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AS/A level AQA A psychology coursework help

Hiya,
The mods have recently noticed the amount of coursework threads that have been created for psychology and have noticed that coursework has taken over the subforum, not allowing discussion of many other areas within psychology. It also looks like clutter, every other thread being another coursework thread.

In an attempt to clear this clutter and allow others to discuss non-coursework areas of psychology (degree level psychology, for example) it has been decided to create three threads for discussion on the pieces of coursework, one for each examining board.

Any coursework separate threads created will be moved into the appropriate thread, the moderators encourage users to post report any threads that need moving.

This thread is for AQA A psychology coursework (AS or A2), the other threads are:
AS/A level AQA B psychology coursework help
AS/A level OCR psychology coursework help

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Reply 1

username124534

If I were doing a piece of coursework on leading questions, would it need to be something vaugley important or traumatic like Loftus did with the cars and smashed glass, or could I just show a clip of Mean Girls or something, and ask if they saw the/a hair clip?

Reply 2

oXsamXo

Hi, I'm planning to do my A2 AQA A Psychology coursework on the Lonely Hearts ads. I am stuck at the moment and have some questions:

1. How will the research be carried out? (i.e. what will the method be?)

2. Is there any pre-existing research on this topic, and what are the relevant Psychologists research that I can put down in the intro?.

Reply 3

silk192

instead of doing a complicated experiment, why dont you do something simple like a memory experiment?

Reply 4

Malinski

OP I did this courswork for my A2 Psychology. The only thing is I can't remember what I put down. If I look through my work, i'll be able to answer your questions! I'll have a look through my work tomorrow and get back to you. Is that ok?

Reply 5

RightSaidJames

oXsamXo

1. Generally the method is to go through lonely hearts sections putting the ads into categories based on what gender they are and what they are seeking/offering. The categories I used were:

•

Seeking Wealth or Resources

•

Offering Wealth or Resources

•

Seeking Youth or Attractiveness

•

Offering Youth or Attractiveness

•

Seeking/Offering Other Factors

2. Look in your textbooks for research by Buss, Dunbar and anything else that is available in the same section.

Reply 6

Itchybrain

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/lonelyhearts/

Inspiration

Reply 7

bex285

RightSaidJames

1. Generally the method is to go through lonely hearts sections putting the ads into categories based on what gender they are and what they are seeking/offering. The categories I used were:

•

Seeking Wealth or Resources

•

Offering Wealth or Resources

•

Seeking Youth or Attractiveness

•

Offering Youth or Attractiveness

•

Seeking/Offering Other Factors

2. Look in your textbooks for research by Buss, Dunbar and anything else that is available in the same section.

i just spent a good 3 seconds trying to kill that "bug".
i hope you're happy *evils*

btw i'm aware this reply is completely irrelevant :smile:

Reply 8

Scipio_Africanus

Do an experiment on The Stroop Effect, simple and easy.

Reply 9

RightSaidJames

Itchybrain

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/lonelyhearts/

Inspiration

Ooh yes, good article :smile:

bex285

i just spent a good 3 seconds trying to kill that "bug".
i hope you're happy *evils*

btw i'm aware this reply is completely irrelevant

Reply 10

Elliebellyboosh

We got a lot of help with ours as a result could not get full marks.
But RightSaidJames is correct. x

Reply 11

Malinski

Elliebellyboosh

We got a lot of help with ours as a result could not get full marks.

Same here! Because we were given the topic and given alot of help we couldn't get full marks.

Reply 12

Gabriel91

I'm really struggling to find an idea for my coursework. I want to do something on the subject of memory but I can't think of any ideas!

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Reply 13

paperclip

Gabriel91

I'm really struggling to find an idea for my coursework. I want to do something on the subject of memory but I can't think of any ideas!

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

As Scipio_Africanus said, do something on the stroop effect as it is relatively straightforward.

:clip:

Reply 14

barries

[QUOTE="thejadedwords"]If I were doing a piece of coursework on leading questions, would it need to be something vaugley important or traumatic like Loftus did with the cars and smashed glass, or could I just show a clip of Mean Girls or something, and ask if they saw the/a hair clip?[/QUOTE

Whilst no expert, I would have thought that it would be better to get a video clip similar to that of Loftus and Palmer and do a similar study.

One of the things that research shows is that memory is more influenced by extreme events ( such as a car crash). More mundane things are very easily missed.

The car crash has more relevence to real life eye witness testemony than that of a hair clip so less issues with ecological validity in the study.

Besides, if you want a good grade, why go re inventing the wheel when if you look at the mark scheme you can do just as well on a replication.

Reply 15

barries

I'm really struggling to find an idea for my coursework. I want to do something on the subject of memory but I can't think of any ideas!

Here are two possibles:

a Loftus and Palmer - leading questions and memory. get a video clip of a car srash. design a questionnaire whcih asks about 10 questions. One of them ( put it somewhere in the middle so your participants dont twig what its about) will be your critical question about the speed of the car - vary the word used...... no need for a full L+P just use three groups - control - what speed was the car travelling at condition one use bumbed and condition two use crashed

Hypothesis - Participants will estimate higher speeds when the question asked is crashed rather than bumped ( thats one tailed). You could do it as a two tailed ( there will be a significant different in the responses given when the participants are asked to estimate the speed depending on the stimulus word used ( thats a bit clumsy - it can be done better)

Show the film clip to a class of people all togehter ( for quickness) . get a list of standard instructions. make sure they dont communicate so cannot see that some have a slightly different questionnaire.

Hey presto you have your data!

Otherwise try the old Gates memory and cued learning. The idea is that memory and recall are better when revision has been cued ( ie they have studied a text with a set of phrases which direct the study.

Again dead simple - a text ( preferably unfamiliar) and two forms of it. One with a set of questions and one without. So two conditions.

Give the participants time to study it ( say 10 mins) and then collect the papers . Give them all the same memory test - one which has in it the same questions as you gave half of them in the original text.

Hypothesis - those who had the text with questions will have significantly better recall of the text than those who had the short text.

Both of these have been done with us in class by my psych teacher so I know they work.

Yes, you could do stroop.

There is also one from Craik and Lockheart ( another one of my teachers). She had three conditions for this. One she asked us to pick out the words in capitals from a list.

The second was to find words that rhymed with a stimulus word. ( like cat mat etc.)

The third was to find words that fitted into a sentence.

Hypothesis if I recall was that subjects who were asked to perform task 3 ( semantic level of processing) would recall significantly more of the words in their set list than those who simply had to identify capitals from lower case ( condition 1)

Any of those any use?

Reply 16

oisky-poisky

I am doing my A2 Psychology Coursework on The effects of advertising on memory and whether logos or slogans help the recall of the brand name, but im stuck on which researchers to look at for my introduction.
Can anyone help? :confused:

Reply 17

oisky-poisky

IM doing my coursework on the effects of advertisin on memory and whether logos or slogans are better for the recall of the brand name, but im really stuck and dont know which researchers to look at. Can anyone help?

Reply 18

CrazyBeautiful

I'd stick with memory but instead do something about like STM and chunking letters or something- much more research= much easier= less hassle= same grade as a complicated piece :biggrin:

Reply 19

silk192

why dont u do something simple like primacy and recency effects, chunking, encoding etc....you dont high marks for choosing a complicated experiment....and i never heard of any studies like that