Practise IB Psychology HL 2.4.5 by analysing research methods and evaluating how evidence supports or limits conclusions about biological processes and behaviour.
The stimulus material below is based on a research article that describes the differences between the portrayal of love and romance in Western culture and women’ s actual experiences.
In Western culture, romance is the main theme of many movies, songs and books. However, the media’s representations of love are not often what people experience in their own lives. This may be a source of frustration. The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate the extent to which heterosexual women’s perceptions of romantic love matched what they had experienced in their own romantic love relationships. The researcher was a female psychologist who also worked as a couples’ therapist. She said that her reason for doing the study was that ever since she was a young woman she had tried to understand her own emotional responses when she was in love. She had seen other women struggling with the same questions and emotional responses as she herself had experienced. This study was conducted in New Zealand. The purposive sample consisted of eight heterosexual women who were either therapists or psychology students. They were recruited through the researcher’s own social networks. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews. With the permission of the participants, the interviews were recorded on audiotape and later transcribed. The transcriptions were shown to the participants to ensure that they were accurate. The transcripts were then analysed using inductive content analysis. The analysis revealed themes such as “romantic love is an illusion” but also that “romantic love provides intimacy and physical closeness”. All the women talked about how they have to “struggle for equality” in their romantic relationships, and that there is a “danger of losing friends and of giving up other interests” through focusing too much on their partners. The researcher acknowledged in the research article that reflexivity was important in this study. The study revealed that the women had mixed perceptions of romantic love. On the one hand, they desired to experience and express love fully, but at the same time they did not want to give up their independence. Negative experiences in previous romantic love relationships had taught these women to resist being too dependent on their male partners and not to give up their own friends and interests. According to these women, maintaining some degree of independence results in more equal and satisfying love relationships. The researcher concluded that these women’s experiences of love are different from stories about love in literature and the media.
Explain why reflexivity is relevant to this study.
Refer to the paper 3 markbands when awarding marks.
The command term "explain" requires candidates to give a detailed account of why reflexivity is relevant in this study and give reasons or causes by referring to details of the study.
Responses that use the term "experiment" as a generic term for "study" should not be penalized.
There is reference to reflexivity in the stimulus material (lines 20-21) and candidates need to rely on their knowledge of reflexivity and provide reasons for why reflexivity could be relevant to this particular study.
Reflexivity is a strategy used by qualitative researchers to reveal how a researcher's subjectivity contributes to the findings. For example, a researcher may be biased towards the findings of a study because she perceives and interprets data through her own individual lens. Reflexivity is thus one way to establish credibility/trustworthiness in qualitative research.
Candidates' explanations as to why reflexivity is relevant to this study could be but are not limited to:
- epistemological reflexivity: for example, the eight participants were all psychologists or psychology students from the researcher's own social network, so candidates may refer to epistemological reflexivity such as considering if the purposive sampling method used in the study is appropriate
- personal reflexivity: for example, the researcher herself states that "ever since she was a young woman she had tried to understand her own emotional responses when she was in love". This statement indicates a subjective interest in the topic under investigation that could potentially bias the results and this alone could justify the application of personal reflexivity in order to avoid this bias.
The terms personal or epistemological reflexivity are not required to access the higher markbands.
Candidates could (but are not required to), as part of the explanation as to why reflexivity is relevant in this study, write how the researcher could apply personal reflexivity to avoid bias, for example, providing necessary information about her own experiences in love relationships and as a couples therapist, or including a critical self
reflection on her own interests in undertaking the study (for example, that the researcher had a desire to understand her own emotional responses). Bias could also be prevented by asking participants to verify the transcripts that are used as the basis for analysis as the researcher did in this study. Statements such as these could be part of an explanation of why reflexivity is relevant and this is perfectly acceptable.