After analysing the IB’s marked answers and writing my own, I created this acronym: RAM-PAC. Will it work? Let’s put it to the test.
This four mark question tests your knowledge of research methods. Read on and you’ll find four example answers – one for each method. These are hypothetical practicals that I’ve chosen deliberately – you cannot use these answers in the exam. They’re about bullying and mental health – an unethical topic for practicals.
The Question: Describe how an experiment/observation/interview/questionnaire was used in your class practical and its aim and procedure.
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While writing these answers I found myself naturally using this template. Gotta love ChatGPTs images.
Imperfect Exemplars
My goal isn’t to show you how to write the perfect response. I want to show you a realistic response. That’s why the following examples are not perfect answers. They would, however, definitely score 3 out of 4 marks and should (in my humble opinion) score 4/4.
Experiment
Describe how an experiment was used in your class practical and its aim and procedure.
Does bullying cause stress? This is what we wanted to find out in our experiment – the aim was to see if being bullied would cause an increase in cortisol levels. We ran a true experiment because we wanted to control the type and amount of “bullying” someone would receive. If we did a field experiment we wouldn’t be able to control this variable.
We used an independent samples design by randomly allocating half of our IB Psychology class into the “bullied” condition and the other half in the control condition. In the bullied condition, participants sat at a desk while three researchers stood over them and read from a script. The script involved calling them names like “Nigel No Mates” and “Loser.” This happened for exactly three minutes and all researchers stuck to the script to keep conditions consistent. After three minutes cortisol levels were measured using saliva samples – these were sent off to the lab for results which we got one week later. In the control condition, participants sat there while the three participants stood over them and read from the dictionary. We chose independent samples to control the extraneous variable of order effects – if participants did both conditions it would be hard to know which condition caused the cortisol levels.
The data was analysed by calculating the mean cortisol scores in both groups. The bullying condition did have higher cortisol levels and we ran a Mann Whitney U test to see if the findings were statistically significant – the p value was higher than 0.05, so the results were not significant. We concluded that bullying does not increase cortisol levels. (268 words).
Tip: It’s not required to include the analysis and conclusion. However, the analysis section allows you to show more knowledge of method-relevant terminology and a one-sentence conclusion rounds off the answer nicely.
Interview
Describe how an interview was used in your class practical and its aim and procedure.
Does bullying feel different for the bully or the bullied? This is the question explored in our class practical. The aim was to understand IB Psychology students’ experiences of being bullied or being a bully.
The semi-structured interview was chosen because if people were individually would be better than in groups. If participants were in focus groups there might be conformity effects – everyone might just go along with the group. The social desirability bias might be a factor – people might worry about being judged if they admitted to being a bully, so interviewing people one-by-one reduces this possibility. Our teacher provided us with the interview schedule – this included a mix of closed and open-ended questions. We were paired up and one person was the interviewer and the other the interviewee. To avoid interviewer effects, our teacher allowed us to choose our own partners. This ensured we were talking to someone we were comfortable with. Our teacher also trained the interviewers in some basic active listening and good body language techniques to help people open up. The interviews were recorded with a smartphone and then uploaded to AI software for transcription.
Our teacher selected five of the transcripts and gave them to us (they were anonymous) and in pairs we conducted a thematic analysis. We then compared themes across everyone in the class and found a common theme was being a bully feels good in the moment but people do it to look good in front of others. There are long-term negative effects, though, like lower self-esteem. Being bullied was also bad for peoples well-being. We concluded that bullying is a negative experience for everyone. (274 words)
Tip: You can make your answer shorter (and faster to write) by including only the research question OR the aim, not both. I recommend making four flashcards of these – one for each method. It’s important to make a good first impression and get them right.
Questionnaire
Describe how an questionnaire was used in your class practical and its aim and procedure.
How prevalent is bullying in modern schools? The aim of our questionnaire was to find out how prevalent bullying is in a modern IB school. We used an anonymous questionnaire that would provided quantitative data. The use of a quantitative questionnaire that gathers self-report data meant we could survey a lot of students easily, increasing our sample size and the validity of our findings. It also allows for a specific prevalence rate to be calculated – if we used interviews or observations we would not be able to calculate a prevalence rate and people might not open up about their experiences in face-to-face interviews.
Our teacher was the researcher and we were the participants. He gave us a quick summary of the questionnaire, handed out informed consent forms and informed us we didn’t have to fill out the questionnaire and that the findings would be anonymous. Anonymity was also promised. The questionnaire was the Bullying Prevalence Questionnaire (BPQ) – this is a 20 question survey that uses Likert scale questions. An example question was “I like to make others scared of me” and people have four choices ranging from Never to Very Often. This specific questionnaire was used because it has been used widely by many researchers and tests have shown it’s high in test-retest reliability – this means we can be confident if we gave the same test on different days we’d get similar scores.
The questionnaire was given through google forms – this meant it was easy for the teacher to share the spreadsheet of data and calculate the mean scores. We calculated the prevalence of bullying by averaging the scores for 5 questions related to bullying. We concluded that bullying is not very prevalent in out class. (286 words)
Tip: I found the questionnaire answer the hardest to write. It was hard to get enough key terms. Plan carefully to make sure you can include 4-5. Some terms to consider if you’re stuck: face validity, construct validity and
Observation
Describe how an observation was used in your class practical and its aim and procedure.
What does bullying look like in a modern IB school? The aim of our observation was to understand what types of bullying happen in a modern school. The method was a covert, non-participant, naturalistic observation method. The covert method avoided the Hawthorne effect – people might not behave naturally if they know they’re being watched. This is especially true for bullying. Non-participant observations meant increased chances of observing bullying as we observed the entire playground at a local primary school. Naturalistic observations meant our data would be higher in ecological validity.*
We observed a 60 minute lunch break at the local primary school. Observers were covert by staying in a classroom that overlooked the playground. Researcher triangulation was used during the observation by having more than one researcher gather data to increase the credibility of the data. We took detailed field notes using an observation schedule. Bullying was operationalised as requiring two ingredients: an imbalance of power and harm. Examples of imbalances of power were when numbers were uneven (e.g. 2 against 1) or size differences (e.g. larger boy and smaller boy). Harm was identified by negative emotions, e.g. crying or discomfort, or negative body language. We collected quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data was calculated by timing the duration of bullying incidents. We started the stopwatch when we first noticed the incident and ended it when we believed the incident had finished.
The field notes from all researchers were collated using google form survey and then printed out. We run a thematic analysis of a sample of 3 summaries of field notes. This analysis revealed that bullying was not very common and when it did happen it was short in duration. (284 words).
*The qualitative research equivalent of ecological validity is naturalistic validity, but this is a far less common term. It would be up to the examiner if they credit this or not but the point is still a valid one.
Student Checklist
You’ll notice the above exemplars all contain the following:
- Research question and/or Aim
- Specific method and an explanation
- Procedures
- 5 specific key terms (or more) (highlighted in red)
- At least one explanation of an attempt to improve credibility or validity
The IB’s marking guide states the following for top marks:
The response demonstrates detailed knowledge and understanding of the research methodology relevant to the class practical.
Psychological terminology is used accurately.
After writing the above samples and analysing the IB’s, I think this checklist could be a good way to self-assess your own answers and prepare for this question.
Try it for yourself – write an explanation using RAM-PAC, check with this checklist and get feedback from your teacher.
Teacher Mark Scheme
The IB’s marking guide states the following for top marks:
The response demonstrates detailed knowledge and understanding of the research methodology relevant to the class practical.
Psychological terminology is used accurately.
After writing the above samples and analysing the IB’s, I’ve devised the following marking guide. If you want to be really quantitative in your approach to marking, you could use something like the following checklist as a guide.
Please be warned I haven’t tested this in real-life.
Travis Dixon has been teaching for over 20 years and is an experienced IB Psychology, History and English teacher, author, workshop leader and examiner