Evaluate one or more studies investigating social responsibility.

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 candidates to make an appraisal by weighing up the strengths and limitations of one or more studies investigating social responsibility. The focus of the evaluation should be upon the study/studies and not on social responsibility. Although a discussion of both strengths and limitations is required, it does not have to be evenly balanced to gain high marks.

The topic of social responsibility may include, but is not limited to:

• prosocial behavior
• atruistic behavior
• bystanderism
• strategies of promoting prosocial behaviour.

Relevant studies may include, but are not limited to:

• Whiting & Whiting (1975) study comparing prosocial behaviour in six cultures
• Miller et al.’s (1990) study on cultural norms and moral values related to social responsibility
• DeWall et al.’s (2008) study investigating differences in helping behaviour towards family versus strangers and the roles of ego depletion and glucose.
• Burnstein et al.’s (1994) study on hypothetical helping behaviour towards different degrees of relatives.

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

• methodological and ethical considerations
• cultural and gender considerations
• supporting and/or contradictory findings
• the applications of the empirical findings
• how the findings of research have been interpreted
• implications of the 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.

In questions that ask for evaluation of studies, marks awarded for criterion B should refer to definitions of terms and concepts. Overall this could include some knowledge of topic but more specifically knowledge and understanding related to research methods and ethics of chosen studies.

Marks awarded for criterion C assess the quality of the description of as study/studies and assess how well the student linked the findings of the study to the question – this does not need to be very sophisticated or long for these questions but still the aim or the conclusion should be linked to the topic of the specific question.

Criterion D assesses how well the student is explaining strengths and limitations of the study/studies.

This was also very popular, but not evenly addressed. As with question 11, some candidates did a very good job of identifying and describing classic studies and included evaluation by focusing on methodological or cultural considerations. However, some candidates wrongly chose to evaluate different explanations of social responsibility and the response did not have a focus on research studies — this approach failed to earn high marks.