Qualitative Research Project on Stress

Qualitative Research Project on Stress

IB 1 Psychology Health Psychology.

Qualitative Research project on Stress

Aims: to research the extent of stress experienced by High School students at ACS Cobham International School and their teachers.

You are going to research stress using qualitative research methods. That is: interviews, surveys, focus groups etc.

You can find information about qualitative research methods on pages 343-377 of our CC.

You are going to write up your research in a formal manner, as if you were writing for a Psychological Journal. The format you should follow is roughly the same as the one for the Internal Assessment you will complete next year.

You can find details about this on pages 388-402 of our course companion.

Please note that your IA will be a replication or modification of an experiment.

This project is NOT an experiment. Your research methods will be qualitative. However, the format you will use to write up the results will be roughly the same as that of the IA.

Procedure:

  1. What do you want to find out? What is your aim and what do you expect to discover? What is your hypothesis?
  1. Decide in particular what you would like to research, what your target population is and how you will conduct your research.
  1. How will you select a sample from your target population? You will need approximately 20 participants, although you can include more if you wish. Will they be chosen by random sampling? Opportunity sampling? Convenience sampling or some other method?
  1. How will you conduct your research? Surveys? Interviews? A case study?
  1. How will you go about conducting your research?
  1. What are the ethical issues involved and how will you deal with them?

Your Research Report.

Should be a maximum of 2000 words in length, (Excluding appendices, abstract)

Should have:

  • a coversheet,
  • an abstract (200 words max),
  • a table of contents
  • an introduction, in which you discuss the theoretical background to your research. Cite at least 6 studies on stress.
  • A section outlining your method, including aim, hypothesis, null hypothesis, research design, participants, sampling method, procedure, ethical issues and how you dealt with them.
  • Results including tables/graphs and description of the same in words.
  • Discussion. Where you discuss your results in the light of your knowledge and understanding of the empirical studies on stress you wrote about in your introduction. Evaluate your own study. Make recommendations for further studies. Did you fulfil your aim? Could you accept your hypothesis?
  • Bibliography. Your sources.
  • Appendices. A copy of your survey, raw results, consent forms etc etc.

Assessment Criteria:

  1. Introduction: 20
  2. Method: 20
  3. Results: 10
  4. Discussion 20
  5. Format: 20
  6. The quality of the survey/interview questions etc. 10

Total: 100

You should submit one report on behalf of you and your partner/group.

Due: Wednesday 13th April for the Tues/Wed/Fri class

Thurday 14th April for the Mon/Tues/Thurs Class.

Good Luck!!

Ms J 4/4/2011

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