Section C

10. Fajar has noticed that some of the younger children in her school believe their toys have feelings but
the older children generally do not. She wants to find out more about what children believe and when
beliefs change. She is planning to use a questionnaire.

(a) Describe how Fajar could conduct a study using a questionnaire to find out about the children’s
beliefs.

I will give children of different ages a questionnaire to complete having closed and open
questions (1). To measure children’s beliefs about toy’s feelings I will use the following closed
question “Do you believe toys have feelings?” Respondents will have a forced-choice between
the following options “yes”, “no”. To measure the age at which children change their beliefs
I will include an open question in the questionnaire where children have to state their age
in years, such as “How old are you?” (2). Children will indicate the answer by circling
yes/no (for closed questions) or by completing the empty space (for open questions) (3).
These questions will generate numerical data (quantitative) making comparisons across age
groups easy. (4)

In this study the sample will be consisted of younger and older school-age children that
attend the same school with ages between 6 and 10 (5). Younger children should have at
least six years as this is when they usually know how to read and write. Before conducting
the study I would participate to parents meeting to fully inform parents about the study
and ask for their consent to include their children in the study (6). All participants will
receive the same questionnaire, in the same way and they will be explained what feelings
are to make sure they know the vocabulary. (7)

My study will be conducted on school premises, during the first class of the day (8). Since
participants are already available in school and in one place, I will come during morning
lessons and apply the questionnaire, thus using an opportunity sampling method (9). I am
aiming to have one set of responses for each age-group so I can make comparisons. To
control for possible biases, all participants will receive the same questionnaire and
standardized instructions of how to complete the questionnaire (10). Also the questionnaire
will contain filler questions to hide the real question of interest to the study in order to
control for possible false answers due demand characteristics (11). These questions will not
be used for the data analysis. I would also add control questions to make sure children read
and understand the questions “Are you going to school?”, “Is happy a feeling?” (12)

After data collection is done, to see if children indeed believe toys have feelings I will
consider how many of my participants answered “yes” to the critical question. (13) The
data should indicate if the belief that toys have feelings is present, therefore confirming the
initial observation about beliefs in young child (14). Also to see when children change this
belief, I will consider the frequency of the “no” answers for each age. An inspection of the
histogram will indicate when no becomes the most frequent (typical) answer.(15)

(b) Identify one weakness/limitation with the procedure you have described in your answer to
part (a) and suggest how your study might be done differently to overcome the problem.

One weakness is that children may lie because they may want to look more acceptable
(social desirability bias). It is possible that children are corrected by parents/teachers when
they express this type of belief and they learn that expressing this belief is met with
disagreement. This is a problem because children might under-report the presence of the
belief and the questionnaire lack validity since it will not accurately measure what it’s
supposed to measure.

To overcome this I would recruit parents through a self-selected sampling method. Parents
could complete a similar questionnaire reporting if their children currently believe toys have
feelings. Since parents would be fully informed, be more open (since they are volunteers
interested in research) and spend a lot of time with the child I expect to have more
accurate results.