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A Experiment With An Independent Group Design Essay

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Method Design The research was a quasi-experiment with an independent group design. Because of pre-existing groups in the independent variable, random assignment was not feasible. Therefore, it was a quasi-experiment. The independent variable was the gender of the participants. The dependent variable was the amount of social support seeking by males and females as measured by the COPE social support scale. Participants The participants were an opportunity sample of 168 undergraduate psychology students from the University of Salford, and psychology students from Salford College. There were 138 females and 30 males. The mean age for females was 19.86 with the range of 18 and 33 years old. The mean age for males was 20.80 with the range of 18 and 31 years old. Material The COPE social support seeking questionnaire by Carver, Scheier, and Weintraub (1989) was applied. The COPE scale is an instrument that measures utilisation of 13 different coping strategies for example, actively coping, social support seeking, and others (Carver et al., 1989). This study however, will focus on the tendency of social support seeking as coping strategy. The questionnaire had 2 types of social support seeking questions; COPE instrumental scale and COPE emotional scale. The instrumental scale measures advice, assistance, and information seeking from others, and the emotional scale measures emotional support, understanding and sympathy seeking (Carver et al., 1989). Carver et al.

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