Strengths and Weaknesses (Andrade)
Using PEEL method (Point-Explanation-Example-Link)
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AS Level
Paper 1 Evaluation Essays
Strengths
- P – The study is a laboratory experiment
- E – It has high level of controls
- E – For example, all participants were required to hear a 2.5 minutes long recording from a voice recorder with a fairly monotonous voice
- L – Controls reduce effect of extraneous variable, ensuring that the causal relationship established is valid
- P – The study has high confidentiality
- E – Personal data of participants were not disclosed to the public
- E – For example, real names of participants were not known
- L – The study followed the ethical guidelines
- P – The study collected quantitative data
- E – Quantitative data has lower chances of misinterpretation as it is easier to be analysed and compared statistically
- E – For example, it is found that doodle group recalled 29 percent more than control group
- L – Researches can draw more valid conclusions
Weaknesses
- P – The study used opportunity sampling to recruit participants
- E – Participants might be all of the same type, reducing the variability of sample
- E – For example, participants were all recruited from members of MRC unit just after finishing a research from another experimenter
- L – Findings might not be fully representative of the target population
- P – Deception was involved
- E – Participants were not able to give full informed consent
- E – For example, all participants were unaware of the surprise memory test on both monitored and incidental information
- L – The study does not fully comply to the ethical guidelines
- P – The study lacks mundane realism
- E – Findings cannot be applied to a range of situations as the task performed is not a usual task in real life
- E – In normal life participant will not be shading shapes while listening to a telephone and recording down names along the way
- L – The findings has low ecological validity