Tarek Islam Psychology Mr Branson

-1Evaluate Blattler Et Al (2002)

Blattler et al is pretty well off in terms of generalisability. This is due to the large
sample of 266 participants. As there is such a large sample, the sample is more likely to
include a vast range of individuals and therefore be more representative of the target
population. This would increase the credibility of the results, thus making it a more useful
study.

However, it does lack generalisability in the sense that it took place in

Switzerland only. This would predispose the study to containing Swiss culture and
attitudes which may not be applicable to the rest of the world. As this is different to other
cultures across the world, it can only be generalised to the Swiss and not implicitly the
general human population.

Reliability is well accounted for in this study. This is due to the fact that self-
reports of drug use were compared with urinalysis reports. The initial reliability of the
results were 0.66 wich increased to 0.82 suggesting reports became more reliable towards
the end of the study. The fact that urinalysis was used increases the reliability of the study
as results were confirmed rather than just assumed to be correct.

The use of urinalysis also proves the study to be very objective in the sense that
the urinalysis will produce a quantifiable figure that has no subjection or interpretation
placed on it. This is better than say relying on a drug users self report as their own
interpretation of what may have been a lot may warp the actual drug use, or even demand
characteristics may alter the results. This objectivity helps to raise the credibility of the
study.

The validity of the study is reduced by the fact that it was non experimental
meaning there was no controlled conditions and no independent variable. This makes it
hard to infer causality and therefore we can not say what the causes of reduced cocaine
use were. It could just be attributed to the natural process of time, meaning there is a
good possibility that the outcome of the study was not due to implementations of the
researchers. This lowers the validity of the study as it is not possible to distinguish the
cause, and therefore our understanding of why the results happened.

In terms of ethics, this study is very ethical as it aims accquire more knowledge
about drug use. Any knowledge we accquire will be helpful in reducing harm to the
participants and society in general, making it a worthwhile study as it will be for the
better of man kind. More studies like this would make it easier to reduce cocaine use as
we will have more knowledge on how to do so.