One Word = Six Concepts: Beneficence

The 3Cs are confusing at first, but brush away the smoke and mirrors and you’ll see that if you teach psychology like you always have, your students will be well-prepared. In this post, I’ll show how one simple word could be used to evaluate research methods and linked to all six concepts.

The Paper One essay in IB Psych will ask students about an area of study (what I’ll call a topic from here on) and one of the six concepts: bias, causality, measurement, perspective, change or responsibility. My advice to prepare for the essay is to first review the topics.

• Read more on how to write good essays using cheeseburgers here

If you studied drug abuse/misuse in a unit on addiction, for example, students should make sure they can write a clear explanation that answers the following:

• Prevalence: Why is drug addiction more prevalent in some groups compared to others?
• Social learning: How can social learning theory explain drug abuse?
• Stress and health: Why is stress a risk for drug abuse?
• Treatment: How and why are CM and rTMS used to treat drug abuse?

We know that “Each question will be a combination of one of the six concepts, one of the content units and one of the contexts.” (TSM p 22). The content units are the topics (e.g. prevalence, treatment, etc.). The rubric requires relevant “knowledge and understanding of the content/concept.” This means students should explain the topic to show their knowledge and understanding.

Once you can answer the questions (i.e. explain the topic), the second step is to explain how we know this through research. For example, students could explain how and why correlational studies and/or experiments are used to study these topics. Once you can do this, the next step is to be able to evaluate these methods and the individual studies. To do this, I would focus on “research considerations.” For example, in my unit on addiction I use “responsibility” as the focus concept to give students practice at evaluating research with ethics. In particular, the guiding principle of all research is beneficence – research should maximise positive outcomes and minimise negative ones (also stated as “do no harm.”) This simple idea is relevant to all addiction research and can be linked to all six concepts.

Here’s an example – let’s consider treatment as the topic. For context, my unit on addiction focuses on the opioid crisis and the two treatments are magnetic brain stimulation and contingency management.

• Responsibility – Beneficence is a fundamental guideline in conducting responsible research. Procedures like getting informed consent and granting anonymity and the right to withdraw help this. For example, if you are using a placebo-control group this should be explained on the consent form, otherwise people might get upset later if they find out that they were never receiving real treatment. Similarly, the right to withdraw is important in case they get side effects from treatment. Following the overall principle of beneficence helps researchers conduct responsible research.
• Bias – Informed consent is a key guideline to follow, but giving too much information on consent forms can cause participant biases (e.g. expectancy bias). For example, if researchers told participants which group they were in during treatment (placebo or treatment group) this would defeat the purpose of the placebo-control. People in the treatment group might get better simple because they expect to get better – this is an example of how ethics needs to be balanced with validity to control for things like bias.
• Causality – It’s impossible to run true experiments to see what causes drug abuse on humans if the DV is drug use and the IV is hypothesised to increase drug use. This would cause harm to participants and break the principle of beneficence. However, experiments can be run on potential treatments to see if they cause better outcomes for patients. The use of double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trials on treatments is the best method to find out if specific treatments cause improvement.
• Measurement – Anonymity could jeopardise the accuracy of measurement in drug abuse studies. While anonymity is a useful guideline to follow to make sure research is ethical and follows the guideline of beneficent, if participants know their data is anonymous and they are asked personal questions like how often they use drugs, they might be more likely to answer falsely. Drug tests (e.g urine tests) are more accurate measures for drug use, but these cost more to facilitate.
• Change – Psychologists study treatments for drug addiction like contingency management and brain stimulation so they can maximise the positive outcomes for patients and change their behaviour for the better. In this way, they are consistent with the principle of beneficence.
• Perspective – In studies on addiction, researchers sometimes have to balance beneficence and following the law. For example, if a participant in their study asked them to hide their drugs so they didn’t get caught, what should they do? In these instances, the researcher might rely on their own perspective of what’s the right way to act or consult others for guidance.

You will see that beneficence naturally fits with some concepts better than others. The key to study for essays, therefore, is to have a range of research considerations like beneficence, triangulation, external and internal validity, experimental and correlational studies, and be able to carefully select how they’re relevant to the topic and the concept in the essay question.

I see a lot of advice about hanging everything on the concepts. I won’t be doing this. To quote Bill Gates, “Content is King.” Students have to know heaps before they can show conceptual understanding. An effective order of teaching, I think, is: Topic –> Research –> Evaluation –> Link to Concept. I have a hunch you could even get away with not mentioning the concepts until Year Two of your course. I might be wrong.