How to answer Paper 2, Question 4 – TAMPA
The Alternative Method

Travis DixonExample Exam Answers, Revision and Exam Preparation

Another acronym to help you plan your Paper 2 revision and responses.

That’s right it’s another exam acronym – TAMPA. It’s a city in Florida and the secret to writing awesome answers in Question 4 (Paper 2)!

Question 4 will ask you to explain how an alternative research method could be used to study the same topic as you wrote about in Question 1. Because they’re mirror image questions, I originally thought we could just re-hash RAM-PAC. But after starting to write some example answers I quickly learned the ol’ Ram wasn’t going to cut it. That’s how I came up with TAMPA – read on to see what it is and how to use it.

Teacher tip: This is one reason why conducting all four practicals on the same topic is helpful – it’s way easier to remember one topic than four! (Read More)

The Question: Design a research study using (alternative research method) to investigate the same topic you investigated in your class practical. (6 marks).

The Marking: To score top marks you need to:

  • Explain the procedure of the research method with accuracy and detail 
  • Effectively use psychological terminology relevant to the research method

TAMPA

The following framework will ensure you cover everything logically and systematically.

  • Topic: What “topic” did you study? This is the topic you studied using the method asked in Qu1. State the same topic to make it clear for you and your examiner. (1 sentence)
  • Aim: What would the aim of this new study be considering the alternative method? For example, the aim of a qualitative interview would be different to an experiment. State the new aim clearly. (1-2 sentences)
  • Method: State the new method (if you haven’t already). You can briefly explain why this specific research method would be valuable to study this topic? (1-2 sentences). NB: This is optional.
  • Procedures: A detailed summary of how the method would be applied, including who, what, where, when, why and how. Use 5+ key terms (the same as you prepared for Question 1).
  • Analysis: How would you analyse the data? For example, would you conduct a thematic analysis or calculate mean scores and statistical significance?

Example Answer

Let’s put it to the test…

The following is an example answer using the TAMPA framework. You can read it and see if it works. The answer is based on the four fictional class practicals I wrote about in this blog post. The topic was “bullying and mental health” – an unethical topic which is why it was chosen.

Question: Design and experiment to investigate the same topic you investigated in your class practical.*

The topic of our class practical was bullying and mental health. This could be studied using a true experiment – the aim would be to understand the effects of bullying on mental health. In particular, we could measure the effects of bullying on stress using cortisol measurements.

To gather the data we’d first need a sample. We could use a self-selected sample by posting flyers around our school. People who signed up would be emailed the informed consent forms and then meet in a classroom on a particular day. To control for participant variability, we’d randomly allocate participants to two different conditions – Bullied vs Control. This would be an independent samples design as participants do one condition. We could do this with a coin toss. In the bullied condition, we could have people call the person bad names for three minutes and in the control condition we could have them do something neutral, like read from the dictionary. We could measure their cortisol levels before and after and the dependent variable is the total change in cortisol levels measured using saliva samples. We can’t use a double-blind design because it’s obvious which condition the participants are in, but we could use a blind design in that the person measuring cortisol levels won’t know who’s in which condition. This controls for potential researcher bias affecting results.

We could gather samples from both conditions and then calculate the average changes in cortisol levels. To see if the results are statistically significant, we run an inferential stats test to see the p-value. If the p-value comes out at <0.05 we could conclude our results are statistically significant.

*Let’s pretend Question 1 asked about a questionnaire.

This would score a 5/6, if not a perfect 6/6. That’s because the answer uses a range of method-specific terminology accurately and effectively. The TAMPA method also helps me cover the procedures in detail.

An Alternative

It’s not essential you state the topic in this answer because you’ve already summarised it in Question 1. I recommend doing it again for this question to help you stay focused and to help your examiner understand your answer. However, you could drop the T and begin your answer explaining how and why you’d use the specific method in the question, the aim of the study, how you’d gather and then analyse the data. The acronym? MAGA!

  • Method: Why would this specific research method be valuable to study this topic? (1-2 sentences, but is optional).
  • Aim: What would the aim of this new study be considering the alternative method? For example, the aim of a qualitative interview would be different to an experiment. (1-2 sentences)
  • Gather Data: A detailed summary of how data would be gathered g. Use 5+ key terms (the same as you prepared for Question 1).
  • Analysis: How would you analyse the data? For example, would you conduct a thematic analysis or calculate mean scores and statistical significance?

Question: Design and experiment to investigate the same topic you investigated in your class practical.*

A true experiment could be used to study bullying and mental health. This would help cause-effect relationship to be tested in a controlled environment. The aim would be to understand the effects of bullying on mental health. In particular, we could measure the effects on stress using cortisol measurements.

We’d first need a sample. We could use a self-selected sample by posting flyers around our school. People who signed up would be emailed the informed consent forms and then meet in a classroom on a particular day. To control for participant variability, we’d randomly allocate participants to two different conditions – Bullied vs Control. This would be an independent samples design. We could do this with a coin toss. In the bullied condition, we could have people call the person bad names for three minutes and in the control condition we could have them do something neutral, like read from the dictionary. We could measure their cortisol levels before and after and the dependent variable is the difference in cortisol. We can’t use a double-blind design because it’s obvious which condition the participants are in, but we could use a blind design in that the person measuring cortisol levels won’t know who’s in which condition. This controls for potential researcher bias affecting results.

We could gather samples from both conditions and then calculate the average changes in cortisol levels. To see if the results are statistically significant, we run an inferential stats test to see the p-value. If the p-value comes out at <0.05 we could conclude our results are statistically significant.

Yet again we come back to the importance of key terms in psychology answers. These are the building blocks you need to construct excellent exam answers. To prepare for the exam, find the right blocks for the question and then figure out how best to piece them together.

Hopefully you’ll know your key terminology better than ChatGPT apparently does!