Participants
Participants in this study were 40 grade 10 to 12 students taken from both simple random sampling and convenience sampling at a local Burnaby secondary school over a three week period. Participants were asked to take the questionnaire outside of class time. Unlike earlier and previously done research, equal numbers of 20 males and 20 females were sampled in order to properly represent the chosen population.
Instruments
A two part online questionnaire with 40 questions, was designed to determine participants’ trait anxiety levels and its correlation to their judgments of approachability and trustworthiness towards others. In both sections, quantitative data is collected and analyzed. The first part of the questionnaire is taken from the State -Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), chosen due to its recognition of being a widely used tool in determining an individual’s measure of anxiety. For this experiment, only the portion pertaining to the measurement of trait anxiety was implemented. Participants were given 20 descriptive statements, such as “I feel pleasant” or “I feel nervous and restless”, as well as a 4-point likert scale to evaluate how these statements are associated with how they generally feel. Dependant on the questions and their selections of the options “Almost Never”, “Sometimes”, “Often”, “Almost Always”, a score of 1 to 4 is given to the participant. The lowest attainable score is 20, signifying low, or no trait anxiety, and the highest attainable score is 80, signifying extremely …show more content…
Neutral images were used rather than ones displaying emotions such as happy, or angry to ensure that less bias will be present in the recorded data. For this study, the provided scenarios