Kieran is planning a self-report study about dream content, to find out whether people feel happier during the day if they have had pleasant dreams the night before. He is considering using either a structured questionnaire or an unstructured interview.

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (Oct/Nov 2018). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

1. [2] 1 mark per relevant closed question with answer options X2 Did you have a nice dream last night? yes/no (= 1 mark) Rate how happy you felt today on a scale of 0-5 (0 = not happy, 5 = happy) (= 1 mark)
2. [2] Both marks are for the advantage. Award 1 mark for identifying an advantage. Award 2nd mark for detail. They give objective data so are reliable to interpret They give numerical data / data that can be converted to numbers so are easy to analyse
3. [2] 1 mark for basic/partial explanation of term (e.g. of ‘interview'). 2nd mark for detail. an interview is a real time / direct / face-to-face self report method (= 1 mark) unstructured ones have no fixed questions (= 1 mark / 1 for detail) so give the interviewer the freedom to adapt to what the participant says (= 1 mark / 1 for detail) this means they can pursue interesting lines of questioning (= 1 mark for detail)
4. [1] 1 mark for a relevant open question Describe how happy you have felt today. If you had a dream last night, describe how nice it was.
5. [2] Both marks are for the advantage. 1 mark for identifying an advantage. 2nd mark for detail. They give participants freedom to express themselves so are likely to be valid / more valid than closed questions (in this respect) They give detailed / in-depth / qualitative data so can reveal aspects in the results that could be overlooked if closed questions were used