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Social practical investigation (Method (QUANTITATIVE The first part will…
Social practical investigation
Aim:
Investigate the perceptions of gender differences in obedience. Background research suggests that females will be more obedient.
Alternative hypothesis:
There will be a difference in the perceived levels of obedience between men and women.
Females will be perceived to be more obedient than men if they are ordered to harm another person.
Method
QUANTITATIVE
The first part will be a series of closed questions and each answer will be given a number e.g 1: very unlikely and 5 very likely.
An example question will be:
How likely would you be to agree to make a colleague redundant if asked to do so by your boss?
QUALITATIVE
The P's will e asked to complete a story. this is to detect underlying attitudes that people have without directly asking them. The start of the story will be written and the P will have to finish.
Sampling: A fairly diverse sample of men and women will be needed. A volunteer sample will be used by placing a advert in the sixth form common room.
Ethical issues:
consent, privacy, confidentiality and protection from harm.
Analysis of quantitative data: Descriptive statistics. Which shows that there is a clear difference in the perceptions of male and female obedience, with the perception that females will be more obedient.
This is consistent in all measures of central tendency. The range and standard deviation suggest that the rate of agreement between P's about their perceptions is similar.
You can use a bar graph to represent the data
Qualitative analysis: Reading the story endings and making a note of any themes that emerge. From the results we can see there were themes of resistance, obedience and protest. These themes can be sub-divided into sub-themes. The obedience was shown by the female but most resistance was shown by the male. We can conclude that males are more likely to resist being obedient.
Evaluation
Strengths:
By asking p's about other people's levels of obedience, they are less likely to display social desirability bias as it is not directly about them. Also by using the story completion technique it allows us to tap into underlying beliefs and this raises validity. 50 responses were gathered from this investigation which is quite a large sample so it is easy to generalise from.
Weaknesses:
As each question was concerned with male or female obedience, the aim of the study may be quite obvious, the questionnaire was not tried and tested for reliability. This could have resulted in p's responding in a way that they though the researcher was looking for. This may account for high levels of obedience in females as social norms would suggest females were more obedient.
Generalisability may be problem as only students were used.