How to Answer an Exam Question on Abnormal Psychology
How is the exam paper structured?
- You will be asked an exam question on Abnormal Psychology on Paper 2 of the exam
- If you are HL you are required to answer two questions on two different options on Paper 2 e.g. Abnormal Psychology and Relationships
- If you are SL you are required to answer one question on one option on Paper 2 e.g. Abnormal Psychology
- If you are HL Paper 2 lasts for two hours; if you are SL Paper 2 lasts for 1 hour
- Each option consists of three different questions each of which are worth 22 marks; you choose to answer one of those three questions (don’t answer more than one question per option!)
- You may be asked to choose to answer a question from, for example, the following choices: biological explanations of one or more disorders; the validity of diagnosis; psychological treatments for one or more disorders
- It is highly unlikely that you will be asked to choose all three questions from one topic e.g. the questions will not all be taken from the Factors Influencing Diagnosis topic
- Each question is an Extended Response Question worth 22 marks so you should spend one hour planning and writing each question
How to structure and plan your response to an Abnormal Psychology exam questions
Let’s take this question: ‘To what extent do sociocultural factors influence the etiology of abnormal psychology’? [22] |
What is this question asking you to do? Start with the command term: “to what extent” requires you to consider the role /influence/effect of sociocultural factors on the etiology of psychological disorders. ‘To what extent’ means that you need to present an argument which explores the extent to which sociocultural factors influence the etiology of abnormal psychology. Here are some useful sentence stems/phrases that will help you to form convincing ‘To what extent’ arguments:
But what does all of that actually mean? Students often express some confusion (panic even!) when they read exam questions. This confusion/panic tends to stem from a) exam nerves (understandable) and b) misreading the question or feeling that the question is asking them to do something that they have never done before. So, let’s unpack the above exam question and break it down into its constituent parts; this way you will be able to see that yes, you can answer this question and yes, you have studied the correct theories and studies that will enable you to answer the question. You should use this approach to deconstruct all possible exam questions as this strategy will help you to understand and be prepared for whatever the exam throws at you!
In conclusion, this question is asking you, ‘Are sociocultural factors such as the environment, culture, learning, the only explanation for how disorders develop/originate or could other factors such as genetics or thought processes also provide convincing explanations?’ |
How to get full marks for this question Yes, it is possible to get full marks for this question or for any question on any of your IB Psychology papers. It is, however, not easy to do so (if it was, everyone would be doing it!) but with hard work, revision (and use of this helpful revision site!) full marks could be yours. So, let’s take this bit by bit: what do you need to do to be in with a chance of achieving 100% on this question?
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That’s all very well but can you show me how?.... There is a full exemplar answer to this response (see the page titled ‘Model Exam Response - Abnormal Psychology’). This exemplar response is accompanied by commentary linking each paragraph back to the question, explaining how it satisfies the criteria for full marks. But just to whet your appetite and give you a ‘taster’ of the exemplar response here are some edited highlights: Exemplar paragraph from the model answer:
Commentary provided for the above paragraph:
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