Cambridge Assessment International Education

Cambridge International Advanced Subsidiary and Advanced Level

* 1 4 3 9 8 0 8 5 3 0 *

PSYCHOLOGY 9990/21
Paper 2 Research Methods May/June 2019
1 hour 30 minutes
Candidates answer on the Question Paper.
No Additional Materials are required.

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Answer all questions.

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The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question.

This document consists of 10 printed pages and 2 blank pages.

DC (RW/SW) 168557/3
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Section A

Answer all questions in this section.

1 From the study by Milgram (obedience):

(a) Outline the sampling technique used in this study.

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(b) Suggest one advantage of using this sampling technique in this study.

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2 (a) Explain what is meant by a ‘covert observation’.

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(b) Suggest one disadvantage of conducting a covert observation.

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3 An experiment is testing the aim that smiling affects helpfulness. The procedure is to investigate
whether people leaving a shop will hold a door open for people who are smiling.

(a) Write an operationalised directional (one-tailed) hypothesis for this experiment.

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(b) Write a null hypothesis for this experiment.

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4 The study by Saavedra and Silverman (button phobia) raised ethical issues.

Explain two ethical guidelines that are relevant to this study.

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5 State one advantage of using the mean as a measure of central tendency.

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6 Define extraneous variables and uncontrolled variables, using any examples.

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Section B

Answer all questions in this section.

7 Dan is looking for a correlation between the amount children play and how aggressive they are.
He is not sure whether children who play more will be more aggressive or will be less aggressive.

(a) (i) Suggest how ‘playing’ could be operationalised using a quantitative measure.

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(ii) Suggest one problem with measuring ‘playing’.

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(b) Suggest how ‘aggression’ could be operationalised using a quantitative measure.

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(c) Dan finds that children who play more are also more aggressive.

Explain why Dan cannot conclude that playing causes aggression.

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8 Zho is investigating how quickly fish learn to respond to different coloured lights. She trains fish in
two tanks to swim to the end of the tank for food in response to a light. She uses a red light with
one tank and a green light with the other tank. She times how quickly the fish swim to the end of
the tank.

(a) Identify the dependent variable in this experiment.

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(b) Identify the independent variable in this experiment.

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(c) Explain two ethical guidelines for working with animals.

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(d) Suggest how one ethical guideline for working with animals could be followed in Zho’s
experiment.

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(e) Zho is plotting a bar chart of her results.

Label the x-axis and y-axis on the graph below.

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9 Ella is conducting a laboratory experiment to find out whether singing helps people to relax. She is
using a repeated measures design and will use pulse rate to measure relaxation.

(a) Identify a suitable control condition for Ella’s experiment.

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(b) Explain why a repeated measures design is the best experimental design for Ella’s study.

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(c) Explain one disadvantage of using a repeated measures design in Ella’s study.

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(d) Ella considered using a field experiment but decided to use a laboratory experiment.

Explain why it could have been better for Ella to conduct a field experiment.

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Section C

Answer all questions in this section.

10 Dr Bell is interested in how aware people are of the two factors involved in emotion according to
the two-factor theory. He wants to know if people are aware of the influence of both physiological
changes and cognitive changes on their emotions. He intends to use a structured interview to
investigate this, based on people’s recall of emotional events.

(a) Describe how Dr Bell could conduct a structured interview to investigate whether people
were aware of the influence of both physiological changes and cognitive changes on their
emotions.

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(b) Identify one practical 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.

Do not refer to ethics or sampling in your answer.

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