A psychologist asks amateur actors to rate how anxious they felt during a performance, from 1 (not at all anxious) to 5 (extremely anxious). The psychologist also invites them to write a comment. Two responses are shown.
| Actor | Rating | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| A | 3 | I felt slightly anxious during the first scene but extremely anxious during the final scene. |
| B | 3 | I felt moderately anxious throughout the performance. |
The psychologist plans to use only the ratings to calculate a mean anxiety score.
Using the responses in the table, explain one weakness of using the rating scale to draw a conclusion about the actors' anxiety.
139 exam-style questions on OCR GCSE Psychology 7.2 Doing Research, covering 7.2.1 Experiments, 7.2.2 Interviews, 7.2.3 Questionnaires (Surveys), 7.2.4 Observations, 7.2.5 Case Studies, and 7.2.6 Correlations. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.