Evaluative Issues in Psychological Studies: Paying

Homage to Formal Terms(Cooligan)

Question: Have you PERVED on the study?

Evaluation using PEE/ PEC structured paragraphs

• Psychology is a science so you MUST evaluate scientifically. This requires you to use the following structure

• The order of the EE in PEE is not important so long as you use both parts.

Paragraph structure

POINT make your point

Evidence (also known as context)

A scientific evaluation MUST have evidence. Use SPECIFIC study findings to back up your claim. Saying a study name is not evidence.

EXPLAIN ( also known as comment)

State whether this is a good or bad thing and WHY it is. Use analogies to help clarify any explanation you use

STRETCH and CHALLENGE extra: Top students will also give ON THE OTHER HAND to their strengths and weaknesses within their point they are making.

ExamplePOINT: A weakness of the developmental approach is that where children are

studied over a long period of time, it may be that researchers become more subjective.

EVIDENCE: For example, Freud’s study of Little Hans was conducted over 2 years and some of his conclusions about the reasons for Hans’ phobia of horses are biased by Hans’ father’s accounts and the relationship that develops with both Hans and his father. Not only this, but the longitudinal case studies conducted by Freud mean that only a few subjects are used to inform his opinions.

EXPLAIN (COMMENT): This is a weakness because the explanations may not be valid, due to researcher bias and other explanations may not be considered (Hans’ may have learned the fear through classical conditioning after seeing a horse rear up). More importantly the studies lack reliability, as they are based on individual cases and can not be replicated.

How to evaluate effectively using PERVED

Evaluation should ALWAYS be balanced. If it is not it is biased and unscientific. ON THE OTHER HAND is a good sentence starter to use after you make a point.

To do this make a list of strengths and weaknesses on paper or in your mind and for each letter think of why it could be argued as good and why it could be argued as bad.

Strengths Weaknesses (on the other hand)

o P = Good because it uses a scientific method (experiment).

o E = Highly controlled environment and task means that the studies results might not reflect real life performance of autistic adults

o R = Measurement may be reliable as the procedure was controlled and standardised.

o V = Controlled procedure and environment and tests against another measure of TOM

o E = Ethical in the areas of confidentiality and deception

o D = data collected is quantitative (easy to compare)

o P = bad because a lot of tests which confuse the participant

o E = sample maybe representative of population as most of autistic were male (like real life). Study is generalisable to other people. Could be negative.

o R = not replicatedo V = does not measure all

content of behaviour. No description of why choosen, no thinking aloud.

o E = possible psychological harm through stress of feeling stupid

o D = no qualitative data. No description of the process

What does PERVED mean???

Practical Procedures?

Ethical issues

Reliable measurement

Valid measurement

Ecologically Valid method

Data analysis

Practical Procedures

• Will the participants be confused?

• Is it well designed so there is no experimenter bias?

• Is the procedure designed scientifically?

Ethical Issues

• Do participants have informed consent?

• Does the study deceive participants during the task?

• Does the study harm participants?

• Are participants identities confidential?

• Does the study give the participants the right to withdraw?

Reliable measure

• Is there a CONTROLLED procedure (remove sources of error)?

• Is there inter rater reliability?

• Is the study replicated?

Validity of measurement

• Does the study measure what it intends to measure (experimental realism)?

• Does it have a CONTROLLED procedure (remove sources of error)?

• Does it measure all the CONTENT of the behaviour?

• Does it check the results against other CONCURRENT measurements of the same behaviour for correlation?

• Is the measure RELIABLE?

Ecologically Valid method

• Is the situation artificial?

• Is the task one that people do in real life?

• Is the sample REPRESENTATIVE of the population (cross section)?

• Is the study generalisable to other settings other than the one used?

Data analysis

• Is the data only quantitative?

• Is the data only qualitative?

• Is the data both (even if both there could be more of one than the other)?