Rosenhan

Question 1

What is the aim of Rosenhan (study 1)?

Answer 1

Investigate if sane people who present themselves to a psychiatric hospital would be diagnosed as being insane

Question 2

What is the sample of Rosenhan (study 1)?

Answer 2

12 different hospitals from 5 states

range of different psychiatric institutions (modern and old, well-staffed and poorly staffed, one was private)

Question 3

How many pseudopatients were there in Rosenhan’s study 1?

Answer 3

5 men and 3 women

Question 4

What did the pseudopatients claim they could hear when calling psychiatric hospitals in Rosenhan’s study 1?

Answer 4

Muffled voice

e.g. ‘thud’ ‘hollow’ ‘empty’

Question 5

What did the pseduopatients give once admitted in Rosenhan’s study 1?

Answer 5

Honest life stories

Question 6

What did pseudopatients claim once they had been admitted in Rosenhan’s study 1?

Answer 6

‘Voice’ had stopped

Question 7

How were the pseudopatients observed in Rosenhan’s study 1?

Answer 7

Natural, participant, covert observation

Question 8

What are the results of Rosenhan’s study 1?

Answer 8

11/12 hospitals admitted them with Schizophrenia

Remained in hospital for between 7-52 days, with a mean stay of 19 days

2100 pills were handed to the pseudo-patients (only 2 were actually
swallowed)

When in hospital, normal behaviours were viewed as symptoms of the illness by
medical staff (e.g. writing in diaries = PATIENT ENGAGES IN PATHOLOGICAL WRITING BEHAVIOUR)

Question 9

What was the conclusion of Rosenhan (study 1 and 2)?

Answer 9

Unable to detect sanity vs insanity

Question 10

What is the aim of Rosenhan (study 2)?

Answer 10

If the tendency towards diagnosing the sane as insane could be reversed

Question 11

What were the teaching and hospital warned about in Rosenhan’s study 2?

Answer 11

Over the next three months one or more pseudo-patients will attempt to be admitted

Question 12

How many pseudopatients were admitted into hospital in Rosenhan’s study 2?

Answer 12

Zero

Question 13

What did staff members rate the new patients in Rosenhan’s study 2?

Answer 13

On scale 1 - 10 as ‘how likely to be a fraud’

Question 14

How many patients were assessed in Rosenhan’s study 2?

Answer 14

193

Question 15

What are the results of Rosenhan’s study 2?

Answer 15

41 rated as a pseudo-patient (by staff)

23 rated as pseudo-patient (by psychiatrist)

19 rated as pseudo-patient (by both)

Question 16

What is a strength of Rosenhan’s sample?

Answer 16

Various style of hospitals over 5 states so results about diagnosis could be applied to a wider population of medical staff

Question 17

How is Rosenhan’s study replicable?

Answer 17

Standardised procedure (e.g. the words thud, hollow, empty when going for
diagnosis) so you can repeat it with the same
words to see if you get a reliable result about diagnosis

Question 18

How is there low demand characteristics in Rosenhan’s study?

Answer 18

Doctors and nurses didn’t know they were being observed or that the patients being admitted was actually a
pseudopatient so they wouldn’t have changed their behaviour relating to
how they treated the pseudopatients making Rosenhan’s results more internally valid

Question 19

How is Rosenhan’s study high in ecological validity?

Answer 19

Carried out in the staff’s natural environment of hospitals

Question 20

How is it useful that the pseudopatients began to act normally once admitted in Rosenhan’s study?

Answer 20

Their misdiagnosis and treatment is a valid representation of real
diagnosis and treatment (rather than being influenced by their acting up)

Question 21

Why is it good that both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered?

Answer 21

Quantitative data about diagnosis can be compared effectively whilst the qualitative data (e.g. how they were treated by staff) gives more depth and detail so we get a better understanding of mental health facilities and diagnosis

Question 22

What is a weakness of Rosenhan’s sample?

Answer 22

All USA hospitals so the results about validity of diagnosis are ethnocentric and might not apply in other cultures like the UK or collectivist cultures

Question 23

Why might Rosenhan’s study be hard to replicate?

Answer 23

The situations which the pseudopatients found themselves in in each hospital couldn’t
be standardised and so it might be difficult to replicate

Question 24

Why is using naturalistic observation a weakness in Rosenhan’s study?

Answer 24

Extraneous variables impact
n the behaviour/treatment of the staff/pseudopatients in each hospital

Question 25

Why might some of the results may have been interpreted when analysing in Rosenhan’s study?

Answer 25

Bias in the reporting of the pseudo-patients (as this is essentially a participant observation) because they were being held there for so long when not ill

Question 26

Why are there ethical issues with Rosenhan e.g. protection from harm?

Answer 26

Study 1: harm to real patients in terms of time lost as staff were working with pseudopatients when it could have been spent with real patients

Study 2: staff could have treated patients they suspected were pseudopatients differently,
compromising their care

Question 27

Why are there ethical issues with Rosenhan e.g. deception?

Answer 27

Pseudopatients lied about their symptoms and acted like real patients