Clinical Psychology- Practical investigation Flashcards
What is the research question?
Does the media sensationalise mental illness in a negative way compared to the reality of mental illness?
What is the experimental hypothesis?
The media portrayal of mental illness will include a significantly higher number of aggressive behaviours (aggressive content) than factual sources
What is the null hypothesis?
There will be no significant difference in the number of aggressive behaviours between media sources and factual sources. Any difference will be due to chance
What were the two media sources?
Girl interrupted (schizophrenia) and one flew over the cuckoos nest.
What were the two real life sources?
Two interviews with schizophrenic patients.
How did we decide what to look for?
We watched/read lots of media sources and came up with common themes.
What categories did we observe?
Bad language, shouting/raised voice, arguing, physical violence (hitting, pushing or kicking), threats, calm behaviour, quiet and coherent.
What can we draw from the latent content?
In the fictional case, the shouting was directed at others whereas in real life the shouting is to make themselves heard. In the fictional cases, the patients were coherent the whole time and could communicate easily whereas this was not the case for the real life patients as they were unable to answer questions directly.
What was the main conclusion that could be drawn from the fictional results?
There was a large amount of physical violence and bad language which is more dramatic.
What is the main conclusion that could be drawn from the real life case study results?
The only behaviours observed were arguing and shouting which are far less aggressive and show frustration more than anything else.
Which hypothesis did you accept?
Our experimental hypothesis. The media portrayal of mental illness will include a significantly higher number of aggressive behaviours (aggressive content) than factual sources
Evaluate the generalisability of the practical.
We had a limited sample as there were only two fictional and two real life sources that were for TV/film only. This didn’t take in to account magazines or newspapers.
Also, it was hard to find our own sources as finding clips about real life schizophrenia that were the correct length were very difficult therefore our choices were limited.
Evaluate the validity of the practical.
Low in validity as we decided our own categories based on our own definition of aggression. Therefore it was subjective.
Evaluate the reliability of the practical.
When performing the content analysis we had to agree between multiple researchers before making our decision which helped limit researcher bias meaning that we had high inter-rater reliability.
Evaluate the objectivity/subjectivity of the practical.
We performed a content analysis which is subjective as we had to find our own sources and categories based on our own interpretation of aggressive behaviour.
