When explaining concepts in relation to your class practical you need to know key terms. The following advice is offered as a starting point for this exam question, not a final destination.
The secret to success in Paper 2 is knowing your research terminology. After all, conceptual understanding is built on content knowledge and key terms are the building blocks of knowledge. Question 2 asks you to explain one concept in relation to one of the methods. This means there are 24 possible questions. Knowing the following key terms could help make this question a little less daunting.
Six Concepts in Six Words
The image below depicts my opinion on the best key term for each of the six concepts. I say they’re the “best” because they’re the most relevant to any of the four methods. This is especially helpful for Question 2 in Paper 2 that asks about the class practicals in relation to the concepts. My advice is to choose your own key terms first and use this as a back-up if you’re struggling. You can also skim read the IB’s key terms in the Psychology Guide (Pg. 20-23).
The purpose of the concepts in IB Psychology is for you to develop a conceptual understanding of the content. If us teachers spell things out too much, then we remove that opportunity for you. That’s why this advice is a starting point but it’s not designed to replace your own thinking on the subject.
Why?
Causality: True experiments are the only research method we use to study casual relationships. Alternatively, you could use “choice of research method” to cover this as the choice of method will influence the role causality plays in the study. You can explain how the study did or didn’t test causality based on the choice of method (i.e. was it a true experiment or not?)
Change: An intervention is any action designed to produce a change. Psychologists can use research findings to design interventions to help change behaviour. In your class practical, you could explain what interventions might be designed based on the topic of your study.
Bias: All studies have researchers, therefore all studies run the risk of researcher bias distorting results. This can happen at any stage of the research process from planning all the way to publishing the findings. You can explain how this is relevant to your practical, including steps taken to reduce researcher bias having an effect.
Perspective: Most studies fall nicely into one of the approaches, whether it’s biological, cognitive or sociocultural. You can explain which approach was used in your practical. If you can’t see how the approaches are relevant to the practical, another useful term to use is researcher triangulation which means using the perspective of more than one researcher in the research process. You could explain how this was used, or if it wasn’t why it could have been a good idea (e.g. reduce bias!)
Operationalisation: Operationalisation means defining the behaviour we’re studying in a very specific way so it can be objectively observed and/or measured. In quantitative studies, we operationalise the variables were measuring by taking a broad behaviour like “aggression” and defining that in a way that’s measurable (e.g. someone’s scores on an aggression questionnaire.
While operationalisation usually refers to quantitative data, it can also apply to qualitative research as well. The behaviours studied in observations or interviews might still be operationalised by the researchers so their readers know what specifically they’re studying. Observation schedules might also include operational definitions to guide accurate field notes. That said, another approach is to explain why measurement is less relevant to qualitative studies since we’re not “measuring” behaviour in the traditional, quantitative sense.
Responsibility: Conducting responsible research means following the ethical standards. This includes common standards like informed consent, the right to withdraw and anonymity. For this concept you can explain what ethical standards were followed in your research. You could also go further and explain limitations of following those standards.
While these terms were devised for Paper 2, they’re also relevant for the essay questions.
Travis Dixon has been teaching for over 20 years and is an experienced IB Psychology, History and English teacher, author, workshop leader and examiner