Study #2 - Year 12 and Subject Choice

My Conducted Study Of The Chosen & Respect Of Subjects Offered At A-Level:

Hypothesis:

1. People will chose to study academic studies over non-academic studies.
2. Academic studies are the most respected studies
3. Lesser-academic studies are the least respected studies

Sample:

Self-Selected/Volunteer Sample - I went into a year 12 form room and requested volunteers to be apart of the study and received a biased sample of students (who were mostly apart of the same friendship group, did very similar subjects and had very similar attitudes and values)

Data Type:

I gathered quantitative data as it was most useful and easy to translate into comparative methods like correlation. I collected this data in the form of three tally charts. This allows anonymity of the participants as no personal data has been acquired nor is required to take part in this study.

Reliability:

The method I highly reliable as it was a standardised procedure that I repeated for every participant, it also was a tally chart and every participant was asked what subject they did, what they respected the least, what subjects they respected the most.

Generalisability:

This study was not generalisable due to the biased sample I gathered through the self-selected sampling method and as they were almost all friends doing the same subjects and did not have differing attitudes to make it generalisable.

Research Method:

This was a interview where students were asked what subjects they did, which ones they respected the least and which they respected the most.

Experimental measures design:

N/A

Ethics:

Participants were briefed and filled out consent forms that gave them full details about the study. The participants names were not used and so they have confidentiality. I have also offered the participants a chance to withdraw from the study. Also participants were not deceived about the study, this however did invalidate my results see below.

Validity:

Participants did suffer from demand characteristics and interviewer bias because they knew the intentions of the study, therefore they may have chanced their answer to suit the study and what they believe I, the researcher, would have wanted to hear. This was particularly evident with one student who's results had to be stricken from the record. The sample biased my results and rendered my study invalid because they shared similar values towards subject choice and shared the same subject choices.