Evaluation points

Question 1

Generalisability & participant sample

Answer 1

Can the results be generalised and applied to larger settings or populations? Is the participant sample small (less than 20 participants) large (better generalisability)? What sort of participants were used (gender/race/culture) and can the results be generalised to other populations?

Question 2

Cultural and individual differences:

Answer 2

Does the experiment take into consideration the cultural and individual differences of participants? It could be that experimenters ignore important aspects of an individual’s personality/religion/culture, which may have an impact on the results obtained.

Question 3

Ethics

Answer 3

Deceit? (Was there any debrief?) Confidentiality (Right to anonymity- problem in some very famous case studies) Physical or psychological harm? (Especially long-term impact on life post-experiment) Participant consent? Use of animals or children? (Questionable as animals and young children can’t express their emotions or objections)

Question 4

Demand characteristics:

Answer 4

Participants might not know how to behave and
therefore behave in a way they think the researcher wants them to.
This artificial behaviour might make results unreliable.

Question 5

Ecological validity

Answer 5

Does the task given in the experiment to participants reflect what people actually do in real life?

Question 6

Experimental setting-

Answer 6

1) Laboratory: Artificial setting = artificial behaviours/ results
However, experimenter can control all variables, causality can be determined & it is replicable
2) Field experiment: Real-life setting= natural behaviour -> less chance of demand characteristics. However, experimenter has no control over variables (extraneous variables), therefore hard to replicate to get same results.

Question 7

what simply refers to whether a study measures what it claims to measure

Answer 7

validity

Question 8

what is a form of external validity and refers to the extent to which the findings can be generalised beyond the present situation

Answer 8

ecological validity

Question 9

what is the argument that we can explain behaviour and experiences by reference to only one factor , such as psychology or learning .

Answer 9

Reductionism

Question 10

what refers to how consistent a study measuring device is .nternal refers to the extent to which a measure is consistent within itself. External refers to the extent to which a measure varies from one use to another.

Answer 10

reliability

Question 11

what are a set of guidelines which psychologists carrying out research should follow. which are proposed by the British psychological society for the conduct of research.

Answer 11

Ethics

Question 12

what is a form of external validity and refers to the extent of which the findings cam be generalized to the present time.

Answer 12

Temporal validity

Question 13

what is the argument that we don’t have much control over our actions but are controlled by factors such as our biology or genes, or by the way we are brought up.

Answer 13

determinism

Question 14

what is a form of external validity and refers to the extent to which the findings can be generalized to other populations of people. This is difficult to achieve

Answer 14

Population Validity

Question 15

Referring to this investigation, explain the difference between primary and
secondary data.

Answer 15

Application:
* primary data is gathered directly/first-hand from the participants, and is
specific to the aim of the study whereas secondary data has previously been
collected by a third party (another researcher or an official body), not
specifically for the aim of the study, and then used by the researcher
* in this study, the interview recordings are primary data –gathered specifically
for the purpose of investigating causes of aggressive behaviour whereas the
school records are secondary data – pre-existing and not gathered for the
purpose of investigating causes of aggressive behaviour

Question 16

Explain how the psychologist could continue her investigation by carrying out
thematic analysis of the interview recordings.

Answer 16

• use the recordings to make a transcription of the interview
• use coding to initially analyse the transcripts
• review the transcriptions/codes looking for emergent themes/ideas that might
  be linked to later aggressive behaviour, eg family violence, parental argument,
  alcohol misuse.