An occupational psychologist wanted to investigate how different auditory environments affect workplace focus. She conducted an independent groups experiment where one group of administrative staff wore active noise-cancelling (ANC) headphones playing brown noise during their shift. A different group of administrative staff wore standard passive foam earplugs. After a 2-hour data-entry task, participants were asked to rate their level of focus on a scale of 1 ('highly distracted') to 12 ('deep flow state').
| Focus score (1–12) | |
|---|---|
| Active Brown Noise Group | Passive Foam Earplugs Group |
| 11 | 7 |
| 10 | 6 |
| 12 | 5 |
| 9 | 8 |
| 11 | 4 |
| 8 | 7 |
| 10 | 6 |
| 11 | 5 |
| 9 | 8 |
| 12 | 4 |
| 10 | 6 |
| 11 | 5 |
Outline one advantage of collecting quantitative data rather than qualitative data in this study.
513 exam-style questions on OCR A Level Psychology Data recording, analysis and presentation. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.