ED209 2010 TMA 02

Question1

The participants were less than 16 years old and considered not be

competent to give full consent. The researcher should have obtained

an informed consent from a parent, guardian or actor in loco parentis.

The researcher just got an agreement from her friend who was a

teacher. The researcher must have sought participant’s ‘assent’-

verbal and non verbal agreement. This was essential because they

were videoed for the research. The researcher must have briefed the

participants at school and the child actors about the research in a way

they could understand. The researcher must have given an opportunity

to the participants to ask questions.

Question 2

The researcher did not obtain ethical approval from the school she

conducted the research. She did not have an enhanced Criminal

Records Bureau (CRB) check to work with children. She deliberately

falsified the information to the participants in both the groups. The

observation setting at lunch time induced aggressive behaviour among

the participants, but the researcher made no effort to debrief about the

research or to induce happy mood state. It seemed the researcher was

an authoritative figure to the participants, and did not make any effort

to inform about participants’ right to withdraw from the research.

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Question 3

The researcher used simple random sampling method in this study.

The simple random ensures that each person in the population has an

equal chance of being selected. Each person of sampling must be

identified uniquely by name or some method of identification. The

researcher used a class register to allocate participants randomly by

their surnames to the two condition groups. The Condition 1 group had

participants’ surnames beginning from A to L and Condition 2 group

had participants’ surnames beginning from M to Z. This type of

sampling is hard to achieve for large population but it was appropriate

for this research.

Question 4

“The strange behaviour of children in strange situations with strange

adults for the briefest period of time”. (Bronfenbrenner, 1979)

Ecology refers to the environment setting which the research

participants linked directly or indirectly. The ecological validity of an

experiment is a measure of whether the results obtained in a

laboratory setting could also be obtained in a natural setting. It is

equally important to ensure that the tasks being asked of the

participants are valid for their particular cultural and social

environment. Bandura’s Bobo doll experiments were conducted in a

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laboratory setting. It was a strange and not their own environment and

they spent brief period with researchers who were strangers to them.

The new people and new environment did not provide a chance for

children to behave naturally. The children did not have an opportunity

to habituate with their new environment. The researcher conducted

her study in children’s environment- classroom and playground.

Children’s teacher was present and the researcher spent time with the

children in their classroom and next day during their lunch time when

she was conducting and observing the study. This helped children to

be more comfortable and behave naturally in their own setting.

Question 5

The study followed between-group design. The researcher created two

groups – Condition 1 group and Condition 2 group. The researcher used

class register to allocate participants to the two groups by using their

surname. Students name beginning from A-L was allocated to

Condition 1 group and students name beginning from M-Z was

allocated to Condition 2 group. This allocation made sure that both

groups had no systematic difference because they matched for their

age. The age was relevant characteristic because the aim of the

research was to see whether watching violent scenes influences

children’s ideas about violence, as well as their subsequent behaviour.

Each group experienced only one condition, that is, Condition 1 group

were shown scene 1 that portrayed a non-aggressive resolution of the

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argument and Condition 2 group were shown scene 2 that portrayed

an aggressive resolution of the argument. This design avoided

participants’ fatigue or practice effect because each group had seen

only one video scene. However, this type of research design has less

control over confounding variables. For example, gender was a

confounding variable in this research.

Question 6

Confounding variable is a hidden and undesirable variable that

influences the relationship between independent and dependent

variables. These variables influence the outcome of a study even

though they are not the variables that are actually of interest. These

variables generally add error to the results. The presence of

confounding variables is mainly because of a poor research design.

The research design should aim to decrease or control the influence of

confounding variables as much as possible.

The result in this study showed that the condition 2 group showed

higher level of aggressive behaviour when compared to Condition 1

group. The condition 2 group had more boys. It could be argued that

boys are naturally aggressive and higher level of aggressive behaviour

was due to higher number of boys in condition 2 group, and not mainly

because of the video content. It is difficult to say to what extent the

confounding variable in this study had influenced the results. Likewise,

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there are no methods to assess the influence of confounding variables.

It is difficult to a make sense of the results because the results may not

be what the researcher intended to study. In such case, it is difficult to

provide potential explanations for the results. The confounding

variables limits the scope of the results and it is difficult to interpret

the results adequately. It is also difficult to compare and say whether

the result reached similar or different conclusions of relate studies

because the confounding variables could deviate the study results to a

certain degree. The researcher can not compare other studies with the

achieved results. Altogether, because of the above said reasons the

confounding variables could influence the results invariably and it

could weaken any conclusions.

Question 7

Matched-pairs design is an experimental design that allows researcher

to match participants as close as possible. Sample among experiment

groups are distributed selectively rather than randomly. For example,

the researcher distributes participants for two groups by selecting

individual for each group from a classroom based on their age. The

researcher would continue until everyone in a classroom assigned a

group. This method allows researcher to bypass random assignment of

participants and provides better control over confounding variables. It

is important that the researcher determines the key variables to have

control before allocating participants, and based on the characteristics

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of the variables the researcher allocates participants to the

experimental groups.

In this design, it is possible that same participant can experience all

the conditions. When same participant experience all the conditions, it

might be possible that this design could create new confounding

variable due to practice effects. It is because the participants have

practiced or understood the condition well, and this may affect the

overall result. The participants may get bored due to repeating similar

conditions. To manage this issue it is important that half the

participants get condition 1 first while half the participants get

condition 2 and vice versa. It allows a counterbalance on practice

effect.

The researcher wanted to study children’s idea about violence and

subsequent behaviour. It would have been appropriate to match

gender in this study. A matched-pairs design would have provided a

better opportunity for the researcher to distribute gender almost

equally. If the researcher had started to distribute girls from Condition

1, it would have been nine and eight girls, and if the researcher had

started to distribute boys from Condition 2 it would have been six and

seven boys, and both Condition would have had 15 participants

equally.

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Question 8

The children were asked about the best ways to resolve arguments.

Ten children watched Condition 2 supported violent as a solution to an

argument and said fighting and punching are good ways to solve the

problems in playground. The researchers had concluded from the

answers she received that watching violent videos changes children’s

attitudes.

It could be further said that watching violence on television causes

children to view violence more favourably. For example, in Bandura’s

study children in no-consequences group and the rewarded group

produced aggression towards the Bobo Doll. This supports the

researcher that children view violence more favourably, and from her

study it was revealed that children are more likely to produce violence

to resolve problems, for example, fighting and punching. In Bandura’s

study when the children came to know that they would be rewarded for

imitating the model man, all the groups imitated equally. This suggests

that violence in television encourages children to involve in violence

when they face a real time situation. This argument could be support

from the following two findings. Libert et al (1997) found that children

aged 2-7 years watch television 25 hours and (Beckman, 1997) found

that when children become 12 years old they would have watched

8,000 murders. The results also suggest that watching violent scenes

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highly influencing children’s ideas about violence. The first part of the

result in this study proved that children’s attitude had been influenced

by Scene 2 video content. Children’s answers suggested that they

imitate violent behaviour from watching violent content because the

age group of the actors were also similar to the participants. Bandura

suggested that children are more likely to copy another’s behaviour if

the model is similar to them age and sex, and if the model have

desirable characteristics and seen as attractive.

Question 9

The researcher could have used intra observer reliability by asking an

independent coder to check the reliability of her coding scheme. The

researcher could have compared it with the original code to establish

the reliability. The comparison of double coding could have been

achieved by counting two agreements of two coders, and calculated

the percentage agreement. The researcher should have calculated

kappa to avoid two coders’ chance agreement. The researcher could

have used predictive validity in assessing the validity of her

observation. It allows the researcher to tally with some other

trustworthy measure of children’s behaviour and their expressed

attitudes.

Question 10

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Natural experiment approach is useful to investigate how children’s

television watching habits are related to their classroom behaviour. It

is possible for researcher to make use of naturally occurring events in

a classroom setting to study the cause and effect of children’s

television watching habits and classroom behaviour. Quasi-

experimental research design is useful for this approach.

The researcher needs to understand from children the type of

television programme they watch at home. It would help researcher to

allocate participants at least two different groups. For example, it could

be a group most watching sports and a group most watching drama.

Therefore, the sampling becomes selective not random.

The researcher observe children’s behaviour as it is happening in their

classroom and keep a diary to record for a period to see whether their

television watching habits are related to their class room behaviour.

The researcher has no control over extraneous variable because

children’s television watching habits and home environment varies.

However, this approach could provide more ecological validity.

Children’s behaviour could be repeatedly assessed over a period in

order to build up a picture of the full range of responses likely to be

produced.

Question 11

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The study has no title and it would have made easier to understand

about the study. The background information was not adequate. The

reason for the study was weak, and there was no adequate reference

to related studies except Bandura’s experiment. The method section

was simplified, and it requires more information for someone to repeat

the study. There was no explanation for choosing the sampling

method, and the research method was weak for this sort of study. The

researcher did not mention about the limitation of the method she

used. There was no mention about ethical issues raised in this study.

The results were not discussed in relation to similar studies.

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