Concepts: Sentence stems
One of the surprises I have had in teaching this curriculum is that students often do not have the “language” to answer the questions. They write sentences like “Bias was high” or “Causality cannot be found.”
After lengthy discussions with our English department, I decided to use sentence stems. It makes a difference. I was advised to provide these stems for the whole first year, and only to remove them from exams in the second year, after students have had enough time to practice them.
Although these stems were written for Paper 2, Section B, they could also be helpful on Paper 1, Section C.
A student version can be found here.
Bias
- One potential bias in this study is…, which could affect the results by…
- The way participants were selected could introduce bias because…
- The researchers controlled for bias by …
- Demand characteristics could influence behavior by causing participants to…
- Uncontrolled biases make it difficult to determine whether…
Causality
- One factor that reduces our ability to draw causal conclusions is…
- The study’s internal validity is strengthened/weakened by…
- Since this is a correlational / quasi-experimental study,
- Questions about causality remain because
- The evidence partially supports a causal relationship, but
Change
- The results of the study changed over time in that…
- Long-term change cannot be determined since …
- If the study were replicated today, the results might differ because…
- Changes in participants’ behavior may be due to maturation rather than …
- Overall, the findings suggest change under these conditions, however …
Measurement
- Measurement in this study focused on…
- The measurement appears reliable because …
- Using this type of measure is appropriate because…
- Construct validity may be limited because…
- This method may oversimplify the variable by…
Perspective
- By using this perspective, psychologists can better explain…
- In contrast, the __________ perspective argues that…
- A strength of this perspective is that…
- This perspective can be seen as reductionist because…
- An alternative interpretation of this behaviour is…
Responsibility
- One ethical issue raised by this study is…
- Because the study involved children/animals/individuals with limited capacity,
- The benefits of the research may/may not outweigh the ethical costs because…
- If this study were conducted today,
- Long-term effects on participants should be considered because…
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