The Research Aims to Determine the Attitude of Students Towards Homework Discussion
I’m studying and need help with a Social Science question to help me learn.
SCENARIO:
Adam wants to find out about students’ attitudes towards homework. He believes boys complete homework more quickly than girls. He will test this theory by carrying out a questionnaire that will ask how many minutes’ pupils at a school spend on homework. Before starting, Adam decides to test out his questionnaire on 5 pupils. They struggle to understand one of the questions, so Adam changes it before sending out the questionnaires for real. Adam sends the questionnaire out to 30 male students, and 30 female students, who all attend one school, in London.
After getting the questionnaire results back, Adam looks at all of the data and finds out that boys do complete their homework quicker than girls. On reflection, Adam thinks that some of his questions could have been better, but that he found out the answer to his question.
QUESTIONS:
- What is the aim of Adam’s research?
- What is his hypothesis (educated guess)?
- What is his sample size? (How many subjects are in his study?)
- Why was his pilot study useful? Why/Why not?
- Are Adam’s results reliable? Explain your answer.
- Reliability: observations can be consistently made over time and by different people (about observation)
- Is Adam’s research valid? Explain your answer.
- Validity: theoretical/conceptual interpretation of observations is correct (about link between observation and theory)
- Is Adam’s research representative? (Can Adam’s findings, based on his sample, be generalized to a larger group?)Explain your answer.
How would you improve Adam’s research methods?.
