IB PSYCHOLOGY

Nailing the I.A.

Evaluation
activity overview
Students have to complete an internal assessment as part of their IB Psychology course. One area of this report is
evaluation, and students will need to practice developing these skills. This task will help students practice writing
the evaluation section of the internal assessment report, and can be used before asking students to write their
own report. This task will also help you to identify which students may need more support in this area than others,
and which students would benefit from seeing models before starting their own.
Resources needed
Student worksheet
Teacher Instructions
1 Explain to your students that they will need to evalute the experimental design, sample and procedure of their
experiment in the evaluation section of their internal assessment repor,t and that students often lose marks on
this because they do not evaluate these elements in sufficient depth.
2 Divide students into pairs or groups of three and give each student a copy of the worksheet.
3 Give students 10-15 minutes to work on the task and monitor them while they are working to see if they require
assistance or have any questions.
4 When students finish with the activity, check if they were able to spot the mistakes and suggest improvements.
For variety in how students are assessed in this activity, you could:
• Show students the answers on the board and ask them to self
assess their own performance. You can ask students to explain to
you what they got wrong or what they struggled with, so you can
make notes on what additional work or support they may need
in the next few lessons.
• Ask students to work in pairs and compare their answers,
and discuss their answers until they reach an agreed decision.
At this point, students can then self assess, as seen in
option A.
• Ask students to consider all suggestions on how to improve
the evaluations, and to select the top 2 suggestions. You
could then ask student to re-write the evaluation, following
the agreed improvement suggestions.
Nailing the I.A. evaluation worksheet
Read the following examples, in which students attempted to evaluate their studies. What are the problems with
how students evaluated their studies? How could you improve these evaluations?
1 The experiment was successful because p<0.05, so we confirmed our hypothesis.
Problem/s

Improvements

2 The researchers controlled the variables, so if any errors have occurred they were constant
throughout the experiment.
Problem/s

Improvements

3 Due to its size and characteristics, the sample cannot be considered representative of the
population as a whole.
Problem/s

Improvements
4 It is possible that other existing differences between participants in the groups could have
affected the results since some individuals could have been more prone to taking risks.
Problem/s

Improvements

5 Due to the debriefing notes, informed consent and withdrawal, this experiment can be considered
to be of high ecological validity
Problem/s

Improvements

6 The experiment was done in a classroom and the conditions were quite artificial and therefore
participants might not have reacted and think as hard for the answer as they would in real life.
Problem/s

Improvements
7 The participant sample was not large or probability-based, but was a typical representative
sample of the seniors in the national program of my school.
Problem/s

Improvements

8 Some participants said they were already somewhat familiar with the study, so some demand
characteristics were present.
Problem/s

Improvements

9 If we want our results to be further applied, we will need to used matched pairs to get more
results.
Problem/s

Improvements
10 Some strengths of the experimental design are that it is simple, but thought through.
Problem/s

Improvements
Nailing the I.A. Evaluation
Suggested answers

1 Evaluation of the experiment should not be focused on its results, but on its procedure – how do various aspects of
the procedure influence the conclusions we can draw from an experiment?
2 It is not explained which variables were controlled for, how, and why it was important. It is not clear what “errors”
refer to (random variables?), why they were constant throughout the experiment and why that is important.
3 Psychologists don’t refer to “the population”, but to various target populations. It is not explained which populations
the findings may or may not be generalized to.
4 This would only be a problem if participants in one of the experimental groups were more prone to taking risks.
That should not be a problem because it is something that can be controlled for by using various procedures, such
as random assignment. If students did not randomly assign participants to conditions, that was their mistake and
it can’t be used as an evaluation point.
5 Materials related to ethical considerations are generally not related to ecological validity and should not be
evaluated.
6 It is not clear which specific characteristics made the conditions artificial and different from those which students
would encounter in their daily lives.
7 If a sample is not large and probability-based, then it can’t be considered representative.
8 This is a mistake made by students and it can’t be used as an evaluation point. It should have been avoided by
choosing a different sample or excluding the results of those participants.
9 Matched pairs design doesn’t help with further applying the results or with getting more results.
10 It needs to be explained how the experimental design helps to control for specific confounding variables, how,
and why it was important.