Psychology and health

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (May/June 2018). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

1. The syllabus covers the studies by Tapper et al. (2003) on schools, Fox et al. (1987) on worksites and Farquhar et al. (1985) Five City Project on communities.
2. Tapper et al. (2003) Food dudes: This was a whole-school programme for 4–11 year olds in primary schools, lasting 16 days. Children were shown 'food dudes' programmes and given lesson materials, stickers, letters home packs, and staff manuals. The programme fostered enthusiasm, improved attendance, and after four months, children continued to eat more fruit and vegetables.
3. Fox et al. (1987): Instituted a token economy using trading stamps at two open-pit mines. Employees earned stamps for working without lost-time injuries, being in injury-free groups, making safety suggestions, and preventing accidents. Stamps were lost for injuries or failures to report. These stamps were redeemable for items from stores. The token economy led to large reductions in lost workdays, lost-time injuries, and accident costs, with improvements maintained over several years.
4. Farquhar et al. (1985) The Stanford Five-City Project: This large experimental field study focused on community health education to prevent cardiovascular disease. It aimed to gather data on cardiovascular disease epidemiology, health education, and behaviour change. The hypothesis was that a 20% decrease in cardiovascular disease risk would lead to a significant decline in cardiovascular disease event rates in two treatment communities compared to three reference communities, through a six-year community-wide intervention. Risk factor changes were assessed via four surveys of independent samples and a repeatedly surveyed cohort, with disease event rates monitored through continuous surveillance of fatal and nonfatal myocardial infarction and stroke.
5. Mark according to the levels of response descriptors in Table A.
6. Other appropriate responses should also be credited.
7. A range of issues could be used for evaluation here. These include:
8. Named issue – validity (most likely around the data collection method used) e.g. self report methods used in the Tapper et al. study with parents of the children. They could forget to complete the questionnaire or not be completely honest and therefore the results would be less valid. However, it is better to ask the parents to complete these than the children who are more likely to lie about eating fruit and vegetables as well as forget to complete the questionnaire.
9. Applications to everyday life – These three studies are very useful as it gives schools, worksites and communities a clear idea of what to do to improve health behaviour around them. Schools can make use of the food dudes which are easy to access and all of the materials are readily available for the teacher. Worksites can operate a token economy system similar to Fox et al.
10. Reliability of data collection methods used – these were often via written self reports so the same questionnaires can be given out again to the participants. In addition, it is reliable to access the work record such as in the Fox et al. study
11. Strengths and weaknesses of method and/or design
12. sampling and generalisations – Fox et al. was just done on steel factory workers in the USA, Tapper was on children aged 4–11 in the UK and Farquhar did look at a number of cities but they are all in California, USA.
13. situational/individual explanations – all offering a situational explanation as it is the token, food dudes or feature of the community that leads to the better health behaviour rather than individual factors.
14. Ethics - the studies are ethical. Although the Tapper study is on children, parental consent was gained and it did get the children to eat more fruit and vegetables which is positive.
15. use of questionnaires/self-reports – the participants can lie. For example, in Tapper the parents, teachers or children may say they have better eating habits after the food dudes programme and not want to admit they have not kept up their healthy eating.
16. Mark according to the levels of response descriptors in Table B.
17. Other appropriate responses should also be credited.