A student is designing an investigation to measure changes in stroke volume following an 8-week high-intensity interval training program.
Evaluate the challenges in ensuring valid, reliable, and credible data collection when measuring complex physiological responses to aerobic training. (6 marks)
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Sample Answer
- Measuring stroke volume accurately is difficult in a school setting because it requires special equipment that most schools don’t have, so students often use less accurate methods that might not show the true physiological changes.
- Many factors like whether participants had food or water before testing, how much they exercised recently, or even if they’re nervous can affect heart measurements, making it hard to get reliable results unless these factors are strictly controlled.
- Students might not try their hardest during testing if they know they’re being observed, which affects how valid the results are because the measurements won’t show their true maximum capacity.
- Heart measurements like stroke volume naturally change from day to day in the same person, which makes it hard to tell if changes are from the training program or just normal variation.
- Schools usually can’t access the best measurement tools (like heart imaging machines), so they have to use simpler methods that might not be as trusted by scientists.
- To deal with these challenges, students should use multiple ways to measure the same thing, keep testing conditions as similar as possible each time, and be honest about the limitations of their methods.
Show Worked Solution
Sample Answer
- Measuring stroke volume accurately is difficult in a school setting because it requires special equipment that most schools don’t have, so students often use less accurate methods that might not show the true physiological changes.
- Many factors like whether participants had food or water before testing, how much they exercised recently, or even if they’re nervous can affect heart measurements, making it hard to get reliable results unless these factors are strictly controlled.
- Students might not try their hardest during testing if they know they’re being observed, which affects how valid the results are because the measurements won’t show their true maximum capacity.
- Heart measurements like stroke volume naturally change from day to day in the same person, which makes it hard to tell if changes are from the training program or just normal variation.
- Schools usually can’t access the best measurement tools (like heart imaging machines), so they have to use simpler methods that might not be as trusted by scientists.
- To deal with these challenges, students should use multiple ways to measure the same thing, keep testing conditions as similar as possible each time, and be honest about the limitations of their methods.