Thursday, 28 March 2013

Evaluating Studies


How to Evaluate a Study - Using Craik and Tulving (1975 Levels of Processing)

A question that asks you to evaluate a study in AS Psychology will roughly be around 5 marks, to achieve full marks you should make a developed point of at least 4 of these areas:

1.       Generalisability

o   How many participants took part in the study?
o   Can this be generalised to the rest of the population?

Craik and Tulving: Does not represent the whole population as there were only 20 participants

2.       Reliability

o   Is a controlled procedure used?
o   Would it be easy to repeat the study?

Craik and Tulving: There is a high reliability as the study took place in a lab

3.       Application to real life

o   How does society benefit from the study?

Craik and Tulving: Can be used to benefit students who are studying for their exams as they know to revise the content semantically by making sure they have a full understanding of their work.

4.       Validity

o   Does the study test what it set out to test?
o   Is the study set in an artificial or real setting?
o   Are there any factors that may affect the results? (confounding variables)

Craik and Tulving: The study has a high validity as being conducted in a lab there was a high level of control meaning there was a small chance of confounding variables affecting the results.

5.       Ecological Validity

o   Was the task conducted realistic?
o   Was a real life setting used? (lab experiment or field experiment?)

Craik and Tulving: Has a low ecological validity as the study took place in an artificial environment as it was a lab experiment meaning the behaviour experience was not realistic.


You can also talk about whether the study meets ethical guidelines, I will be making a seperate resource on this.

If you have any questions please leave a comment below x

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