IB DP Psychology: Option: Health psychology – Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. They are not reproduced past-paper questions. They use Paper 2’s 22-mark extended-response format, but not the paper’s exact wording or selection – the IB holds copyright in its own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available through your school or the IB store.

Related: Health psychology revision notes and the health psychology study guide.

IB DP Psychology Paper 2 (first assessment 2019) sets three 22-mark essays on the health option. The seven questions below cover every content point; the model plans use stress as the health problem, but each plan notes how to adapt it to addiction or obesity. Allow about an hour per essay.

How the essays are marked

Criterion	Marks	Top-band expectation
A Focus on the question	2	Explains the problem or issue posed by the question
B Knowledge and understanding	6	Accurate, detailed, well-explained terminology
C Use of research	6	Relevant research, explained and linked to the question
D Critical thinking	6	Well-developed evaluation and consideration of alternatives
E Clarity and organisation	2	Clear and coherent throughout

Questions

1. Evaluate the biopsychosocial model of health and well-being. [22]

2. Discuss how dispositional factors and health beliefs influence health. [22]

3. Evaluate research on risk and protective factors in health. [22]

4. Contrast two explanations of one health problem. [22]

5. Discuss factors that influence the prevalence of one health problem. [22]

6. Evaluate one health promotion programme. [22]

7. Discuss how the effectiveness of health promotion programmes can be assessed. [22]

Model plans

1. Biopsychosocial model.

• B: Engel’s (1977) critique of the biomedical model; health as the interaction of biological, psychological and social factors.
• C: use stress research at each level – Kiecolt-Glaser et al. (1984) immune effects of exam stress (biological), Lazarus’s appraisal (psychological), Whitehall II and job control (social).
• D: holistic and useful for treatment planning; but vague about how factors interact and hard to falsify; weighting of factors differs across health problems.

2. Dispositional factors and health beliefs.

• B: optimism, hardiness, Type A and hostility; the health belief model and the theory of planned behaviour.
• C: Western Collaborative Group Study (Type A and coronary heart disease); Kobasa’s (1979) hardiness research with executives; studies applying the HBM to screening or vaccination.
• D: correlational, self-report personality measures; later reanalysis pointed to hostility rather than Type A as a whole; health beliefs predict intentions better than behaviour.
• Adapting: for addiction, outcome expectancies and self-efficacy.

3. Risk and protective factors.

• B: risk factors increase probability of ill health; protective factors reduce it.
• C: Cohen et al. (1997) social network diversity and resistance to colds; Marmot’s Whitehall research on job control.
• D: Cohen’s study used quarantine and a deliberate virus exposure – strong control but ethical issues; Whitehall’s sample of civil servants limits generalisation; risk and protective factors interact.

4. Two explanations of stress (contrast).

• B/C: biological – Selye’s GAS and HPA axis, Kiecolt-Glaser et al. (1995) wound healing in carers; cognitive – Lazarus’s transactional model, appraisal research.
• D: the biological account explains how stress damages the body but not why people react differently to the same stressor; the cognitive account explains individual differences but relies on self-report; an integrated model combines both.
• Adapting: for obesity, contrast genetic explanations with sociocultural ones (food environment).

5. Prevalence.

• B: prevalence is the proportion of a population affected; influences include gender, age, income, culture and measurement.
• C: national stress surveys such as the APA’s Stress in America; social gradient findings from Whitehall II.
• D: self-report prevalence varies with definitions and cultural willingness to report; cross-sectional data cannot show causes.

6. One health promotion programme.

• B: MBSR – an eight-week programme of mindfulness meditation and body awareness.
• C: Shapiro et al. (1998): randomised trial with medical and premedical students showing reduced anxiety and depression compared with a wait-list control.
• D: small, motivated student sample; short follow-up; participants not blind to condition; self-report outcomes; cultural acceptability of meditation.
• Adapting: for addiction, the US “truth” anti-smoking campaign (Farrelly et al., 2005).

7. Assessing effectiveness.

• B: outcome measures (behaviour, physiological markers, self-report), comparison groups, follow-up, cost-effectiveness.
• C: contrast a randomised trial (Shapiro et al., 1998) with a population campaign evaluated by trends over time (Farrelly et al., 2005).
• D: trials give causal evidence but small samples; population evaluations have reach but many confounding variables; long-term maintenance is rarely measured.

Worked paragraph: linking research to the question (Question 4)

Lazarus’s transactional model explains a weakness in purely biological accounts of stress. Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome describes the same physiological sequence for any stressor, but it cannot explain why two students facing the same exam show different stress responses. Lazarus argued that stress depends on primary appraisal, whether a situation is judged a threat, and secondary appraisal, whether one has the resources to cope. This difference means the cognitive explanation can account for individual differences, but it depends heavily on self-reported appraisals, which are open to social desirability bias. The two explanations are therefore better treated as complementary.

Frequently asked questions

Can I switch health problems between questions? Yes, but it is safer to know one health problem thoroughly and adapt it.

Do I need statistics from studies? Specific findings help criterion C; quote them only if you are sure they are accurate.

What does “contrast” require? An account of the differences between the two explanations, referring to both throughout.