9990_s26_qp_21 — 2026 May-June Psychology 9990 Question Paper 2 Variant 1 · Cambridge CAIE AS & A Level

Applying human ethical guidelines to animal studies

“Some responses used human guidelines and as a result could not be awarded any credit. Common errors were informed consent and the right to withdraw. The elephant walking away is not an example of the right to withdraw.”— Paper 1, March 2025

How to fix: Animal studies use DIFFERENT ethical guidelines: replacement, reduction, refinement (the 3 Rs), species-appropriate housing, minimising suffering. Human guidelines (informed consent, right to withdraw, deception, debriefing) do NOT apply to animals.

Tautological definitions — defining a term using the same word

“There were some responses that were tautological (e.g., empathy is about being empathic) which could not be given any credit.”— Paper 1, March 2025

How to fix: Never repeat the word from the question in your definition. 'Confidentiality is keeping information in confidence' = 0 marks. Instead: 'Confidentiality means ensuring participants' personal data and responses are not shared with anyone outside the research team.'

Confusing reliability with replicability

“Many candidates appeared to confuse reliability with replication — referring to repeating a study and getting the same results rather than the consistency of any test or task or measure.”— Paper 2, May/June 2023

How to fix: Reliability = consistency of a measure (does it give the same result each time?). Replicability = can the study be repeated by someone else? Inter-rater reliability = agreement LEVEL between two observers (must be >0.80), NOT just having two observers.