standardisation between participants because the results of the experiment could be effected by the extraneous variable of rehearsal, and the measured results could in turn be a measure of the effect of rehearsal on memory, rather than the actual Independent variable that the experimenter had been manipulating which is method of retrieval. This could be controlled for in the future by having a standardised time limit.
9. Debriefing: A debriefing process is a process where an experimenter thoroughly debriefs and informs the participant of the meaning of their results once an experiment has ended, although at the end of the survey there is brief indication of debriefing, it is not sufficient to be considered a quality adherence to the ethical guideline of debriefing.
10. The effect of the delayed serial position effect may be observed in the results. Participants who undergo the short answer test first will likely remember more words form the end of the list and display the recency effect due to the fact that the words at the end of the list are readily available in their short term memories, whereas participants who undergo the short answer test second will have delayed recall, and would likely remember more words at the beginning of the list (displaying the primacy effect), due to the fact that the items at the beginning of the list had a greater chance of rehearsal and long term retention when they were initially learnt.
-sorry if nothing makes sense i wrote this realllly quickly-