A-Levels Psychology Coursework Example

A-Level Psychology Coursework Write-Up Example

Note, this example if specifically for the AQA Psychology (B) A-level Specification. However, it is a useful guide for developing an understanding of how to write-up your psychology coursework practical for all A-level specifications and also for undergraduate degree courses in psychology.

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the extent of conformity in donating to charity. The hypothesis for this experiment was:

The amount of money given in sponsorship will be significantly higher if the previous donations were high, compared to that of low previous donations.

The design employed for this study was independent measures. The two conditions were (A) low previous donations and (B) high previous donations. There were forty four participants of equal male and female ratio. The experimental hypothesis was rejected using an unrelated t-test.

My conclusion from this study was that there is a high level of conformity in donating to charity, the participant nearly always tried to match the amount that was donated by the first four fictitious donators.

Teacher comments:

This abstract is ok, but fails to include the results ( inferential or descriptive statistics) of the study and details about the sampling method used.

It also uses the word "My" when refering to the conclusion. The coursework should be written in the the third person, so avoid using the word "my" and "I".

Introduction

Conformity is a wide topic and can mean a range of things, a lot of psychological research has been focused in this area. What is conformity? People fitting their behaviour to that of others who are in the same situation, but is it that straight forward? Kelman (1958) argues that there are basically three levels of conformity. Compliance in which people act in accordance with the majority but don’t change their own private ideas and beliefs. Internalisation in which people do change their private beliefs because they come to believe that the other view is the more valid one. And finally identification, in which people change their attitudes or beliefs in order to become more like somebody that they respect or admire.

This has been a problem in a lot of studies concerning conformity, the investigating psychologist has not identified the true nature of conformity, i.e. is this person agreeing with the group because he truly believes them to be right or is it because he hasn’t the confidence to disagree?

I feel that unless you can ask the person indirectly or otherwise ask them what they truly believe to be correct you have presumed it is compliance.

There are no social or written codes on how much money to donate to charity, therefore this is quite an uncertain area for people on how much they should donate. Another study into conformity which dealt with an uncertain or unambiguous situation was Sherif’s study (1936) where he asked participants to judge how far a dot of light moved. When doing this on an individual basis, the distances varied significantly but when in a group the distances all became very similar. The reason the task was ambiguous was the dot of light did not move but Sherif was relying on the autokinetic effect where something appears to move but doesn’t actually (it is the movement of the observer’s head).

In a situation which was not at all uncertain Asch asked people to judge which line was the same length as the stimulus line from three other lines that were all distinctly different when in a group of people (confederates who were told to pick the wrong line). The participants were saying the wrong line even though it was blatantly incorrect. The highest proportion of conformers occurred when there were four confederates in the group. This experiment received a lot of criticism for a number of reasons, including the fact that there was very little ecological validity to it. People in normal situations are not asked to judge lengths of lines. There was also an important ethical criticism, that the participants were put in a situation where they were obliged to lie (they were conforming not internalising) and therefore put under a considerable amount of stress. But we have learned that four people is the optimum amount when trying to make people conform.

Anonymity may be a problem affecting people so Deutsch & Gerard (1955) used the same study as Asch but conducted it using remote buttons and partitions dividing them. This did cause the level of conformity to drop.

The problems with these studies is that they don’t relate to real life. If a study was designed where they didn’t even realise they were being ‘tested’ it would wipe out both problems simultaneously making it just about as ecologically valid as you can get and as it was a normal task they were doing they would feel confident and the results would show compliance but they could also show internalisation if the task didn’t require a right or a wrong answer (this may induce compliance as it could reflect on them badly if they go against the norm). So it would be better if the task was ambiguous with no true right or wrong answer.

The study which I feel fits all these criteria is a study into conformity using the amount of money people donate to charity as the dependent variable. People are always being asked to sponsor someone for charity as it is so common the participants should feel no stress in doing this and as it is so ambiguous there should be no fear of getting the ‘wrong’ answer.

The aim of my study is to investigate the extent of conformity in donating to charity. The following hypothesis has been decided upon: The amount of money given in sponsorship will be significantly higher if the previous donations were high, compared to that of low previous donations. The null stating that any difference in the results of condition A and condition B could of occurred by chance.

Aims

To investigate the extent of conformity in donating to charity.

Experimental hypothesis

The amount of money given in sponsorship will be significantly higher if the previous donations were high, compared to that of low previous donations.

Null hypothesis

The difference in the donations between the condition A and condition Bs could of occurred by chance.

Teacher comments:

A clear explanation to start, but is it relevant?

Good, dealing with the difference between conformity in ambiguous and unambiguous situations — highly relevant to this study.

Good summary of a relevant piece of research (Sherif and Asch).

Good critical comment, linked to aims. However, it’s a shame the student wasn’t aware of relevant field experiments with real-life validity.

Useful inclusion of evaluative material.

It would have been useful to mention some of the techniques for inducing compliance and associated research (e.g. ’foot-in-the-door’’).

Fails to write in the third person.

There is no reason to repeat the statement of hypotheses. The aims should be a link between the introduction and the hypotheses – one sentence is not enough.

Altogether, the introduction and aims section comes to 770 words, just about right (for A2).

The hypotheses should state if they are one- or two-tailed. Overall, however, aims and hypotheses are reasonably accurately stated.

Method

Design

An independent measures design was used. I chose this design as it was straight forward to implement and it avoids any order effects which might occur if using repeated measures. There are two conditions or independent variables.

Condition A: low previous donations (average amount 20p).

Condition B: high previous donations (average amount 100p.)

The dependent variable is how much money the participant donated to charity.

The participants were selected using opportunity sampling. There were 44 participants, 22 in each condition (A&B). See section on participants for more information. The procedure was standardised with a script and standard donation forms so as to avoid some important errors that may occur. Without a script there may be investigator bias and the choice of words employed may cause a difference in donations in itself. If the donation sheet had been different then, for example, the names of other donors may have been what was determining how large the donation was, not the size of the previous donations. Therefore this would be measuring the effect of name. By keeping the sheets exactly the same (except for previous donation size) we have excluded this as an extraneous variable.

I chose a significance level of 0.05 to analyse the results (this allows for a 5% error due to chance). This level is the normal significance level used in psychological research. It is neither too stringent nor too lenient. For the statistical analysis we used the Mann-Whitney test because the data was independent.

Possible extraneous variables were identified and these are the controls which were used to try to avoid them.

• Standardised instructions were used.

• The sponsorship forms were identical in each condition and the only inter-conditional variable being the amount donated.

• The participants were all tested around the same time of day to avoid fatigue effects (for example participants might be more irritable later in the day).

Teacher comments:

In the design section we are looking for ‘appropriate’ design decisions. It is up to the candidate to provide evidence here about what decisions were taken and why.

The IV and DV are operationalised.

There is no need to describe sampling decisions here - save that for the participants sub-section.

Possible extraneous variables have been indentified, but no reference to how they might have affected the results (DV).

Participants

There were forty-four participants, twenty two in each condition (A&B). There was an equal number of males and females so as to avoid gender bias. The target population where students from Liverpool Sixth Form between the ages of eighteen and thirty, the age was restricted as people who are older may have more disposable money as there would be so few people over the age of thirty (available to us for the investigation) we wouldn’t have a representative sample which could lead to a skew in the results. All the participants were asked if they studied psychology to make sure they were psychologically naive. Partipcants were selected using opportunity sampling because it was a quick and easy method.

Apparatus and materials

• Donation sheets

• Experimental script (explaining about the charity, etc.)

• Debriefing script (explaining the investigation to the participant, etc.)

See appendix I, II and III for these.

Procedure

The procedure we followed before the experiment.

• Firstly the fictitious charity and how it was going to be sponsored was decided.

• Then the ‘sponsor form’ was constructed on the computer.

• The sponsor forms were then filled in using four fictitious names (four being the optimum amount according to Asch).

• The sponsor forms were then put into groups and then the amount donated by the fictitious sponsors was filled in, one group of forms had an average donation of 20p and the other being 100p (condition A and B).

• The next stage was to standardise the experimental script.

The experimental procedure.

• After seeing someone who looked suitable i.e. they were not running somewhere, I tossed a coin to see whether they were to be in condition A or B.

• After approaching the participant we said the standard script (see appendix II)

Teacher comments:

Avoid using bullet points in the procedure.

There is no geographical reference to where the particpants were approached and selected (that relates to the target population).

There is no mention of ethical issues there. Were the participants debriefed? Did they give their consent?

Results

For the raw data see appendix IV.

The data we obtained from our investigation has been treated in the following way:

Firstly a quick way to see if there is a difference between conditions A and B is to find the average of each condition. There are three types of averages each giving a different number (unless the results are statistically ideal). The mean is worked out by totalling the results and then dividing by the number of results, i.e. 1+2+3+4=10 104=2.5. The median is worked out by ordering the results into ascending order and taking the middle one. If there is an even number there will be two middle numbers in which case divide the total of the two numbers by two, i.e. 1,2,3,4 3+2=5 52=2.5. The mode is the commonest number that occurs, i.e. 1,2,3,3,3,4,4,5 it is 3.

Type of average Condition A Condition B

Mean 41.1 120.9

Median 30 115

Mode 25 100

The average which gives the most accurate picture in my opinion is the mean. The data can also be represented using other descriptive statistics such as bar charts

Two graphs showing a comparison of the amount of money pledged by conditions A and B

Condition A

Condition B

At a glance this does show a difference but to see if it is statistically significant we can use an inferential test.

A statistical test can be used to see if there is a significant difference between the two conditions. there are many statistical tests and it is important that the right one is chosen otherwise the results will be meaningless. The data is unrelated and we want a two-sample test of difference, therefore we use the Mann-Whitney U test.

The calculations are shown in Appendix V.

Information relating to the Mann-Whitney test:

• NS and NL are both 22.

• The hypothesis is one-tailed (stating a direction).

• The desired significance level is 5%.

• The critical value of U for NS and NL of 20 is 138.

• The observed value of U is

Since the observed value of U is greater than the critical value (p >0.05) we can reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternate hypothesis

Teacher comments:

Descriptive statistics need to be in a summary table with an appropriate title, and the candidate should go on to put these results into words.

You don't have to show how the results were calculated - leave this for the appendix V.

Note: although the report was in word processed format, the graphs were hand drawn. This is perfectly acceptable. No more marks would be obtained had they been presented as here (as Microsoft Excel charts).

The bar charts are not really comparable since they have different scales on the horizontal axis. It might have been better to use the same scale and present them on one graph since there is no overlap.

The use of a non-parametric test should have been justified, since a t-test was possible.

Alternate hypothesis should have been restated here to make the conclusion clearer.

Discussion

This investigation into the extent of conformity has been very successful. The experimental hypothesis: The amount of money given in sponsorship will be significantly higher if the previous donations were high, compared to that of low previous donations has been accepted which means that the null hypothesis: The difference in the donations between the condition A and condition Bs could of occurred by chance has been rejected.

The significance of the results measured using the Mann-Whitney test showed that at the significance level of 0.05 the results were very unlikely to have happened by chance. Not only does the statistical test support the hypothesis but the results are so pronounced that simply by looking at the graph or any of the averages in the results section you can see that there is definitely a difference in the two conditions. The graph is not ideal in its shape. I think this is probably just from the increments in the amount of money scale being too large, if they were smaller the curve in the graph would probably have been smoother though not ideal.

This study supports all the previous research by Asch and Sherif but it is a higher ecological validity because it occurs in everyday life and isn’t just an abstract test devised by us in which participants have no real experience or confidence which may encourage participants to comply. Also this study doesn’t have the test element of previous studies as the task is not seen in a testable situation (by the participant) with no correct or incorrect answer this will almost eradicate any demand characteristics and should of made the results more valid. The results from this experiment can not be directly compared to that of the studies mentioned in the background as they show a percentage of participants who have conformed, while ours shows whether there is a significant level of difference indicating conformity, but the conclusions from this study and the previous studies do agree with each other. Kelman’s three types of conformity are mentioned in the background I think that the type of conformity displayed in this experiment is internalisation the participants see the amount pledged by fellow students (presumably) and think well these people have to put down this much that seems about right, or more cynically people do not want to donate any money by feel obliged to by the present norms and then use as a guide the previous donations to decide what is the minimum amount that they could donate with out looking too ‘tight’.

A possible problem with this experiment is we are already selecting people more likely to conform as they have agreed to sponsor us and maybe all the people who declined to participate in this study were all the non-conformists. This would exaggerate the effect of conformity and a way to get round this should have been realised or at least the problem should have been acknowledged. Also another problem with this study is the financial situation of the participant may have affected how much they donated. Two ways this study limited this problem was using only students (roughly all in the same financial situation) and the two amounts on the sponsor sheets were relatively low but this problem may have affected the results none the less. A way to get round this would be to take the fiscal element out of the study and possibly replace it with how many hours they could spare to help (if this course was selected then the task would be non-discriminatory against what males and females perceive are gender related tasks, as this may skew the results). Deutsch and Gerard (1995) showed us that anonymity does effect conformity so if the study could be modified to keep the participant anonymous then this may help but I do not feel this is too important because in real life anonymity is not possible so it is more ecologically valid.

Conclusion

The amount people donate beforehand on a sponsorship sheet does effect how much people will themselves donate and they will normally try to keep it relatively close to the previous donations, e.g. previous high donation leads to a high donation, previous low donation leads to a low donation.

Teacher comments:

Good attempt to present the outcome in a clearly understandable form. Reference to the descriptive statistics as clear support for the statistical test is excellent.

The relationship to background research is mainly a repetition of the introduction. And because some relevant background material is not referred to, the discussion does not quite have sufficient breadth.

The end of this paragraph is a mistaken attempt to pad out this part of the discussion. It doesn’t explain the findings.

These errors in punctuation are verging on more than ‘minor’. The candidate should really have reread the text and made it more readable.

Some thoughtful criticisms and suggested improvements of the method.

There is no real discussion of implications or ideas for future research omitted, all suggestions are really modifications as opposed to ideas for further research. There was no discussion of the ethical implications. An important omission.