Chewing gum has been suggested to maintain or improve mental focus and alertness during repetitive cognitive tasks. A cognitive psychologist wants to investigate this further using an experimental design to determine if participants performing a sustained attention task perform better when chewing non-flavoured gum compared to a control group (not chewing gum). The researcher measures concentration solely through quantitative metrics: the number of targets correctly identified on a computerised task and the reaction times in milliseconds.
Outline one strength and one weakness of not having any qualitative data in this study.
644 exam-style questions on OCR A Level Psychology Research methods and techniques. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.