Section C Answer all questions in this section. Elio is planning a field experiment to investigate whether office layout affects laziness. The two types of office he is comparing are big open-plan shared offices and individual offices with walls and doors that make them more private.

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (May/June 2019). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

1. Three major omissions for a field experiment are:
2. What: - will be recorded, ie DV
3. How: - IV
4. Where - location of participants when data is collected (e.g. a company with different types of office / different companies with differing style offices)
5. The minor omissions are:
6. how - controls
7. who - participants (must be office workers)
8. Indicative content for a field experiment:
9. • How - identification of the independent variable
10. ∞ operationalisation of the dependent variable
11. • What - identification of the dependent variable
12. • operationalisation of the dependent variable
13. • including examples of ways to measure the variable such as questions/tests used
14. • Where - location of participants when data is collected
15. • How - controls
16. ∞ experimental design (any are appropriate here)
17. • sampling technique
18. • sample size
19. • description of how data will analysed, e.g. use of measures of central tendency and spread, bar charts
20. • ethical issues
21. Problems may, for example, be matters of:
22. Validity
23. • operationalisation (of laziness)
24. • difficulty with demand characteristics/social desirability
25. Reliability
26. • intra-rater consistency (scoring laziness)
27. This list is not exhaustive and other appropriate responses should also be credited.