A class practical investigated whether background conversation affected concentration during a task. Ten adult students who volunteered after a classroom announcement completed one letter-search sheet in silence and another while a recording of conversation played, with half completing the silent condition first. The researchers measured concentration by counting the target letters each participant failed to mark during a two-minute period.

Apply the concept of measurement to the way concentration was investigated in this practical.

Researchers investigated whether introducing protected rest breaks reduced workplace stress among hospital reception staff. Two hospitals agreed to participate. Managers circulated an invitation, and 36 employees volunteered. One hospital introduced a daily protected twenty-minute break for six weeks; the other continued its usual arrangements. Employees were not assigned to hospitals by the researchers. Both hospitals experienced changes in patient numbers during the investigation.

Before and after the six weeks, each employee took part in an individual interview in a private room at work. Researchers asked the same six questions about experiences during the previous working week, including feeling overwhelmed, difficulty relaxing after work and concerns about making mistakes. Employees could elaborate on their answers. Interviews were recorded with permission. Participants were told that participation was voluntary and that managers would receive only a summary of the findings, not recordings or individual responses.

Two researchers independently read each transcript. They counted every sentence containing an expression of worry or tension and used the total as the employee’s stress score. A sentence could count only once, even if it contained several expressions. The researchers discussed disagreements and agreed on a final score. They knew which hospital each employee worked at. Interview length varied because some employees gave much longer answers than others.

At the hospital introducing breaks, the mean stress score fell from 12 to 7. At the other hospital, it fell from 11 to 10. Several employees described the breaks as helpful, although others said they still worried about unfinished work. The researchers concluded that protected breaks reduced stress and recommended extending the arrangement to other hospitals. They did not collect additional evidence about employees’ experiences outside work.

Discuss this study with reference to two or more of the following concepts: measurement, bias, causality and responsibility.

Researchers investigated whether feedback about improvement encouraged adults to continue learning a difficult skill. Sixty adults volunteered after seeing an advertisement at a public library. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups of thirty. Everyone completed a ten-minute introductory lesson on folding unfamiliar paper shapes, delivered through the same recorded instructions. They then attempted three practice shapes individually in separate workspaces.

One group received the message, “Your folds are becoming more accurate with practice.” The other received the message, “You have completed the practice stage.” These messages were delivered automatically and were not based on individual performance. Participants had consented to a study of learning activities but were not told beforehand that the researchers were comparing the messages.

Participants were then offered up to twenty minutes to attempt a more complicated shape. They were told that they could stop at any time without losing their payment and could use the remaining time to read magazines. Researchers measured willingness to continue learning as the number of minutes from the start of this optional stage until a participant chose to stop. Anyone still working after twenty minutes received a score of twenty. A researcher who did not know which message participants had received recorded the stopping times. Afterwards, participants rated how much they had wanted to improve, from one, “not at all”, to seven, “very much”.

The improvement-message group continued for a mean of sixteen minutes, compared with eleven minutes in the other group. Both groups gave a mean rating of five for wanting to improve. Some participants said they continued because folding was enjoyable; others said they wanted to avoid appearing unhelpful. During debriefing, researchers explained the purpose of the messages and offered participants the opportunity to withdraw their data. They concluded that feedback about improvement increased willingness to learn.

Discuss this study with reference to two or more of the following concepts: measurement, causality, bias and responsibility.

A class practical investigated whether the time available to study a list affected how many words participants could remember. Ten adult volunteers recruited through a college noticeboard studied a list for 30 seconds and wrote down the words they remembered, then studied the same list for 60 seconds and repeated the recall task. The researchers counted correctly recalled words, but participants asked whether spelling mistakes and repeated words would be counted.

Design a revised experiment to investigate this aim using a clear and consistent measurement procedure.