Psychology: Clinical- Methods (AJW) 2016

Evaluation of Vallentine (2010)The Question

Interviews have been used to investigate mental disorders in clinical psychology. You have learnt about one study in detail that uses interviews. Evaluate the use of interviews as a research method in this study (6)

A lady called Victoria Vallentine did a study on criminals in Broadmooor, who had done various crimes like murder, kidnap, rape and so on. She gave them lots of interesting sessions called “psychoeducation” where they learnt about mental health problems like schizophrenia, which a lot of them had. You could say her study was good because she used questionaires like the CORE(OM) and the SCQ. These used a standardised procedure, asking the same questions in the same way to all the criminals and this means that other people could also replicate her study and her data could be tested for reliability. Also, because she is collecting quantative data here this is also good because its more objective and does not require interpratation and this means her study has good credability.Vallentine also did a good job because she used structured interviews meaning that all the criminals got asked the same questions. The data is quallertative which is also better than just using quantertative data.

Psychology: Clinical- Methods (AJW) 2016

So for example they said stuff like….(sorry I can’t remember what sort of things they said actually)A bad point is the criminals probably lyed in the interviews because Victoria Vallentine was interviewing them and they probably thought if they said her psychoeducation sessions were good and that it had helped them, then she would think they were getting better and they might be allowed to have more priverliges in the hospital and they might get let out earlier. This means her study wasn’t very good after all because basically the data was nonsense. Also the themes she came up with were very subjective, other people might have interpretted what they said in a totally different way.Also Victoria Vallentine did not interview quite a lot of the criminals because they didn’t want to be included, this is a problem for her study because it means that although some people say the psychoeducation was helpful it’s only a small group of people and some people who did not want to be included probably thought they were rubbish and also they haven’t got any better either.Ethically, the psychoeducation was good because now forensic psychologists know that patients approve of these session and it’s worth investing more money in them because the offenders did feel valued and impowered because of it and it also meant there were less violent episodes and so it was well worth the cost of running those sessions.

Psychology: Clinical- Methods (AJW) 2016

1. Does the answer belong to Dre (Didn’t Revise Enough) or Betty (Bad Exam Technique, TrY again ) or maybe they worked together ;) ?

2. Does the answer show off the pupils’ accurate and thorough knowledge of the study?

3. Does the answer actually answer the question asked?4. Have they explained each point fully?5. Have they used subject-specific terminology appropriately?6. Does the answer have well developed chains of reason?7. Have they given both strengths and weaknesses?8. Complete your feedback below.

WWW: What went well?

EBI: Even better if?

DIRT: Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time; what do Dre and Betty need to focus on in their private study time; can you select one area of the answer that they could rewrite to show they have really tried hard to improve their writing in psychology?

SPaG Are there any spelling, punctuation or grammatical problems?

Now it’s your turn, can you write a better response?

Remember to focus on the interviewing aspect of the study. Think about generic strengths and weaknesses of semi-structured

interviews with regard to reliability, validity, subjectivity, objectivity and credibility

then make them specific by including thorough and accurate knowledge of this study and the type of questions she asked and the types of answers the offenders gave for example.