Internal Assessment: Montemayor and Eissen (1977)

Hereafter, you will find my original work that I had created in preparation for my internal assessment. Please understand that copying material without giving credit to the source is known as plagiarism and a form of theft. In addition, I recommend you not use this post as the basis for your internal assessment as I am only a student myself, and calling me a reliable source may be debatable in the eyes of teachers and IBO. I am merely posting this as a guideline and example for internal assessments for HL Psychology, so please only use it as one. Thank you and I hope this helps you! - R. B. (Admin)

Topic: Developmental Psychology
Link of original document by Montemayor and Eissen here.
Hypothesis presented in the study: "it is hypothesized that young children primarily conceive of and describe themselves in terms of such concrete characteristics as their physical appearance and possessions, while adolescents conceive of themselves more abstractly and describe themselves in more psychological and interpersonal terms."
What design did Montemayor and Eissen use, and why: Montemayor and Eissen used a controlled laboratory experiment-method because it was the most appropriate design to use for the particular experiment. The nature of a laboratory experiment allows the researchers to control the environment as well as the subjects.
How was the sample selected and how might this influence the study: 136 males and 126 females were selected from four different grade-level schools from suburban, midwestern and university communities. The subjects were either in grades 4, 6, 8, 10 or 12. The subjects were all exclusively white and had average or above average intelligence levels. Almost all of the subject's parents were in classes I and II (Hoolingshead's two factor index of social positions). The focus group may influence the study as the results will not be relevant to the self-perceptions of people of other ethnicities and cultures.
What controls were established? There were no controls other than the students being divided according to their age groups. They were all administered the same test, first created by Burgental & Zelen in 1950, called the Twenty Statements Test. There were 20 spaces were they were directed to defined themselves.
What is the independent and dependent variable? The independent variable is the age group of the subject, and the dependent variable is their quality of self-perception.
Describe the procedures employed by the researcher: Montemayor and Eissen instructed their subjects to complete the Twenty Questions test (question: "Who Am I?") and then had two trained undergraduates to score the answers provided by the subjects according to Gordon's (1968) 30-category scoring system. The 30 categories were those that aimed to classify each and any answer that was written down by the subjects. (E.g: sex, age, name, racial or national heritage, religion, kinship role, occupational role, student role, political affiliation, social status, territoriality or citizenship, membership in actual interacting group, existential or individuating, etc...)
What type of data was gathered? How was it or how could have it been analyzed? Data was gathered within aforementioned 30 categories. The data was processed by the researchers in a way that it was laid out in a table as the percentage of subjects at each age using the category at least once (i.e. quantitative data). Chi-squared tests were also performed due to the large data sets. The researchers explained their data in the form of linear and curvilinear lines.
What are the research findings? Conclusions were made that support the GENERAL hypothesis. The researchers were able to conclude that:
a) The concrete-to-abstract change is not a simple linear one. However, this is most likely because some of the categories can be considered to be either concrete or abstract. The changes between concrete-to-abstract self-perceptions from childhood to adolescence primarily involve the use of concrete description by adolescents rather than the use of abstract self-perceptions by the children.
b) Children in the study primarily described themselves in terms of concrete, objective categories such as their address and physical appearance, while adolescents used more abstract and subjective descriptions such as personal beliefs and interpersonal characteristics.
What types of problems could there have been with the research? Because it was not required that each subject write down all 20 answers, where could have been an uneven amount of data distributed among the age-groups.
What changes could be suggested for future research? Make it compulsory for them to fill out all 20 answers as long as the subjects are willing to participate in the experiment.