Psychology - Loftus & Palmer: Better Sample.

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Loftus and Palmer’s study: Representativeness of sample ‘Suggest one change that could be made to Loftus and Palmer’s study and outline the implications of this change.’ (8 marks) To improve the generalisability of the sample in Loftus and Palmer’s study, researchers could increase the number of participants and select a wide range of individuals rather than only using students. Using a self-selected sampling method, an advertisement would be placed in a local newspaper asking for participants to take part in a study investigating memory. The researchers would aim to gather 100 participants to take part, with the hope of obtaining 50 males and 50 females. Upon arrival at the university, participants would be allocated to the 5 verb conditions, ensuring that there were an equal number of males and females in each condition. In the original study there were only 9 participants in each condition, however in this study there would be 20. This change would improve the population validity as a wide range of individuals would be gathered. It is more likely that participants will represent a range of ethnicities, social classes and ages, as opposed to the original study where they were all students. The results would be more generalisable as they would be representative of the effect of leading questions on the wider population. A self-selected sampling method is also less time-consuming as the participants come to the researcher. However, a self-selected sampling method could actually limit the generalisability of the study as the type of people who choose to take part may be different in terms of the time they have to participate as well as their susceptibility to leading questions. The advert will only be seen by those who read the specific newspaper, so the results are not going to be generalisable to

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