Offender Profiling (AQA A Level Psychology): Exam Questions

In an experiment into the effectiveness of the top-down approach to offender profiling, 20 participants were asked to build a profile of an offender using information from real life cases. Half of the participants were given information about a murder case and asked to produce a profile. The other half were given information about a robbery and asked to produce a profile. After the profiling session, each profile was classified as High Accuracy or Low Accuracy.

The researcher decided to use a Chi-Squared test to analyse the data from this study. One reason for choosing this test was that each participant only took part in one condition of the experiment.

Referring to information about the study, explain two other reasons why it was appropriate to use a Chi-Squared test in this case.

Using your knowledge of the top-down approach to offender profiling, explain the likely outcome of the study.

Different participants were used in each condition of the experiment, which might have affected the results.

Explain one way in which the experiment could be changed to control for the problem of using different participants in each condition.

Outline the bottom-up approach to offender profiling.

Briefly evaluate the bottom-up approach to offender profiling.