social practical - questionnaire

• Aim:             To investigate whether males or females perceive themselves as more obedient

  Hypothesis: There will be significantly higher perception of obedience in females compared to

  males. 
• Sampling:    An opportunity sample of 20 students aged between 16-18

  Procedure: A questionnaire was devised using open and closed questions in order to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. 5 scenarios involving obedience were given. Participants were first asked to rate their likelihood of obeying on a scale of 1-10 and then asked to explain why they had given the rating.

  A pilot study was conducted on 3 participants to check the questions were easy to understand

  Participants were given 10 minutes to complete the questionnaire
• Ethics:         Verbal consent was collected from the participants. All data was kept confidential by numbering participants rather than using names.

  Participants were told of their right to withdraw and reminded of this at the conclusion of the study.
• Ethics:         Verbal consent was collected from the participants. All data was kept confidential by numbering participants rather than using names.

  Participants were told of their right to withdraw and reminded of this at the conclusion of the study.
• Graph used – bar chart of means

  Analysis – Females were more obedient than males, but not a large difference so may not be significant. Range shows a greater spread of scores for females suggesting that some were very unlikely to obey whilst others were very obedient
• Qualitative analysis (thematic)

  The analysis of explanations for the levels of obedience given, identified some key themes in the behaviour of males and females.
• Theme 1 – Resistance to authority – one theme identified was resistance to authority. Many participants suggested that there was a lack of trust over the instructions given by the authority figures in the scenarios or that they would only obey a police officer if they showed their badge

  Theme 2 – The need to obey – the other main theme, from the responses was of fear of the consequences of not obeying. Many participants emphasised that they felt they had to obey
• Conclusion: Females do appear to be more obedient than males but with more variance in the

  data for this group, results are unlikely to be significant and therefore there is very

  little difference in obedience levels.
• A strength of my study was that I utilised various question types to gather both qualitative and quantitative data about why people obey, I used closed questions such as “would you obey a police officer?” (Yes/No) and open questions such as “why would you obey?”. This allowed my participants to explain their rationale behind their obedience or lack of, allowing me to get rich detailed data about the reasons which motivate people to obey or be defiant.
• However, I analysed the open questions myself through thematic analysis which is subjective and could lead to bias results. I identified the themes such as resistance to authority myself, by finding codes and categories in my participants answers. The issue with this is that I could have misconstrued or misunderstood the meaning of the phrases my participants wrote down about obedience and so whether my study is reliably investigating obedience is questionable.