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AQA Extended Project Help - Difficulty constructing a Title

As someone who intends to do Youth Work at University, as well as currently doing A-Levels in History, Psychology and Sociology; I intend to integrate all of these into an Extended Project title revolving primarily around Youth Culture and Identity generically, and have found myself coming across a number of fear, worries and/or problems.

Firstly, my most important concern is whether or not I'd be able to gather enough information from that overall, and/or whether or not I would need to narrow further to focus primarily on one "aspect" of culture or identity. I've been suggested by others that youth crime over a longitudinal period might be an easy area of study, and I am open to following that route if I'm left with no other options, but it's not particularly the area that most interests me personally - having a greater interest in subcultural views and values etc. - and, thus, I fear I may run into a lack of motivation if choosing crime. My main question is whether or not I'd be able to get enough information on youth subcultures to form the essay?

Secondly, ofcourse, is the title itself - I have a specific idea in my head of what I want to research, but can't think of a way to shorten it into a title that can be used, and even have difficulty in explaining the concept. Basically, I want to focus on whether or not the arisal and/or growth of subcultures is as a result of individual psychological "free will", in which a person both forms their own values and joins the group on their own accord as one extreme; or, at the other extreme, whether or not it's the result of group conformity, norms, values and other societal factors (i.e. the media). In essence, I'm trying to word it into a question, hypothesis or statement that sets Sociological views and Psychological views at polar opposites.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, be it in regards to sources of information, viability of the title, title construction and any other additional help. :smile:

Reply 1

lukenoel123

Free Will : is it really free at all?

Reply 2

Mirandaandcake

On the actual content of the title, I can't offer much help on this subject topic. However, having just completed my EPQ with a provisional grade of A*, I may be able to help somewhat.
Firstly, if you want to meet the AOs, it is a good idea to formulate a question as your title, therefore you can be analytical e.t.c.
Perhaps something like: 'To what extent has the youth culture phenomenon been the result of sociological and/or psychological factors'?
Whatever you do decide,make sure you keep it a focused title and that it is not too 'open' or indeed too 'closed'- you get a lot of marks for how achievable and realistic your title is.
Finally, from what you have described, it may be a good idea for you to carry out a survey and maybe some interviews. You could ask members who identify themselves in different 'subcultures' their reasons for joining the group e.t.c. This will give you a lot scope for your project.
Hope this helps :smile:

Reply 3

Desmond08

From your original post a lot of the areas you want to look at seem to cross over with the specifications of the subjects you study; one of the parts of the specification of the epq is that it can'y be on somehting you are currently studying (or have done at as) for example, if you do crime and deviance at A2 for sociology you wouldn't be able to look at subcultures as part of your epq as that is one of the explanations of crime you will cover. Just thought I'd warn you...
As far as information is concerned there is a wealth of it around; just start googling things and loads of articles will come up, google books is useful too as it offers a preview of books.
Hope this is helpful.