Issues and Debates in Psychology: How to answer "Compare..."

A lot of the part b) questions ask you to "compare" research, methods and theories. It's actually one of the easiest forms of question to answer because you can apply the issues you know best to the question, but it can be pretty daunting to think of them at first. 

Good issues to mention are:

• reductionism/holism
• to what extent do the theories/studies support psychology as a science?
• nomothetic/idiographic
• situational/dispositional
• to what extent are they subjective/objective?
• nature/nurture
• ethics
• application of research
• usefulness
• validity
• reliability
• approach
• determinism/freewill
• research methods

Some people use the GRAVER STANDERS acronym to help them but there's a few extra ones above just for good measure.

Personally, I think the most important ones are reductionism, validity, reliability, usefulness and situational/dispositional because you can apply them to most questions, but it's worth learning them all.

With regards to how to answer compare questions, here's an example:

b. Compare techniques for managing stress [15]

Intro: outline the three main approaches (cognitive, behaviourist and social support)

Main body: compare the approaches on the basis of (for example) whether they take a situational or dispositional approach, how useful they are, and how easily they can be applied. Use evidence from studies to support your arguments, and then evaluate one or two strengths or weaknesses. E.g. social support is situational which may be harder to change and may cause additional stress so may not be appropriate, but cognitive therapy is expensive and requires dedication, but the support offered may help to reduce stress more quickly and thus may be more efficient. Make sure you include similarities and differences and evaluate them on this basis. 

Conclusion: summarize the main points from each paragraph

What is Reliability?

Reliability is probably one of the most difficult concepts to get a handle on that you have to understand at A-level psychology. So I'll ease you in gently.

Reliability refers to the extent to which something is consistent. It does not imply validity, as something may consistently give incorrect measures, though both can be affected by factors such as participant variables, observer bias, subjectivity and standardisation. 

You can be asked to assess reliability of a number of things, most commonly:

- reliability of a measure
- reliability of research
- reliability of a method

There are two main types of reliability: external reliability and internal reliability. Internal reliability refers to the extent to which a measure is consistent within itself whilst external reliability is consistency over time (i.e. it is externally reliable if the measure taken in similar circumstances would produce similar results).

Generally, the factors that affect reliability are:
- the level of control over confounding variables. The higher the control, the less chance there is of inconsistencies over time and thus the more externally reliable it is likely to be
- standardisation. If research into an area tends to use experiments with standardised procedures, or a manual is used, it's more likely that reliability will be high.
- population and ecological validity (research). If a study has poor generalisability due to an ethnocentric or biased sample, or poor mundane realism (as in the case of many lab experiments) findings when applied to real life cannot be expected to be consistent with that of the research.
-subjectivity. If a measure or study relies on subjectivity to give results, as with all qualitative data, self-reports or observations and much research done in cognitive/psychodynamic psychology, it's unlikely to produce consistent results and will probably lack in internal reliability because interpretation becomes a confounding variable and thus may change from measure to measure.