Issues and debates Flashcards
Define: ecological validity
How applicable a study is to everyday life
Strengths and weaknesses of ecologically valid research
Weaknesses
Difficult to control variables in the natural environment. • Could be unethical as participants do not know they are in a study. • Can be unreliable as difficult to replicate.
Strengths
Useful as the study is naturalistic so can be applied to everyday life. • Participants do not know they are in a study so results are more natural. • Participants do not know they are in a study so results are more valid.
List the advantages of ecologically valid research
a
Define: ethics
Guidelines put in place in order to protect the rights of research participants, and protect them from physical or psychological harm
Can breaking ethical guidelines be justified?
No:
- Participants will find the experience upsetting
- Will give Psychology a bad reputation
- In the future, people will not want to participate in psychological research
- Studies may not get funding easily
Yes:
-May avoid demand characteristics/social desirability as participants do not know they are in a study
- May be able to study anti-social behaviour as participants will be placed into uncomfortable situations
- Research may be more useful as the studies will be more realistic
Define: ethnocentric bias
A distortion caused by a focus on the researcher’s own culture which narrows the appropriateness of the methods when used with participants from other cultures and causes a lack of generalisability of the finding to other cultures.
List the problems faced when trying to avoid ethnocentric bias
- difficult to find generalisable sample
- experimenter bias may interfere
- leading questions, social desirability, demand characteristics
- researchers may not realise procedures are irrelevant or impossible to complete due to language or culture problems
- difficult to make reliable study as different cultures may produce different results
Explain: individual and situational explanations
A situational explanation is where our behaviour is explained in terms of the situation we are in. For example, we might be aggressive because we were raised in an aggressive home.
An individual explanation is where our behaviour is explained in terms of a person’s disposition and personality. For example, we might be aggressive because that is part of our natural personality.
List problems with investigating situational or individual behaviour
- May be difficult to create studies that are ecologically valid.
- May create unethical studies.
- May be difficult to find a representative sample.
- May be difficult to create a valid measuring device.
- Participants may respond to demand characteristics if the study is unnatural.
- The findings may offer a reductionist explanation of social behaviour.
- Difficult to control/identify individual differences.
Explain: nature and nurture debate
Whether behaviour is due to biological influences or learning
List the problems with investigating whether behaviour is due to nature or nurture
Difficult to distinguish whether behaviour is due to nature or nurture. Studies are often on children which may be unethical. Studies may lack ecological validity. Validity/reliability of measuring devices used. Sample may not be representative. Difficult to find a representative sample. If very realistic may be unethical. If informed consent obtained may be unrealistic. Difficult to control the variables in very realistic studies. Difficult to replicate due to lack of control.
List the strengths in investigating nature/nurture
- Provide useful explanations
- Can provide simple explanations of behaviour which are easy to understand
- If research is done in a lab has good control so more reliable and / or valid
- If studies are done on young children / animals lack of demand characteristics / social desirability
- Can show a cause and effect link
Define: psychometric test
Mathematical measure of the mind
List the advantages of using psychometric tests
Can be ethical as participants are often asked to carry out a straightforward test.
Produces numerical data so comparisons can be made between groups.
Reliable as easy to repeat test at a later stage.
Useful as a diagnostic tool.
Tests have gone through lengthy processes to be created so are valid.
Objective as the responses of the participants are not judged by the psychologist.
Can test a large number of participants easily.
List advantages of collecting quantitative data
Easy to compare groups of participants.
Easy to apply statistical tests to the data.
Sometimes easier to interpret
Easy to summarise results
Sometimes faster for the participants to do the study
List problems with collecting qualitative data
- Interpreter bias
- Difficult to summarise data
- Social desirability/demand characteristics
- Difficult to analyse data.
Define: generalisations
The extent to which one group’s results can be applied to the general population / the situation in the study is realistic
List the problems faced when trying to make generalisations from research
- Studies can lack ecological validity
- Samples may be small and not varied - not representative of target population
- Cannot generalise animals to humans
- Data collection methods may be invalid or unreliable
- Operalisation may be invalid
- Not useful
- May get demand characteristics/social desirability if participants know they are in a study.
Define: application to everyday life
This is whether research is useful and can improve the lives of people in their day to day lives.
Define: snapshot data
Data collected over a short period of time in one place
List the advantages and disadvantages of data collected using the snapshot method
Does not show change over time. Often lab studies as these are quick. May not be time to give a full debrief. Cannot collect detailed data. Often reductionist as data is simplistic.
Longitudinal
a
adv disadv
a
List the problems with using children in research
- Children have poor concentration.
- Cannot do very much when very young (cognitive developments)
- Language/communication problems/difficulty understanding the instructions
- Demand characteristics/social desirability.
- More vulnerable so more ethical issues.
- Difficult to get children as parents may not wish to volunteer their child.
List the strengths and weakness of using animals in research
Strengths:
- animals do not understand, so no demand characteristics/social desirability
- may be better than performing on humans when unethical
Weaknesses:
- cannot explain their own behaviour
- cannot generalise findings to humans
- cannot give them right to withdraw / debriefing
Define: reductionism
An approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to more fundamental things, resulting in overly simplistic explanations.
List the problems faced by psychologists when carrying out reductionist research
- Effect of extraneous variables prevent reductionist explanations / difficult to implement controls
- May lack ecological validity
- DV in study may not be valid as too simplistic
- A complete picture of behaviour not given
- Conclusions are not useful as too simplistic
Define: determinism
The view that all behaviour is caused by preceding factors (e.g. biological, environmental) and is thus predictable
List the problems of deterministic views
- Inconsistent with society’s ideas of responsibility and self control that form the basis of our moral and legal obligations.
- Studies are often reductionist
- Cannot completely predict behaviour due to extraneous variables
List the strengths of reliable research
- Studies are often done in a laboratory so therefore are controlled/standardised
- Can be replicated at a later date to check consistency
- Equipment is often used which is more scientific/accurate
- Can be more valid if standardised
- Often uses quantitative data which means comparisons can be made/statistics easily used.
List the weaknesses of reliable research
- Can lack ecological validity if very standardised as this will be false
- Often has quantitative data which lacks depth
- Can lead to social desirability/demand characteristics as the standardisation may give away the nature of the study.
List the difficulties in carrying out valid research
- Demand characteristics, social desirability
Difficult to make studies ecologically valid and reliable - May break ethical guidelines in order to be valid
- Quantitative data may not give full picture of behaviour/thoughts and feelings
- Qualitative data may be difficult to summarise and important information may be left out
