AQA AS level research methods psychology 12-mark essay

Discuss ethical issues in psychological research. Refer to one or more research studies in your answer. (12 marks)

I honestly don't know how to structure the essay; I thought I could perhaps first mention and define an ethical issue, outline a research study then evaluate the study in relation to the ethical issue at the beginning of my point; I thought that perhaps doing this twice of three times would be enough.

There are 5 ethical issues: Competence of the experimentor, right to withdraw, informed consent, Psychological harm and whether the participant is debriefed.
Just define these for a mark each, and link a study to each of these by explaining your points etc
They put you in mark bands so you can get full marks if your quality of explaining is thorough and you give a range of studies

Hope this helps, I could be talking rubbish but I nearly got an A at AS, good luck

You could structure your essay in 2 paragraphs (you don't really need more than 2 for a 12 marker at AS. At A2 you will get a 16 marker - 4 paragraphs)

Also keep it short and concise, each paragraph should be no more than 100 words (tip from an examiner!)

Paragraph 1 - AO1 = Describe 6 marks

- Choose 2/3 ethical issues (2 is better as in the exam you wouldn't have time for all of the issues. Bear in mind you can only spend 12 - 15 mins on this question)
- Provide evidence - research study e.g Protection from harm (Milgram/Zimbardo), Deception (Asch) etc.


Paragraph 2 - AO3 = Evaluate 6 marks

- Evaluate the studies using GRAVE :

- Generalisability -can it be generalised to the whole population, sample size, sample bias, age of pp's, gender of pp's etc

- Reliability - is the study replicable, how much control was there, lab/field/natural exp, ev's or confounding variables, internal/external validity etc

- Application - can the findings be applied to real life situations? Does it provide evidence for a specific theory?

- Validity - ecological v, internal v, external v, population v (people), temporal v (time). Variables = situational variables, participant variables, investigator effects and participant effects.

- Ethics - did it stick to ethical guidelines?
Ethical issues (5) = Informed consent (written + verbal), Protection from harm, Confidentiality, Deception and Right to withdraw.

That's an easy 12 marks! Hope this helps you :-)