Section F: Stakeholder redesign
Seven people redesign the study
The outline asks you to choose two of these roles. This guide covers all seven, so you can see how different the redesigns become when the person's concerns change. Each page has the same order: what this person cares about, what worries them about the original, their redesign, why, and what the redesign gives up.
- Participant A four-year-old's view. Being tricked, losing the toys and being watched in secret, and how to keep the science while treating children with respect.
- Parent A parent wants to know what will happen to their child, wants nothing lasting to come of it, and wants the study to answer a question they face at home.
- Teacher A teacher wants to know what happens between real children in a real classroom, over weeks, and what part their own behaviour plays.
- Clinician A child psychologist wants to know which children are most affected, and whether modelling can be used to help children who are already aggressive or frightened.
- Researcher A researcher today would fix the scoring, the sample size, the single pair of models and the missing follow-up, and would separate learning from doing.
- Policymaker A policymaker needs evidence about real harm across a whole population, and evidence about which interventions work, before making rules.
- Community leader A community leader asks whether the study fits local lives, respects local values, and leaves the community better off. The redesign is built with the community, not done to it.
The seven redesigns side by side
| Stakeholder | Their main question | Biggest change to the study | What it costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Participant | Am I safe and do I understand what is happening? | Child's assent, no deliberate frustration, a way to stop, a reassuring ending | Less arousal, so smaller effects and no direct comparison with 1961 |
| Parent | What happens to my child, and what should I do at home? | Full information, a parent who can watch, a follow-up check, a test of adult comments during viewing | Parents' presence may change children's behaviour |
| Teacher | What will this mean in my classroom? | A field study in real classrooms, measuring aggression and kindness towards peers over weeks | Less control, so causes are harder to isolate |
| Clinician | How can this help a child who is struggling? | Using modelling to teach alternatives to aggression, with attention to each child's history | Harder to compare with the original, and smaller samples |
| Researcher | Is the result real, and how far does it reach? | Blind video coding, several models of each sex, larger and more varied samples, delayed follow-up | Cost and time; still a laboratory study |
| Policymaker | Is the evidence strong enough to act on for a whole population? | Long-term field evidence on real harm, and trials of interventions | Slow and expensive; may not isolate modelling |
| Community leader | Does this fit and serve my community? | Questions, models, language and methods designed with the community | Results may not be comparable across places |
Choosing your two
The best pairs for the journal are two roles that disagree. A researcher and a participant, for example, want different things: the researcher wants control and clear causes, the participant wants safety and respect. Showing how each would redesign the study, and where their redesigns conflict, demonstrates the perspective-taking the outline describes as "especially powerful".
Try this
A researcher wants to keep the frustration step, because without it fewer children show aggression and the effect is harder to detect. A parent wants it removed.
Can both be partly satisfied? Suggest a compromise and explain its cost.
Show the reasoning
One compromise is to replace deliberate frustration with a mild, honest challenge that is not a deception, such as a puzzle that is a little too hard, followed by help to finish it. This still raises the children's readiness to act, but it does not involve taking toys away with an untrue reason, and it ends with success.
The cost is that the new step may produce less arousal than the original, so aggression scores could be lower and harder to compare with 1961. Bandura's own 1965 study found copying without any frustration step, which suggests the effect can still be detected without it. The parent gains a less upsetting procedure; the researcher accepts some loss of comparability.