OCR A-Level Psychology H567
Research Methods and Techniques
Planning and Conducting Research
Data Recording, Analysis and Presentation
Report Writing and Scientific Communication
Practical Activities and the Nature of Science
Mathematical Requirements for Research Methods
Studying and Evaluating the Core Studies: The Common Framework
Core Studies: Social Area
Core Studies: Cognitive Area
Core Studies: Developmental Area
Core Studies: Biological Area
Core Studies: Individual Differences Area
Areas and Perspectives in Psychology
Debates in Psychology
Practical Applications of Psychology
Issues in Mental Health
Child PsychologyApplied option
Criminal PsychologyApplied option
Environmental PsychologyApplied option
Sport and Exercise PsychologyApplied option
Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology
Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology
- 14 subtopics
- 40 things to know
- Component 03
What Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology covers
Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology is examined on component 03 of OCR Psychology, Applied psychology. 169 recall questions across 14 subtopics.
The 14 subtopics
Each one has its own page.
- Nature and nurture across applied psychologyRecall questions on the nature, nurture and interactionist positions, diathesis-stress, twin studies and concordance, and how Gottesman et al., Van Leeuwen et al., Raine et al. and Wilson and Kelling fit the debate and shape applications.Open →
- Freewill, determinism, reductionism and holism across applied psychologyRecall questions on freewill, hard and soft determinism, types of determinism in explanations of mental illness, determinism and the law, adolescent risk-taking, the difference between reductionism and determinism, levels of explanation, holism, and reductionist accounts of disorder and aircraft noise stress.Open →
- Individual and situational explanations across applied psychologyRecall questions on individual and situational explanations in applied psychology, the simulated prison study, athlete personality profiling, audience effects, broken windows and brain abnormality explanations of crime, and why both kinds of explanation are needed.Open →
- Usefulness of research in applied psychologyRecall questions on what makes research useful, criteria for judging usefulness, biased samples and controlled laboratory studies, the usefulness of shift rotation, window view, cognitive interview and fingerprint research, and why usefulness is a judgement.Open →
- Psychology as a science across applied psychologyRecall questions on features of scientific enquiry, falsifiability and the psychodynamic explanation, objectivity, replicability, induction and deduction, cause and effect, why psychology's subject matter is hard to study scientifically, brain scanning, and field studies.Open →
- Ethical considerations in applied researchRecall questions on the four BPS ethical principles and their requirements, deception, ethical criticisms of the simulated prison study and Rosenhan's pseudopatients, research with children, national registry data, cost-benefit judgements and animal research on audience effects.Open →
- Conducting socially sensitive research in applied psychologyRecall questions on what makes applied research socially sensitive, social sensitivity in research on criminal biology, offspring of ill parents, heritability of intelligence and accent and guilt, arguments for conducting it, reducing harm, and reporting correlational findings.Open →
- Ethnocentrism across applied psychologyRecall questions on ethnocentrism, imposing measures across cultures, and ethnocentrism in the Strange Situation, deviation from social norms, diagnostic categories and crime prevention strategies, reducing ethnocentrism, and cultural relativism.Open →
- Validity in the key research of applied psychologyRecall questions on valid conclusions, internal validity and pre-existing groups, external, ecological and population validity, face, construct, concurrent and criterion validity, threats to internal validity, demand characteristics and social desirability in the key research.Open →
- Reliability and sampling bias in the key research of applied psychologyRecall questions on internal, external, test-retest, split-half and inter-rater reliability, reliability and validity, sampling bias, volunteer, opportunity, snowball and random sampling, the samples in the prison, attachment, murderer, cockroach and airport studies, and standardisation versus ecological validity.Open →
- How different areas and perspectives explain applied topicsRecall questions on the five areas of psychology and the behaviourist and psychodynamic perspectives in applied psychology, using more than one area to explain criminal behaviour and aggression, and how an area shapes methods and applications.Open →
- Social, moral, cultural and spiritual issues raised by the applied topicsRecall questions on social, moral, cultural and spiritual issues raised by applied topics, how spiritual issues differ from moral ones, and examples from biochemical explanations, exercise programmes, hospital design, zero tolerance, children's advertising and recycling campaigns.Open →
- How the key research contributes to understanding individual, social and cultural diversityRecall questions on individual, social and cultural diversity, and how research on accent and guilt, gendered advertising voices, infant attachment, athlete personality and dance in Parkinson's disease contributes to understanding diversity.Open →
- How society decides about scientific issues and psychology's contribution to the economyRecall questions on peer review, factors affecting whether society acts on findings, the media, ethics committees, replication, psychology in public policy, and the economic contribution of research on mental illness, ward design, shift work, displays, offices, crime and recycling.Open →
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
Why does a high concordance rate between identical twins fail to prove that a behaviour is purely inherited?
How does brain-imaging research on murderers pleading not guilty by reason of insanity feed the nature side of the debate?
Name three types of determinism used in psychology and state what each says causes behaviour.
Define holism and give one explanation of mental illness that takes a holistic view.
Why can a tightly controlled laboratory study still be useful even though the setting is artificial?
Identify one ethical strength and one ethical weakness of the study in which healthy pseudopatients gained admission to psychiatric hospitals.
Distinguish internal reliability from external reliability.
Explain why using more than one area gives a fuller account of criminal behaviour.
Why are spiritual issues not simply the same as moral issues?
Give one spiritual consideration a psychologist should take into account when designing a health or exercise programme.
Why should an applied psychologist consider social, moral, cultural and spiritual issues before implementing a strategy?
How can research on shift rotation benefit an employer economically?
Why is research showing that an audience improves simple performance but harms complex performance a situational explanation?
What is meant by the usefulness of research?
Name four features of scientific enquiry that psychology aims to meet.
Why does research using animals, such as work on audience effects in cockroaches, raise different ethical questions from research on humans?
Name three steps a researcher can take to reduce harm when conducting socially sensitive research.
Explain how research using the strange situation to classify infant attachment can be ethnocentric.
State the two questions you should ask when judging the external validity of a piece of key research.
Give two ways a researcher can improve the reliability of an observation.
What is meant by cultural diversity?
How does research into motivating recycling benefit both society and the economy?
What is meant by an individual explanation of behaviour?
What is falsifiability, and why does it matter?
What are the four principles of the British Psychological Society's code of ethics and conduct?
Define ethnocentrism.
Why does comparing groups that already differ, such as offenders and non-offenders, weaken internal validity?
Name the five areas of psychology.
What is meant by individual diversity?
Which explanation of mental illness is an example of psychic determinism, and why?
What is meant by a situational explanation of behaviour?
Name three criteria you would use to judge how useful a piece of research is.
Why does replicability matter when applied psychology is used to change practice?
What is the main ethical criticism of the simulated prison study?
In what way can diagnostic categories for mental disorder be ethnocentric?
Why is construct validity particularly hard to establish for a measure of psychopathy or of anxiety?
Why does reliability matter most when a measure is used to make a decision about an individual, such as a diagnosis or a selection test?
How does research into infant attachment contribute to an understanding of cultural diversity?
Name three factors besides the evidence itself that influence whether society acts on a psychological finding.
Take Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology further
The same content, four other ways.
Commonly confused
Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.
Internal reliability vs External reliability
Internal reliability: the consistency of a measure within itself, across its own items. External reliability: the consistency of a measure when it is used again on another occasion.
Ecological validity vs Population validity
Ecological validity: how far findings hold in settings and tasks beyond those of the study. Population validity: how far findings hold for people beyond the sample studied.
Ethnocentrism vs Cultural relativism
Ethnocentrism: judging other groups by the standards of one's own culture. Cultural relativism: the position that conduct can only be judged within the culture it occurs in.
Questions from this topic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 1
What does the nature side of the nature/nurture debate claim about where behaviour comes from?
Model answer
It claims behaviour is largely inherited, arising from genes, brain structure and physiological processes present from birth.
- 2
What does nurture refer to in this debate?
Model answer
Nurture is everything a person experiences after conception, including upbringing, learning, culture and the physical environment, which together shape behaviour.
- 3
What is the interactionist position on nature and nurture?
Model answer
It argues that genes and environment act together, with inherited predispositions being expressed, strengthened or suppressed by a person's experiences.
- 4
Explain how the idea of an inherited vulnerability triggered by stress combines both sides of the debate.
Model answer
A person inherits a predisposition to a disorder, but the disorder only develops if environmental stressors are severe enough to trigger it, so nature sets the risk and nurture decides the outcome.
- 5
Why are twin studies used as evidence in the nature/nurture debate?
Model answer
Identical twins share all their genes whereas non-identical twins share about half, so a higher concordance rate in identical pairs suggests a genetic contribution to the behaviour.
- 6
Why does a high concordance rate between identical twins fail to prove that a behaviour is purely inherited?
Model answer
Identical twins are usually reared together and are often treated more alike than non-identical twins, so a shared environment can inflate the concordance rate.
What is inside Levo
Six ways to work the same material.
Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology revision questions
- What does Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology cover in OCR A-Level Psychology?
- 14 subtopics: nature and nurture across applied psychology, freewill, determinism, reductionism and holism across applied psychology, individual and situational explanations across applied psychology, usefulness of research in applied psychology, psychology as a science across applied psychology, ethical considerations in applied research, conducting socially sensitive research in applied psychology, ethnocentrism across applied psychology, validity in the key research of applied psychology, reliability and sampling bias in the key research of applied psychology, how different areas and perspectives explain applied topics, social, moral, cultural and spiritual issues raised by the applied topics, how the key research contributes to understanding individual, social and cultural diversity and how society decides about scientific issues and psychology's contribution to the economy. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.
- How is Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology organised?
- By the OCR H567 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.
Every question in Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology, on a schedule.
Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.
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