9.6 Quick review questions
A study (Bingham et al. 2016) examined the effect of peer pressure from passengers among teenage male drivers; the aim was to
…experimentally test the effects of passenger presence and social influence […] of male adolescent novices in a simulated driving task.
Bingham et al. (2016), p. 126
The use of a driving simulator was justified as:
… driving simulation has been shown to be an externally valid predictor of real-world driving
Bingham et al. (2016), p. 125
The Discussion section of the article includes a subsection called ‘Strengths and limitations.’ Part of that sub-section reads:
participants were closely clustered around average rates of resistance to peer influence for this age group […] so it is unclear to what extent these findings would generalize to participants with weaker resistance to peer influences.
Bingham et al. (2016), p. 135
Later, the paper reports:
… the use of an age-peer [passenger assigned by the researchers] allowed substantial experimental control, it may have provided participants with an artificial experience compared to the influence of actual friends.
Bingham et al. (2016), p. 135
- The study used \(n=52\) 16- and 17-year-old males in the study.
Should the external validity of the study be criticised for only using teenage males in the study,
and not teenage females?
- What does the second last quotation above mean?
- True or false: The Hawthorne effect is likely to be an issue in this study.