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Lesson Element
Aims, Hypotheses and Variables
Instructions and answers for teachers
These instructions cover the student activity section which can be found on page 7. This Lesson element supports OCR AS and A Level Psychology. When distributing the activity section to the students either as a printed copy or as a Word file you will need to remove the teacher instructions section.
Introduction
Students are required to have knowledge of aims, hypotheses, independent and dependent variables and operationalising them as well as extraneous variables. They should be able to identify variables and formulate aims and hypotheses. The key objectives of this lesson element are to familiarise students with:
- Identifying and writing research aims
- Identifying and writing alternate and null hypotheses
- Identifying independent and dependent variables
- Operationalising variables. Julu 2015 This activity offers an opportunity for English skills development. This activity offers an opportunity for maths skills development.
Worksheet 1
Aims are statements about what the researcher wants to investigate. Hypotheses are predictions about what the researcher expects to find.
Student misconceptions
The most common error when writing aims is students often confuse them with hypotheses or statements of findings (results). It is therefore important that students understand the distinction between them. Worksheet 1 is designed to introduce students to aims of research. The activity can be used to link to the core studies. If students have not studied the core studies, extracts could be given to help them identify the aims. To stretch and challenge, students could be given the task of finding out about the studies for themselves.
Variables worksheet 2
Experiments always have an independent and dependent variable. The independent variable is the one the experimenter manipulates (the thing that changes between the conditions the participants are placed into). The dependent variable is the thing being measured, or the results of the experiment. Students will be required to identify independent and dependent variables as well as formulate them when designing their own research.
Teacher answers (Activity)
- Babies will show a preference for different types of patterns. IV: type of pattern DV: babies preference Julu 2015
- Males will make more driving errors than females. IV: Male or Female DV: number of errors made in a driving simulation/test It is important for students to recognise the need for high control in experiments to overcome the effect of extraneous variables. By controlling the environment, situational variables can be significantly reduced. Randomly allocating participants to their conditions or using a matched pairs experimental design can help to reduce participant variables.
Worksheet 3
When predicting the outcome of the experiment, a psychologist always has two types of hypotheses; an alternate one (which predicts a difference will be found in the results between the conditions of the independent variable) and a null hypothesis (which always predicts no difference will be found). Upon conducting research, one hypothesis is always accepted and one is rejected.
Teacher answers (Activity)
Boys will show more physical aggression than girls. One tailed alternative. There will be a difference in happiness scores between people who work full time and those who work part time. Two tailed alternative. There will be no difference in the number of goals saved by goal keepers during a football match and during a training session. Null hypothesis. The amount of alcohol drunk has an effect on reaction times. Two tailed alternative. Julu 2015
Student misconceptions
When writing hypotheses, students often write in the past tense as in what the researcher has found as opposed to what he predicts to find. Students often confuse one and two tailed hypotheses and so it is important to give them plenty of practice at both writing them and identifying them. To facilitate this, students could be given examples of research and asked to write their corresponding hypotheses. As an extension activity students could be asked to rephrase the hypotheses from the activity from one tailed to two tailed and then to write a corresponding null hypothesis and vice versa.
Worksheet 4
Anything that is not the independent variable that has the potential to affect the results is called an extraneous variable. It can be a natural characteristic of the participant, such as intelligence levels, gender, or age for example, or it could be a feature of the environment such as lighting or noise.
Teacher answers (Activity)
There are many extraneous variables that could affect the results other than the monetary reward. These include: the amount of revision the student does how many hours of lessons the students has a week attendance percentage the subjects the students are studying the natural differences in ability of the student.
Consolidation task
Students learn about conducting research by having the opportunity to plan, design and carry it out for themselves. They will be asked to reflect on their practical experiences, so it is therefore encouraged that students are given the opportunity to design and conduct their own experiments. As a plenary activity, students could be given the opportunity to begin planning and designing their own experiment at this stage. Julu 2015
Lesson Element
Aims, Hypotheses and Variables
Student Activity
Writing Aims - Worksheet 1
All research must have an aim. The aim is a statement about what the researcher wants to investigate. It is usually kept quite broad and is written using the following format: ‘The aim of the research is to investigate ….’ So the aim of Bandura’s (1961) study was to investigate whether aggression can be transmitted through the imitation of aggressive models. Complete the activity on the following page.
Activity
Complete the table to show the aim of the five classic studies. ( Bandura’s (1961) has been done for you.)
Study Key theme Aim
Milgram (1963) Obedience
Loftus and Palmer
Eye witness testimony
Bandura (1961) Transmission of
aggression
To investigate whether aggression can be
transmitted through the imitation of
aggressive models.
Sperry (1968) Split brain
Freud (1909) Little Hans
Extension task
Identify the aims for the five corresponding contemporary studies.
IV:
DV:
- Males will make more driving errors than females. IV: DV:
Operationalising variables
To ensure cause and effect is established it is important that we identify exactly how the independent and dependent variables will be measured, this is known as operationalising the variables. This enables another Psychologist to replicate your research and is essential in establishing reliability (achieving consistency in the results). Let’s take the aim above to see if children will perform better working alone than in groups. Without operationalising the variables we don’t know how many children will be in the group or how performance will be measured. By stating that the children will either work alone or in groups of three is operationalising the independent variable. How could the dependent variable be operationalised?
Activity
Go back to the independent and dependent variables in the previous activity and operationalise them.
- Babies will show a preference for different types of patterns. IV: DV:
- Participants who get less sleep will have slower reflexes. IV: DV:
- Participants who practice doing a task will get better the more they do it. IV: DV:
- Males will make more driving errors than females. IV: DV:
Read the following hypotheses and identify whether they are alternative one tailed, alternative two tailed, or a null hypotheses.
- Boys will show more physical aggression than girls.
- There will be a difference in happiness scores between people who work full time and those who work part time.
- There will be no difference in the number of goals saved by goal keepers during a football match and during a training session.
- The amount of alcohol drunk has an effect on reaction times.
Activity
Re-word these hypotheses so one-tailed become two-tailed and vice versa and that alternative become null.
Stretch and Challenge
Have a go at writing your own alternative and null hypotheses for the following research aims. Remember to operationalise your variables!
- To investigate whether eating lunch impacts alertness.
- To investigate whether the use of social networks affect individual’s social life.
- An investigation into the use of advertising on buying patterns.
- An experiment into workload and stress.
Extraneous variables - Worksheet 4
Read the following extract and identify as many extraneous variables as you can and suggest possible ways to control for them. Answer the questions that follow. A psychologist wanted to investigate whether giving students an incentive to achieve increases the number of high grades achieved. He asked two colleges to take part. One college offered students a payment of £50 for every A grade they achieved. The second college did not offer any rewards. The independent variable is: The dependent variable is: Possible extraneous variables Can you suggest ways to control these?
Write a suitable alternate hypothesis for this study. State whether it is one tailed or two tailed and justify your choice. Write a suitable null hypothesis for this study.
