Before conducting the experiment of the effect of writing biology notes in pencil or in pen on the performance of grade 10 students in their biology examination, the experimenter should first carry out a simpler experiment on his participants (group of students). In this simpler experiment, the experimenter will give a small paragraph of around 3 – 4 lines to his/her participants. Half of the participants will be given the paragraph written in pencil and the other half will be given the paragraph written in pen. Then they will be given 10 minutes to memorize the paragraph and then present (say it aloud) in front of the whole class without reading or looking at the paragraph. By doing so, the experimenter will be able to observe and measure the performance of both the groups of the students i.e. those who got the paragraph written in pen as well as those who got the paragraph written in pencil.
Through this simple experiment the investigator can realize the visual impact articles written in pen and pencil have on these children. The simple experiment outlined above is a laboratory experiment. Laboratory experiments have numerous advantages and disadvantages linked to them. These are:
- As the experiment will be carried out under fixed/contrived conditions no external factors from the natural environment will interfere with the memorizing process of the students, thus, the experimenter will be able to measure the visual and memorization impacts with more precision.
- The experimenter can easily replicate the research if carried out in closed conditions rather than the natural environment. This means that, in this experiment the investigator can vary some variables easily, for example: he/she can give his participants two new paragraphs but this time the group who got the paragraph in pencil earlier will now be given the one in pen and vice versa with the other half. This will help the experimenter to know if it’s the children who have good memorization skills or is it the visual impacts that help the students memorize well.
- As the experimenter will try controlling almost all the variables regarding the type of his/her sample, he/she will be better able to draw conclusions about the effect of notes written in pen and pencil on the memorizing of his/her participants.
- As the experiment is conducted in contrived conditions, the students may find it difficult to memorize the paragraph with the feel of being kept in a closed and packed room.
- By keeping all the participants together in one room, if one or more participants tend to read and speak the paragraph loudly as part of their memorization process it might affect other students’ concentration and thus, memorization.
- Surveys (carry out a survey research)
Survey research is the research in which people chosen to represent the larger population are asked a series of questions about their behavior, thoughts or attitudes. The experimenter will carry out a small survey comprising of two important questions which he/she will ask the group of students and will note down their responses. The two questions that the investigator will ask his/her participants are:
- In a scale of 1 – 5, how much would they rate their performance in their biology tests and examinations?
- Do they write their biology notes in pencil or in pen?
By carrying out this survey research, the experimenter will be able to realize the potential of the group of students in terms of their performance in biology tests and examinations and he/she will also be able to know who from his/her participants writes biology notes in pen and who writes them in pencil. Thus, this will help the investigator to evaluate whether those who write their biology notes in pencil perform better or those who write their notes in pen perform better.
- Survey research is an inexpensive methodology. In this experiment there is probably very little or no costs associated to the survey research as the experimenter just has to ask his/her sample only two questions which will neither take a lot of their time nor will need any money to be spent on carrying out the survey or designing the questions.
- As the survey will be face-to-face, the experimenter will be able to notice if a participant is uncomfortable with the question or maybe not willing to answer a question. For instance, one of the participants might have scored very low in his biology examination and so he/she might not want to reveal out his/her marks.
- As the sample is picked from the large population, the feedback of the sample can be considered to be the results of the larger group and thus, the process of asking everyone from the whole population is eliminated hence, making it a less time consuming research method.
- The participants might feel difficult in recalling their marks of their biology tests and might also feel embarrassed in revealing their scores if they are low and thus, they could lie which would lead to the experiment being biased.
- Sometimes it becomes difficult to take the average score of the sample group to represent the score of the whole population for the biology tests and examinations because maybe more intelligent students are not part of the sample or less clever people are not part of the sample. Thus, the average score of the sample might not be applicable to the score of everyone in the larger population.
- Documentation (using their report cards or mark sheets)
Documentation is the process of using written evidence (documents) related to the phenomenon investigated or measured. It is the process of using documents supporting references to investigate and conclude about the idea being discussed.
In this experiment, investigators will collect the report cards and mark sheets of biology of their sample indicating which ones are of those who wrote their biology notes in pencil and of those who wrote them in pen. This will enable the experimenter to make more precise and unbiased conclusions about the performance of their participants in biology tests with the help of these written and authorized documents.
- While conducting the survey research, some students might have lied about their biology marks and this might have made the experiment biased. But by referring to their report cards and mark sheets, the experimenter can know their actual marks and can hence conclude about their performance in relation to their notes (i.e. written in pen or in pencil).
- Written evidence can be held on to if referring to it in near future is needed. For instance, the experimenter might want to confirm his/her collected data and on the basis of this data he/she will want to analyze and present it in a pictorial way using graphs and pie charts etc. Thus, the presence of the participants’ reports or mark sheets (documents) will enable the investigator to analyze his/her data more easily.
- The grading scale in the report cards might be different from the rating scale (likert scale) the experimenter uses to rate the participants’ performances and thus, conflicts may arise between the grading of the two scales which could lead to confusion in the findings and results of the experiment
- The documents used by the experimenter might reveal other information not related to the phenomenon being investigated and this might lead to ethical issues which the experimenter will face. For example, the report cards give out scores of other subjects as well and not only biology, and if the experimenter gets to know the participants’ other scores it might be unfair for the students and could be unethical if he/she has scored low and has not performed well.
- Errors might have been experienced in calculating the mean and standard deviation while using the likert scale in rating students’ biology and memorizing performances which could lead to inaccuracy and wrong outcomes.
Conclusion:
Triangulation as mentioned earlier is the process of combining three or more research methodologies when investigating a certain idea or issue. This process of triangulation has much importance and is beneficial in many ways. The strengths of triangulation are:
- The triangulation process strengthens the research design. This means that it results in an experiment more significant and stronger due to a combination of many research methodologies.
- By using three or more research methods, the experimenter has access to more sources of information and data and the findings of the experiment are more reliable and valid.
- Each research method is linked to its own biases, but by combining many research methodologies together, the process of triangulation helps to minimize these insufficiencies of the individual research method.
- When using triangulation, the threats or weakness associated to internal validity are noticed and the experimenter tends to address and work on them in order to eliminate these weaknesses which indeed result into more accurate, precise and more valid outcomes.
Bibliography:
Done By:
Priyank Punatar
IB – 1
Psychology HL
10th October 2007
