An occupational therapist student is researching how workspace organization affects cognitive fatigue. They design two workstations:
The student researcher decides themselves, based on their own subjective impressions of comfort and modern design, which equipment layouts belong to each classification.
Participants perform a series of attention tasks at each workstation for two hours, after which their fatigue is measured using a self-report scale (1–50). The researcher plans to use a Wilcoxon signed-ranks test to compare the fatigue levels between the two layouts.
The student researcher decided themselves which workstation layouts were 'ergonomically optimized' and which were 'ergonomically poor'.
Explain how the study could be improved by selecting or categorising the workstations another way.
Practise AQA A Level Psychology Scientific processes with exam-style questions for A Level Psychology. 689 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.
