EVALUATION FOR MAKING A CASE

Interviewing witnesses
STUDIES: Bruce, Loftus, Fisher

Generally questions have been based on research, so here are some issues:
Evaluating research;

• ecological validity: Bruce and Loftus are poor in EV, Fisher is high
• population validity/generalisability: all fairly low, but at least Fisher uses real detectives
• all are experiments: good for control and internal validity, and allow for replicability so likely to be somewhat reliable. However, many factors influence information given in witness interviews so it's unlikely that given the same situation, that any two people would give a consistent account and thus reliability is questionable. 
• usefulness and application: knowing about the inaccuracy of e-fit identification, eyewitness accounts and effectiveness of CIT has excellent real-life implications, helps inform policy and could help to change the way that juries perceive eyewitness testimonies. However the results aren't really well known, so this is a drawback.

Interviewing Suspects

• Validity of suspect interviews: police officers only 64.5% accurate at telling truth from lies, interviews lead to social desirability and all associated issues, interrogations lead to false confessions, etc. Research in this area tends to have high EV though, which is good because generalisability of findings should be strong.
• Reliability: similar to interviewing witnesses, affected by individual differences of interviewee and interviewer.
• Ethics is an important issue
• Usefulness/applications of research: shows that police officers may need more training in identifying lies and truth, highlights the unethical nature and poor validity of confessions obtained through interrogation

Creating a Profile

• Validity, effectiveness and usefulness: Mokros and Alison suggested that top down typological profiling is inaccurate as it's too reductionist, Canter found bottom up approaches effective, and Copson found that police officers may not be aware of benefits of profiling but that many would use again for a second opinion
• Reliability: top down is more reliable as it uses pre-existing categories. 
• Qualitative and quantitative data: both approaches feature some qualitative (e.g. looking at details, not numerical data) and some quantitative (e.g. looking at numbers and patterns). Quantitative is good because it's easy to analyse, qualitative is good because it's more in-depth and more humanistic. 
• Determinism: top down assumes that similar criminals create similar crime scenes, which is fairly reductionist and deterministic. Bottom up is less deterministic in that it suggests criminal choose to act consistently, and more holistic as it looks at each characteristic in turn and builds up a picture rather than choosing for example disorganised or organised. 

Identifying disorders and why it's not as simple as it seems

Characteristics for disorders (DSM-IV)

SCHIZOPHRENIA

• Psychotic disorder
• Generally characterised by loss of contact with “reality”
• Must have 2+ symptoms, as well as socio-occupational dysfunction
• Positive symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations and disordered thought/speech/actions
• Negative symptoms such as loss of contact with reality, catatonia, loss of pleasure in usual activities and loss of emotional responses

DEPRESSION

• Affective disorder, so most linked to mood changes
• Can be unipolar or bipolar as well as dysthymic (chronic)
• Must have 5+ symptoms to be classified as depression
• Behavioural symptoms include loss of pleasure and loss of appetite
• Physical symptoms include catatonia, fatigue and insomnia
• Cognitive symptoms include poor concentration and suicidal thoughts
• Emotional symptoms include feelings of worthlessness and persistent negative moods
• Bipolar disorder includes episodes of these characteristics alongside manic episodes, including delusions of grandeur, excessive happiness and feeling restless (those with bipolar may be confused with schizophrenia due to the occasional presence of delusions and disordered speech, thought or actions)

PHOBIA

• Anxiety disorder
• Persistent, excessive fear or anxiety and recognised as so
• Immediate fear response on contact
• Actively seeks to avoid phobic situation
• Disruption to everyday life
• May seem irrational to others but has very real consequences to the individual

Issues with identifying disorders:

• Highly subjective
• Requires self-report from individuals who may not perceive their behaviour as abnormal or dysfunctional, or who may be prone to lying/disordered thoughts and social desirability
• There is significant overlap between disorders e.g. loss of pleasure is a factor in depression and schizophrenia, whilst bipolar disorders and schizophrenia can feature delusions and disordered actions. Anxiety is also somewhat common amongst people who are depressed, due to feelings of worthlessness and pessimistic depressive thought patterns.

Evaluation points for Stress

As requested, I've done some evaluation points for stress. They aren't the only ones, so if you think of any more, feel free to use those. 

Causes of Stress

• You could evaluate the extent to which each of these were nomothetic - does everybody have lack of control/work/daily hassles/life events? Does it cause each person stress?
• You could look at situational versus dispositional - all of these actually tend to favour situational explanations of stress, but the treatments tend to be dispositional, so this could be a good issue to look into. 
• You could maybe also look at how simple these causes would be to fix, and how the knowledge that they cause stress could be use. This leads you to evaluation issues such as usefulness and application. 

Measures of Stress

• Validity is a major issue here. You've got low construct validity in that it's hard to define stress and thus hard to know when you're measuring it, as well as face validity because the measures of stress can be affected by lying, memory, demand characteristics, illness, emotion, etc. Also, different people experience stress differently so using only one measure on participants may not be a valid approach.
• Reliability is also important. As different people experience stress differently, measures are unlikely to give consistent results if used again in similar situations. Too many things affect measures of stress and stress itself in order to give consistent results on physiological or self-report measures.
• Reductionism is a potential issue. Obviously, measures which are only self-report (e.g. SRRS) or only physiological (e.g. heart rate monitor) are reductionist and don't look at many features of stress response or the dynamic between them, whilst combined measures are holistic and thus may be more appropriate and useful.

Managing Stress

• Situational versus dispositional is also appropriate to evaluate here. Social support takes the situational approach whilst cognition is dispositional, as is behaviourism (biofeedback). Though, behaviourist ways of managing stress emphasise the role of positive reinforcement, so it has a situational element as well. You could obviously link this to reductionism and holism. 
• You could look at whether symptoms or causes of stress are targeted, and evaluate whether this is a good approach to managing stress. SIT attempts to prevent stress as well as help the individual overcome their current stress which Meichenbaum suggests is the actual cause of stress, thus it targets causes rather than symptoms. Biofeedback treats the symptoms of stress response rather than the causes as it teaches relaxation, though this may prevent stress too. Social support targets the symptoms and causes in that having strong social networks can provide support to prevent stress, and provide support once stress has onset. 
• You could also look at effectiveness by looking at whether research supports it, or by cost and time effectiveness. Biofeedback in the form of EMG machines are expensive and require a practitioner, it's somewhat difficult and expensive to get a therapist but once you've learned the skills it lasts a long time, and social support is free and lasts a long time, but is not instantaneous. 

Also, some of the studies are pretty unethical, such as Geer and Maisel, and those which put participants on waiting lists rather than giving them therapy. Though control groups help with internal validity checks, they aren't the most ethical. E.g. Meichenbaum's study had a control group of students who did worse on their exams than the experimental groups - if they were in the other group, they'd have benefited and thus they lost out. 

Tackling part b) questions

Part b) generally consists of an evaluation on the section of the syllabus relating to part a). So, if you had a part a) question on brain dysfunction, you'd get a part b) on biological explanations of crime. 

There is no set structure for how to answer these questions. I can give you some pointers, but essentially you're going to have to find a way that works for you. That being said, some starting points and structures can help. 

The most important thing
The most important piece of advice I can give you is answer the question you're being set. Not the one you can best answer, not one you'd like to have come up. Everything you write must be related to the question. I'd suggest highlighting key words in the question including the key verb (e.g. assess, compare, evaluate). This'll get you in the right frame of mind.


Questions; what they're asking for
"Assess," "evaluate" and "to what extent" questions are essentially asking you to look at both strengths and weaknesses of a section, and then to come to a judgement in your conclusion. "Compare" questions obviously require key words such as "both","on the other hand", "in contrast" and "similarly" to really emphasise that you're answering the question. 

The way that questions in this section are worded are sometimes a little tricky to get your head around. Words such as "appropriateness" and "effectiveness" are seemingly easy to understand until you start to write it down. So, learn some simple definitions. By defining a key term in the intro, you will start to think of evaluation issues to relate to it and give your mini-essay some structure. "Appropriateness" refers to suitability, and encompasses  suitability to a person or group, situation, or occasion. So you could evaluate temporal validity, generalizability, ethnocentrism, etc. "Effectiveness" refers to the extent to which it brings about an effect, or achieves the desired results. So, you could talk about if it has negative or positive implications, the strength of these applications, and more specific factors such as recidivism rates or benefits to society.


Remember that this is an evaluation section; they want you to make judgements and insights, and then to illustrate these with examples from studies/theories/techniques, but you won't get marks for just outlining or describing the studies. Using key terms such as "reliability", "validity", "usefulness" and "applications"

Structure
You need a brief intro, a main body consisting of two or three paragraphs (and about five to seven evaluative points), and a brief conclusion linking explicitly back to the question.

One way some people like to structure their paragraphs is PEcEC:

Point, Example, compare, Example, Conclude
Note that the conclude section will include at least two or three evaluation points. 

Final thoughts
But this isn't necessary and it doesn't work for some people. As long as you give a range of evaluation points related to the question, that you're concise, use relevant detail, illustrate with examples and conclude with explicit link back to the question, then that's all you need. Keep practising your timing too; you only have 15-20 mins for this section and if you run over, you run the risk of not having time to answer the other questions. 

If you'd like to see an example of a 15 mark question (full marks), click here.