Example Answer – Unseen Study Analysis
Paper 2, Section B

Travis DixonExample Exam Answers

An example answer and some exam tips.

Here’s an example answer for the unseen study analysis in Paper 2 (Section B).

In a previous post, I showed how you can make your own practice papers. The answer below is in response to the example question on that post. After the example answer, I show you my plan and my advice for answering these questions.

Discuss the following with reference to two or more of the following concepts: measurement, responsibility, perspective and causality.

Causality is relevant to this study because it appears to be making a causal conclusion and investigating the effect of one variable on another (chronic illness influencing personal relationships), but the study is qualitative. This means it can’t be experimental which also means no causal hypotheses can be tested nor conclusions drawn. For example, the study concluded that “the quality of social interactions significantly affects emotion well-being and self-concept.” The term significantly suggests statistical significance, but we can only conclude that if statistical tests have been conducted. To do this, we need quantitative data. Because this was a qualitative interview with a thematic analysis, this is a misleading conclusion. Or at least, we cannot determine causality between social interactions and well-being from these methods.

Another issue that prevents any causal conclusions made in this study is that it doesn’t manipulate an independent variable to make two conditions for comparison. It also doesn’t measure a specific dependent variable. Instead the researcher made naturalistic observations. Any causal effect would have to be assumed by the researcher, not demonstrated in an experiment.

The study is also limited by perspective. The study was conducted by one researcher – Kathy Charmaz. This means her observations could be prone to researcher bias, in particular confirmation bias. Her existing ideas or beliefs about the topic could have biased the observations she made and the field notes she took. These biases could also influence the data analysis, especially since its qualitative data which is more likely to be subjective. One way Charmaz could have improved the credibility of her findings would be to use researcher triangulation.

That said, she did use multiple perspectives by using methodological triangulation – she conducted interviews alongside observations. This makes it more of a case study and can increase the credibility of the findings.

Using different perspectives with researcher triangulation in the interview process could have also helped. That’s because of the gender-of-interviewer effect – people tend to respond differently based on the gender of the interviewer. In this case, men and women might have answered differently because the researcher is a woman. For instance, men might not have been honest about their dependency on other people if they thought they’d be viewed differently by the interviewer because of this.

Responsibility is another concept relevant to this study. That’s because the topic is highly sensitive and personal, but the method was observational. It doesn’t mention if it was an overt or covert observation – this is an important consideration. Because the observations were at home, we can assume it was overt – it would be highly unethical (and irresponsible) to conduct a covert observation in people’s homes. We can also assume she gained informed consent to be in these private places to conduct observations. While this makes the study more responsible, it also introduces other factors that might affect the validity of the data being gathered. For example, people might have changed their behaviour to be viewed more positively (social desirability bias) and/or changed in other ways just because they were being observed (Hawthorne effect).

Because this is a qualitative study, the concept of measurement is less relevant because this term is most applicable to quantitative data.

This is not a perfect 15/15 answer. But it would score a 12, which is on track for a 7.

My Plan

The plan I wrote before answering the question.

My Advice

In the exam, spend about 30-40 minutes answering this question. This includes 3-5 minute planning. The following steps helped me. 

  1. Step One: Annotate
  1. Step Two: Concept Notes
  1. Step Three: Plan Answer
  1. Step Four: Write

The Steps Explained

  1. Annotate: My first step was to read the study and make annotations (notes on the paper). This helped me pic out interesting bits of the study and its methods.
  2. Concept Notes: I then write out the four concepts (see below) and put bullet points for each concept. Notice how I’m using specific research terminology in my notes.
  3. Plan Answer: I recommend starting your essay with the concept you have the most to discuss. In my case, the order I wrote my plan and the order of the essay were the same. That’s probably because I thought of the ideas as I was annotating.
  4. Write: Now you’ve spent roughly 5 minutes planning, you can start to write your answer.

The secret to success in Paper 2 is to know your key terms. They’re the building blocks of every good answer.