A Level Psychology OCR Practice Exam

The feature that likely enhances the reliability of the Raine et al. study is the use of standardised procedures during research. Standardisation refers to the consistency of the study's methods and protocols across different participants and sessions. This ensures that every participant experiences the same conditions, which reduces variability that could affect the results.

Reliability is crucial in psychological research as it indicates that findings can be replicated and are not due to random chance. By employing standardised procedures, researchers can confidently compare results across groups and ensure that any differences observed are meaningful. Other aspects, such as high ecological validity and in-depth qualitative data collection, address different facets of research quality, such as how well findings can be generalized to real-life settings or the richness of the data collected but do not directly contribute to the reliability of the study findings in the same way standardisation does.