A researcher wanted to investigate if police officers are better at identifying lies than the general public. After seeking permission from the chief constable, the researcher randomly selected 10 police officers from a local police force. 10 students studying at a local university were selected to represent the general public. They were all asked to come to a psychology laboratory to complete the research. All participants were assessed individually. They were presented with a film of an actor making 10 statements (5 of the statements were true and 5 were false). The participant had to report whether they thought each of the actor’s statements was true or false.
(b) Outline one weakness of using the opportunity sampling technique to select members of the general public in this research.
[2]
One weakness of opportunity sampling is that it is unlikely to be representative because it could lack population validity, where participants are only selected from one location/region.
Improve the answer here:
Each time you want to write participants refer to them by name e.g. the general public.
Use connections and wording that specifically relates to the scenario and question stem e.g. the general public were selected from ‘students studying at a local university’.
Explain why your weakness is a weakness e.g. which kinds of people are not represented by selecting the general public from local university students?