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Alexei conducted an investigation into whether appearance of the defendant can affect the decisions made by a jury - AQA - A-Level Psychology - Question 7 - 2022 - Paper 2
Question 7
Alexei conducted an investigation into whether appearance of the defendant can affect the decisions made by a jury. Alexei used an opportunity sampling technique to ... show full transcript
Worked Solution & Example Answer:Alexei conducted an investigation into whether appearance of the defendant can affect the decisions made by a jury - AQA - A-Level Psychology - Question 7 - 2022 - Paper 2
Step 1
Explain one strength and one weakness of the sampling technique used by Alexei for his investigation about jury decision making.
Answer
Strength: Alexei used an opportunity sample, which allowed him to quickly gather participants for his study on jury decision making, as the participants were readily available from the local business where they worked. This efficiency is advantageous in research.
Weakness: The participants that Alexei used for his jury decision making investigation were from a specific local business, which may not represent the diversity of a typical jury. This could introduce bias, making the results less generalizable.
Step 2
Calculate the mean number of months participants in condition A said the defendant should spend in prison.
Answer
To calculate the mean for condition A, sum all the responses from condition A and divide by the total number of participants:
total = 3 + 6 + 2 + 8 + 4 + 7 = 30
mean = total / number of responses = 30 / 6 = 5
Thus, the mean number of months is 5.
Step 3
Calculate the median number of months participants in condition B said the defendant should spend in prison.
Answer
To find the median for condition B, we first arrange the values in order:
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Since there are six values, the median is the average of the 3rd and 4th values:
median = (7 + 8) / 2 = 15 / 2 = 7.5
Thus, the median number of months is 8.
Step 4
Determine whether Alexei's results were significant or not at p ≤ 0.05 for a two-tailed (non-directional) hypothesis.
Answer
Alexei's calculated Mann-Whitney U test value was 4.5. According to the critical value table for the Mann-Whitney U test, the critical value at 0.05 for a two-tailed test is 5.
Since the calculated value (4.5) is less than the critical value (5), we can conclude that there is a significant difference in the number of months indicated for the defendant based on appearance.
Step 5
Explain one improvement that Alexei could make to his investigation.
Answer
Alexei could use a stratified sampling method instead of opportunity sampling. This would involve selecting participants from various demographics and backgrounds, thus ensuring a more representative sample of the general population. This could help yield results that are more generalizable to actual jury decision making.