1. 3 Psychological investigations
Self-report

2. a knowledge and understanding of rating scales
Learning outcomes
a knowledge and understanding of rating scales
an understanding of open and closed questions
the strengths and weaknesses of each
identify strengths and weaknesses of the technique, both in general terms and in relation to source material
These learning outcomes are from the specification

3. A knowledge and understanding of rating scales
Rating scales (for example, Likert scales) enable the participant to give a numerical value to their opinion/feelings, e.g I feel very stressed by exams.
This concept of Likhert scales is easy to understand. However the problems of responding 1 every time need to be addressed, so the questions need to sometimes be reversed so that the scoring is then also reversed. This might need some examples, for example, I don’t mind about exams 1 = strongly agree is actually = I am not stressed, so would get a 4 when scoring.
Strongly agree
Slightly agree
Slightly disagree
Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4

4. Open and closed questions
Closed questions have a limited set of answers, e.g.
Do you feel stressed? Yes/no
Open questions allow the participant to answer question in own way, e.g.
Tell me about your stress.
Fairly straightforward. Students could try finding out someone's favourite film by asking closed questions you can only answer yes and no to, and then an open question. They are obviously not allowed to ask “What is your favourite film”

5. The strengths and weaknesses of open and closed questions
Open question
Closed questions
Strengths
Rich data, less ambiguity
Less frustration by participant
Easy to compare and analyse data
Weaknesses
Difficult to compare and analyse data
May miss out on data because it falls outside of the allowed responses
This information is needed as evaluation for their own research and core studies.

6. Identify strengths and weaknesses of rating scales
can be used many times, and is seen as objective, scientific measure of behaviour
Quantitative data so can be analysed easily and comparisons made
Good to gauge strength of opinion
weaknesses
scores only have meaning compared to other people’s responses on that scale
Different points on scale may have different meanings to different people so can lack reliability
This information is needed as evaluation for students own research and core studies.

7. A typical exam question
A researcher wants to find out about students’ opinions of their college. She wants to use a Likert scale.
Give an example of one question and the scale for the response a researcher could use.
Give one strength and one weakness of this type of question.
This is typical of an exam question on the psychological investigations paper.