Q1 In your own words, describe the main purpose and aims of the activity.

You will find the answer to a question on purpose, aims/objectives or background to an activity under the Introduction.

In this case, it is quite straightforward - it is an activity to establish attitudes (rather than actual behaviour) in terms of attitudes/beliefs towards driving under the influence of cannabis and/or alcohol.

Q2 In your own words, describe the main findings of this activity.

The answer to this question will be found under 'Results'. You should summarise the main findings in your own words and quote from the article (quote figures if these are given) to support your answer.

In this case - the researchers found that while young people felt strongly that drink driving was wrong/dangerous/risky in terms of penalties, they were much more relaxed about driving under the influence of cannabis and felt that this was more commonplace among their peers (and give an appropriate quote or quotes to support this).

There are three parts to this question - first, a description of the methods, which you'll find in the Methodology section, second, the relative advantages of this method over others, and third, the relative disadvantages of this method over others. The advantages and disadvantages you should know from your LO3 notes, although you might find further evidence in the study to support this.

In this case - the research methods used were a group interview, with small groups being interviewed in different settings (workplace/college). Some groups were organised with participants having a shared cultural background, or already familiar to each other (college tutorial groups).

Advantages of the group interview were that they took place face to face, allowing clarification of answers, and making it less likely that participants would lie. Interviews also allow the researcher to gather in-depth, qualitative data.

Disadvantages were that too much data might be gathered, making it difficult and time-consuming to make use of the information. In this study in particular, 'group polarisation' was encountered, where the young people were subject to social pressure to go along with the views of the rest of the group, either positive or negative - 'cautious shift' or 'risky shift'.

In this study, the young people were instructed to talk about friends and people they knew, rather than themselves. This was useful in that it (hopefully) encouraged honesty and overcame the problem of confidentiality. In a group situation, some people would not feel comfortable discussing their own personal health or personal lives.

However, it didn't overcome the problem of 'risky shift/cautious shift' - see above.

Q5 How has the qualitative information been presented?

Qualitative information is information which cannot be quantified or counted, e.g. information relating to feelings, emotions and attitudes. This health promotion activity dealt almost exclusively with qualitative information, which was presented in the form of brief quotes from interview transcripts.

Quantitative information is information that can be quantified or counted, and presented as statistical data (e.g. in a graph). There is little quantitative information in this study, however some statistics are quoted in the introduction, and figures relating to the stratification of the groups (how they were distributed by age, driver/non-driver etc) were presented in a table.

Q7 In your own words, describe the main conclusions of the study.

This question should be simple - read the 'Conclusion' section at the end of the study and then summarise this in your own words.

This study concluded that while health promotion campaigns on the dangers of drink driving had had an effect on the attitudes of young people, in that they generally considered drink driving to be dangerous and would arrange alternatives to avoid it, the same cannot be said for attitudes to cannabis. Young people were found to be quite complacent in their attitudes to driving under the influence of cannabis and believed it to be more widespread than drink driving.

There are no absolute right or wrong answers to this question, as it asks you to state an opinion (and then back this opinion up with reference to the study).

You should start by clearly restating the aims and objectives of this study - i.e. to establish young people's attitudes to driving under the influence of cannabis and alcohol.

You may then want to refer to:

• the methodology used - how effective were interviews in meeting these aims?
• the sampling technique used - was the sample big enough? was it balanced?
• factors that may have influenced the outcome e.g. risky shift/cautious shift
• the researchers interpretation of the results - have they overlooked any trends? are their conclusions valid?

You may think that the activity has been very effective, but you can usually find some improvements that can be made - often the researchers will identify these themselves, in which case you just need to explain them in your own words.

In this study, the most obvious alternative would have been to do a questionnaire (or possibly individual interviews). Use your LO3 notes to give the pros and cons of the alternative you have identified.