Compare and contrast questions - PYA5

How likely are these sort of questions going to come up? Have they even came up before in the past?

How do you do them =/ Looks really hard to find the similarities and differences between two disorders or between the psych and bio explanations.

I haven't done this sort of question before and there's two weeks left.

Reply 1

cami_d

"outline and evaluate" "discuss" "explain what is meant by...." are much more common
in January 2005 there was a compare and contrast question on biological and psychological explanations of depression

Reply 2

Faint_x

Doubt we're gonna get differences and similarities between two disorders but comparing biological and psych explanations is quite easy its same as a normal question really. Like if the question was to only discuss biological, you would mention psychological explanations as your A02 anyway so just do the same and compare them by criticising and that.

Reply 3

jenny1000

I hope it doesn't come up! If it does:

1st paragraph - outline biological
2nd paragraph - outline psychological
3rd paragraph - similarities
4th paragraph - differences
Conclusion (eg/ there are similarities between the two but also differences, diathesis stress more likely)

For similarities, comment on if they are reductionist (eg/ similarity - they both are, difference - reduced to different things), if they are determinist (eg/ similarity - both determinist, difference - determined by different things), how successful their therapies are, if they have empirical support, if they regard family/childhood as important (eg/ bio says family is important because of the genes, and psych theoroes also regard family as important, but for different reasons - environment, etc), if they take into account the other theory or explain it in terms of JUST bio or JUST psych, etc.

Learn lists of similarities/differences for each one beforehand so it won't be a problem if that question comes up.

Reply 4

Hispanic-Impressions

According to my Psychology teacher, compare & contrast questions can be answered in two different ways.

The first way is -
1. Describe both therapies/disorders/whatever the question is on (A01)
2. Compare and contrast (A02)

The second is -
1. Describe the similarities and differences of the therapies/disorders/etc (A01)
2. Evaluate these similarities/differences (A02)

Supposedly the second one is easier (even though it looks more complicated), because if you just compare & contrast the techniques for A02 it's apparently harder to get A02 marks because it requires you to use words like strong/weak/validity/reliability/however/but/blahblah, whereas people tend to just describe differences instead which gains no A02 credit.

So we have been advised to go for method 2, where the evaluation side would basically require you to answer "how valid and reliable is the similarity/difference". For example, if the difference is that A is better than B because A has research to support it, for A02 you could say the research that supports A is flawed for x/y/z reason, thus the comparison is weak.

...If that made any sense at all. =/