Charlton et al. (2000): TV & behaviour

This error is factual, so it scores zero. Candidates say the children became more aggressive once television arrived; in fact anti-social behaviour did not increase and pro-social behaviour was maintained. The credited explanation is the community — tight-knit, every child known, closely supervised — not that they watched little television.

Pro-social behaviour helps others (sharing, comforting); anti-social behaviour harms or distresses others (hitting, name-calling, exclusion). Being good and being naughty are not definitions. They are also not simple opposites — a child can do neither, and here the pro-social measure held while the anti-social measure did not rise.

A result is what came out of the recordings; a conclusion is what it tells us in general. Anti-social behaviour did not increase over the five years is a result; television does not automatically cause anti-social behaviour, because a community's controls outweigh the screen is the conclusion. Restating the figures scores nothing when a conclusion was asked.

A weakness is what is wrong as it stands — St Helena is unlike other places, so it may not generalise. An improvement is a change plus its benefit — repeat the observation in a large town where supervision is weaker, to test whether the community, not television, produced the result. Restating the weakness is not an improvement; the mark is in the benefit.

A weakness is that it was only one island names a point and stops. A creditworthy evaluation has three parts: the point, why it follows from what the study did, and the consequence. Example: high ecological validity, because children were filmed at an ordinary break, so what was recorded is real behaviour. Point, why, consequence.

Candidates describe the study but never use the scenario — that is AO1 only, and AO3 needs AO2, so the evaluation marks can go too. Not application: the character's name, repeating the stem, or lifting a scenario line unused. Application takes a specific detail — the estate where no one knows the children — and reads it through the study.

Charlton proved television has no effect overclaims: it is one community over five years and what children watched was uncontrolled. Bandura was disproved is also wrong — different questions. Synthesis: children can imitate an aggressive model, but whether they do depends on the setting; imitation is possible, not inevitable.

"It is only one island, so it is useless." Stated alone, this is identification, not evaluation. For AO3, say what limits it — small, remote, every child known and supervised — and what follows — it cannot show what happens where supervision is weaker. Ethics is real and forgotten: young children were filmed, raising consent and privacy, not harm.