A psychologist was interested in the relationship between older adults' digital literacy and their feelings of social isolation. They used a correlational design to investigate this in a self-selected sample of 40 participants aged 65 and over.
Each participant completed a digital literacy test involving 10 online tasks, such as sending an email with an attachment and finding specific local community news online. Social isolation was then measured using a self-report questionnaire consisting of 15 closed questions about their weekly social interactions and personal feelings of loneliness.
Outline how the ethical consideration of protection of participants could have been dealt with in this study.
276 exam-style questions on OCR A Level Psychology Debates, covering Nature/nurture, Freewill/determinism, Reductionism/holism, Individual/situational explanations, Usefulness of research, Ethical considerations, Conducting socially sensitive research, and Psychology as a science. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.