Biology -Practical Investigation
In this assessment you will be planning and then carrying out an investigation which looks at the relationship between social media use and stress. To do this you will need between 10 and 20 of your family and friends or work colleagues to complete a measurement of their stress levels (in the assessment we suggest you do this by measuring pulse rate and there are instructions on how to do this in the assessment). You will also need to measure their social media use – we have given you a questionnaire to use – you can add questions to this. The most important thing about this measurement is that you obtain a numerical score which reflects the social media use – the higher the overall score on your measurement the greater the social media use.
The overall aim is to investigate whether there is a relationship between social media use and the stress levels of the participants.
The assessment begins with you researching what the investigation is about and also the background theories and research related to this area. It is useful to do this background research. It is very tempting to dive straight into completing the TAQs but these will make much more sense if you complete the research outlined in the assessment brief first – you will then be able to complete the investigation in a much more informed way.
The links in the assessment brief help you to gain an understanding of the background theories and research. This will help you to write the introduction (which comes later in TAQ5) and will also help you to develop a rationale (reason for conducting your research). You should research the stress response and how it may be linked to social media use. This is also covered in the topic 1 materials for this unit. Make notes on all of this as these will be really useful when you write your introduction in TAQ 5.
It would be a really good idea to have a go at the two different measurements that you are going to use on your participants for yourself. Once you have done this you will have a good idea of what it is you will be asking your participants to do. Think about how you will send these to your participants – what instructions you will send with them and how you will collect the data. Also think about your participants and who may complete your investigation for you. You need 10 to 20 people. You don’t actually have to meet with your participants, you can send them links and they can send the results back to you.
Think about whether what you are asking them to do is ethical – how will you ensure that the data is confidential, that they have been briefed and debriefed?
Once you have done these tasks you are ready to complete TAQs 1 to 4