Biological practical

• What was the title of the biological practical?

  Is there a correlation between aggression and risk taking?
• What is the background of the biological practical?

  > A possible link between aggressive and risk taking behaviour could be due to impulsivity

  > A risk taker will act impulsively, may be seen in acts of aggression
• What was the aim of the biological practical?

  Investigate whether there is a correlation between aggression and risk taking using self-report measures
• What is the null hypothesis?

  There will be no significant correlation between self-reported aggression (out of 145) and self-reported risk taking (out of 160) and any correlation will be due to chance
• What is the one-tailed hypothesis?

  There will be a significant positive correlation between self-reported aggression (out of 145) and self-reported risk taking (out of 160)
• What was the procedure?

  > 10 participants, 16-17 years old who all studied psychology, opportunity sampling

  > Participants consented and had the chance to withdraw

  > Aggression questionnaire with 29 questions using a 5 point scale out of 145

  > Risk taking questionnaire with 32 questions using a likert scale out of 160
• How was the data analysed?

  > Descriptive data; scatter graph, tables and median

  > Inferential data; spearmans rank test (used ordinal data as that was collected from questionnaires)
• What was the result?

  Because the calculated value of 0.906 is equal to or greater than the critical value of 0.564 it is possible to reject the null hypothesis and accept alternative hypothesis
• What was the conclusion?

  There is a significant positive correlation between aggression and risk-taking
• What were the positives of the biological practical?

  > Quantitative data

  > Ethical

  > Standardized questionnaire. replicable therefore reliable
• What were the negatives of the biological practical?

  > Middle value on likert scale could encourage response bias

  > No cause and effect

  > Only numerical data

  > Only A-level psychology students