Evaluate one or more explanations for one psychological disorder.

Refer to the paper 2 assessment criteria when awarding marks. These can be found under the “Your tests” tab > supplemental materials.

The command term “evaluate” requires the candidate to make an appraisal by weighing up the strengths and limitations of one or more explanations for one psychological disorder. Although a discussion of both strengths and limitations is required, it does not have to be evenly balanced to gain high marks.

The disorder chosen is likely to come from the list in the guide:

• anxiety disorders
• depressive disorders
• obsessive compulsive disorders
• trauma and stress related disorders
• eating disorders.

Explanations for psychological disorders may include, but are not limited to:

• Biological explanations, such as neurological/neurochemical explanations for depression, the role of genes, or the role of brain abnormalities
• Cognitive explanations, such as Beck’s theory of depression
• Sociocultural explanations, such as Brown and Harris’s social vulnerability model.

Relevant studies may include, but are not limited to:

• Brown and Harris’s (1978) study on vulnerability to depression
• Caspi et al.’s (2003) study on genes and depression
• Gilbertson et al.’s (2002) study on the hippocampus and PTSD in veterans
• Hitchcock et al.’s (2015) study on cognitive appraisal in post-traumatic stress.

Evaluation of the selected research may include, but is not limited to:

• methodological and ethical considerations related to research into psychological disorders
• the accuracy and clarity of the concepts
• cultural and gender considerations
• supporting and/or contradictory findings
• contrasting explanations
• the productivity of the explanation in generating psychological research
• implications of findings
• the applications of the empirical findings.

If the candidate addresses only strengths or only limitations, the response should be awarded up to a maximum of [3] for criterion D: critical thinking. All remaining criteria should be awarded marks according to the best fit approach.

This was one of the most popular questions on the exam, and was, for the most part, answered well. Most candidates seemed to be well prepared for this question and had clear knowledge of one or more explanations for one psychological disorder. Responses focusing on one or two explanations tended to be focused and well written, providing a good balance between knowledge and evidence of critical thinking. Popular examples of psychological disorders were major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Popular explanations were biological explanations (role of genes or role of neurotransmitters) and cognitive explanations. Unfortunately, some candidates failed to address the question fully since they attempted to focus on describing and evaluating research studies of one or more explanations for one psychological disorder.