Psychology A Level NotesTopic: Name: Date:

Starter: What level of measurement are the following data:

1. Steam engine numbers

2. A child’s age

3. Hospital staff, grades 1-9

4. Football goals

5. Beaufort scale of wind strengths

6. National insurance numbers

7. Centimetres

8. Pass or failure on an exam

1 2

3 4

5 6

7 8

EXCERCISE 1: Label the following distribution curves: Normal, positively or negatively skewed

Learning Outcomes

Basic

Reasonable

Challenge

EXERCISE 2 A: What is a significant result?

What does this mean in terms of hypotheses?

What are the results due to?

Challenge task: Draw your own distribution curve on the data provided. You must label whether your curve is normal, positive or negative

EXERCISE 2 B: What is a NON-significant result?

What does this mean in terms of hypotheses?

What are the results due to?

EXERCISE 2 C: Are the following results significant or non-significant?

1. 0.52. 0.123. 0.0014. 0.045. 0.16. 0.005

Psychology A Level NotesTopic: Name: Date:

EXERCISE 3: Which test? To help you practise deciding which test to use, try the following: which test would be appropriate for data derived from the following experiments and investigations?

1. Thirty people are given a questionnaire in which their attitudes towards corporal punishment are measured before and after they have been shown a film on the subject.

2. Two groups of participants take part in an experiment on sleep deprivation and mathematical ability. They are not twins, and they are not matched in any way.

3. ‘Before’ and ‘after’ scores obtained from a group of people who were exposed to a lecture on artistic appreciation of paintings. They were asked to rate a set of paintings on a scale from 1-10.

4. Research into strategies to save oneself during lifeboat disasters is concerned with whether men, women and children

behave differently: do they get into a lifeboat, cling to floating debris, or have to swim?

5. An analysis of differences in exam marks obtained by boys and girls in a particular year, with a view to showing that one of the sexes obtained better marks.

6. Participants in an experiment into alcohol consumption were matched on height and body weight, and placed into an experimental (alcohol) condition and a control (no alcohol) condition. They then took a simulated driving test, which they passed or failed.

7. Medical social workers in a hospital start to notice that people who live in the vicinity of the nuclear reactor site have large ears. They measure ear length precisely in these people, and also with people who live in villages outside the site. They measure how far away from the reactor site people live, along with their ear length.

8. Study skill differences between science students and art students, concerning whether or not they revise as they go along with the course, or keep up with the course but leave their revision until just before the exam.

Key words checklist:o Inferential stats testso Normal distributiono Positive skewo Negative Skewo P valueo Critical valueo Significant resulto Non-significant resulto t-testo Mann Whitney Uo Wilcoxon Signed Rankso Chi-Squareo Binomial Signo Spearmans Rho

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