Researchers investigated whether attendance at a neighbourhood club was associated with stronger friendships among adults who had recently moved into the area. They distributed a questionnaire to club members at an evening meeting and to other residents through leaflets delivered to nearby homes. Forty club members and eighty residents who did not attend the club returned completed questionnaires. Participation was voluntary, and the researchers did not record how many people received an invitation.

The questionnaire asked how often respondents had met a friend in person during the previous week. They selected one of three categories: “not at all”, “once or twice”, or “three times or more”. The researchers assigned these categories the numbers 1, 2 and 3 when entering the responses. Respondents also indicated whether they attended the neighbourhood club. They were not asked how close they felt to their friends, whether meetings were enjoyable or how often they communicated without meeting in person.

Twenty-four club members and forty non-members selected “three times or more”. The researchers emphasized that more non-members appeared in this category. They also calculated the mean of the category numbers for each group and described these values as average friendship-quality scores. Their report did not explain the category coding or acknowledge the unequal group sizes. No assessment had been conducted before participants joined the club.

The researchers concluded that club attendance did not improve friendships and recommended that the local council redirect its funding. They did not investigate whether people with different existing friendship networks were more likely to join or respond. Questionnaire instructions stated that answers would be confidential. However, respondents supplied their names and street addresses so that researchers could check that each person participated only once. These identifying details were retained in the same file as their answers and were accessible to the club coordinator.

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

A preliminary experiment investigated whether presenting written instructions in short sections affected accuracy when following a new set of rules. Six adults volunteered through a college notice and completed one task with instructions presented as a continuous paragraph and another with instructions presented in short sections. Everyone completed the paragraph condition first, and the students retained only the total number of errors across all participants in each condition.

Design a follow-up repeated-measures experiment that addresses these procedural limitations, explaining how its data would be recorded and represented.

Researchers investigated whether practising with physical objects rather than watching a demonstration helped adults learn an unfamiliar assembly task. Forty-eight adults volunteered after receiving an advertisement circulated by a vocational college. The advertisement described an opportunity to discover an effective way of learning practical skills. Participants were randomly allocated to two equal groups.

One group spent ten minutes practising with the objects. The other watched a ten-minute recording showing the same assembly procedure. Both groups then attempted the task individually using identical materials. Researchers provided the same written instructions and recorded the time taken to complete the assembly correctly. A researcher who knew each participant’s group stopped the timer and decided whether the finished assembly met the requirements. Participants could request assistance, but the number of requests was not recorded.

The practice group had a mean completion time of 72 seconds and a median of 58 seconds. The demonstration group had a mean of 65 seconds and a median of 64 seconds. The standard deviations were 32 seconds and 10 seconds respectively. One participant in the practice group took much longer than the others after repeatedly misunderstanding how two pieces fitted together. The researchers retained this observation because the timer had worked correctly.

In their report, the researchers emphasized the lower median in the practice group and concluded that physical practice produced faster learning. They did not discuss the contrasting means or differences in variability. No later assessment was conducted. Participants had been told that their performance would not affect their college records, could stop at any time and would receive an explanation of the research afterwards. The college considered recommending physical practice for all its training courses.

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

A research team investigated how adults experienced returning to everyday activities after a minor physical injury. Twelve adults receiving care at one clinic agreed to take part after their treating practitioner invited them. All had recently resumed at least some activities. The researchers wanted to identify experiences that could help the clinic improve its support during recovery.

Each participant completed an individual interview lasting approximately forty minutes. The interviewer asked the same opening questions about recovery but could ask further questions to explore an account. With permission, the interviews were recorded and transcribed. Participants were told that they could decline any question and that the clinic would receive an anonymous summary rather than individual transcripts.

The lead researcher, who believed that successful recovery depended mainly on personal determination, read all the transcripts twice. She labelled passages about setting goals, continuing activities and overcoming discomfort. She grouped these labels into a proposed theme called “Taking control restores confidence”. A second researcher examined selected extracts supporting this theme but did not read the complete transcripts. The team defined the theme and selected quotations for its report without returning to the wider collection of accounts.

Several participants described feeling more confident after achieving small goals. One said, “Doing the shopping again made me feel like myself.” Other participants described practical help from relatives or changes made by employers. One explained, “I wanted to do more, but I could not manage until my hours changed.” These accounts were placed in a miscellaneous file and were not discussed in the final report.

The report presented determination as the central feature of recovery and recommended that clinic staff encourage patients to set more demanding goals. The treating practitioners were shown the report before participants received a summary. Although names were removed, some quotations included distinctive details about participants’ occupations and injuries.

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