A sports scientist wanted to investigate whether drinking concentrated beetroot juice before exercise reduces muscle soreness in amateur runners. Previous research had suggested that the high nitrate content in beetroot juice enhances oxygen delivery to muscles, potentially reducing post-exercise fatigue and muscle damage.
The scientist used a repeated measures design with 30 amateur runners who completed two identical 5 km runs, one week apart, under the same environmental conditions.
For Condition A, runners drank 150 ml of concentrated beetroot juice two hours before their run.
In Condition B, runners drank 150 ml of a nitrate-depleted beetroot juice (placebo) two hours before their run.
Twenty-four hours after each run, for both Condition A and Condition B, each runner was asked to rate their overall muscle soreness on a rating scale of 1 to 10, where 1 indicated no soreness and 10 indicated extreme soreness.
Explain one strength and one limitation of collecting quantitative data in this study.
Practise AQA A Level Psychology Data handling and analysis with exam-style questions for A Level Psychology. 263 questions, matched to the AQA A Level Psychology (7182) specification and written in Paper 1, Paper 2 and Paper 3 style. Every question includes a full worked solution and mark scheme, so you can see where marks are awarded rather than just whether you got the answer right.
