Practical Investigation - stress and aggression correlation

• Aim of my Biological practical investigation

  To investigate if there is a relationship between stress and aggression using a correlation between the Buss-Perry aggression scale and Holmes-Rahe stress scale.
• Hypothesis of my Biological practical investigation

  There will be a significant correlation between Holmes-Rahe stress scores and Buss-Perry aggression scores. 
• Method of my Biological practical investigation

  • Firstly, I gathered 10 people in my sixth form, aged 16 and 17 (8 girls and 2 boys) for my opportunity sampling as I asked them if they looked like they had time to do my questionnaire. 
  • Then I asked them to give consent to filling in the Holmes-Rahe Stress Scale for Youth to measure their stress and I also asked their consent for filling in the Buss-Perry Scale for aggression
  • They then filled in the stress and aggression scale and I added up their scores to calculate 2 results one for aggression and one for stress
  • I then added up each participants 2 scores and put them into a table with one column for the stress score and one column for the aggression score and did a Spearman's Rho stats test and calculated a value of 0.89
  • I then compared this to the critical value and found that my results were significant 
• Results of my Biological practical investigation

  After my spearman's rho test I calculated a value of 0.89 and I compared this to the critical value for a two tailed test which was 0.564 and my value was greater than this so therefore I found that my results were significant so therefore there is a relationship between stress and aggression.
• Conclusion of my Biological practical investigation

  My results show that there is a significant correlation between stress and aggression as when the aggression scores were high for a participant  the stress score was also high for the participant and when their stress scores were lower for a participant the aggression score was also lower for the participant. This is therefore representative of the general population.