Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology | OCR A-Level Psychology (H567)
Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology
- 169 questions
- 14 subtopics
- Component 03: Applied psychology
- Component 03
Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology is examined on component 03 of OCR Psychology, Applied psychology.
169 recall questions across 14 subtopics.
Sample questions from Methodological Issues and Debates Running Through Applied Psychology
Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.
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Nature and nurture across applied psychology
Why are twin studies used as evidence in the nature/nurture debate?
Show the 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. -
Freewill, determinism, reductionism and holism across applied psychology
What would a biological reductionist account of a mental disorder look like?
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It would explain the disorder purely as an imbalance of neurotransmitters such as dopamine or serotonin, reducing the illness to biochemistry alone. -
Usefulness of research in applied psychology
Why can a tightly controlled laboratory study still be useful even though the setting is artificial?
Show the answer
The control allows a genuine cause-and-effect relationship to be established, and that reliable relationship can then be built into a real-world intervention and tested there. -
Psychology as a science across applied psychology
What two features of psychology's subject matter make it harder to be as scientific as chemistry?
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Its subject matter includes mental processes that cannot be observed directly, and participants know they are being studied, so demand characteristics and social desirability distort behaviour. -
Conducting socially sensitive research in applied psychology
Why is research on the children of two psychiatrically ill parents socially sensitive?
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It touches on stigma, reproductive decisions, insurance and employment for families already affected by mental illness, and risks people being labelled before any symptoms appear. -
Ethnocentrism across applied psychology
Why should a crime prevention strategy developed in American cities be applied cautiously elsewhere?
Show the answer
Patterns of disorder, community relations and expectations of the police differ between countries, so a zero tolerance approach that appeared to work in one culture may damage trust in another. -
Reliability and sampling bias in the key research of applied psychology
Can a measure be reliable without being valid? Explain with an example.
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Yes; a badly worded questionnaire can give the same score every time yet measure the wrong construct, so it is consistently wrong rather than accurate. -
How different areas and perspectives explain applied topics
How does the area a psychologist works in shape the method they choose?
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A biological researcher is likely to scan or measure the body, a cognitive researcher to run a controlled experiment on a mental task, and a social researcher to observe behaviour in a real setting.
The 14 subtopics
One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.
| Subtopic | What it covers | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| Nature and nurture across applied psychology | Recall 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. | 13 |
| Freewill, determinism, reductionism and holism across applied psychology | Recall 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. | 17 |
| Individual and situational explanations across applied psychology | Recall 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. | 10 |
| Usefulness of research in applied psychology | Recall 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. | 10 |
| Psychology as a science across applied psychology | Recall 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. | 10 |
| Ethical considerations in applied research | Recall 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. | 11 |
| Conducting socially sensitive research in applied psychology | Recall 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. | 8 |
| Ethnocentrism across applied psychology | Recall 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. | 8 |
| Validity in the key research of applied psychology | Recall 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. | 12 |
| Reliability and sampling bias in the key research of applied psychology | Recall 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. | 19 |
| How different areas and perspectives explain applied topics | Recall 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. | 13 |
| Social, moral, cultural and spiritual issues raised by the applied topics | Recall 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. | 12 |
| How the key research contributes to understanding individual, social and cultural diversity | Recall 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. | 10 |
| How society decides about scientific issues and psychology's contribution to the economy | Recall 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. | 16 |
How the guide is worked
Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.
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Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
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Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
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Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.
Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.
Nearby topics
OCR A-Level Psychology Active Recall Guide
Every topic, not just this one. 3,537 questions with their answers.