Evaluaiton Flashcards
(4 cards)
Validity
It had a high xternal validity as it had taken place within a real hospital and real staff, therefore it was represenattive of teh staffs true behaviours and the enviornement of the spsychiarty hospital was true
It had a high internal validity as Rosenhan could contro.l many factors and made sure that the rpocedures were standardiserd. For exmaple, he told how the pseufdo pateints shoudl behave when they were admitted into the psychiatry hospital ads well as the behaviour he had to present to the staff such as that they heard voices and were hearing “Thud Hollow and Empty”.
However, the study could have been seen as invalid as the pseudo patients could have had a different experience compared to the real patients as they did not have the comfort that the diagnoseds was false.
The baility of the speudo pateints to observe and record observations and behaviours made by staff further enhanced tjhe validity of the experiment.
Reliability
It had a low inter observer reliability as the observations made by the pseudo pateints were not compared. Suhc as the behaviours made by the staff. Howver the observations made by the pseudo patients were all the same.
Sampling bias
Rosenahn made sure to use a large amount of psychitry hospiatls in America so it is highly generalisable and represntative to all the hospitals in America.
However, since the hospitals were only in America. It cannot be generalisble to the countries outside of AMerica as they have different diagnsotuic systems and different systems for hsopitalisation. Tjhe findings may be different in other countries
Furthermore, the study was conducetd in the 1970s therefore it cannot be generalibsilble to psychitric hospitals today. As the dioagnostic systems have been updated and the conditiosn adn teh environemtna s well as the treat,ents towards people who are mentally ill have changed significantly.
Ethnocnetrism
;;
