When you're revising for your A-level exams, you want to make the most of your study time.

So, we invited the experts at the AQA exam board to share their tips and advice on preparing for A-level Psychology exams.

The article that follows has been written by an AQA curriculum expert, based on their years of experience in the assessment of their subject.  

You can find more articles in this series, covering a range of subjects at both GCSE and A-level, over on our revision section.

Also on The Student Room, you can find student discussion of 2024 A-level exams.

1. Do read and decode the question carefully, paying particular attention to command words.
    
2. Don’t try to learn pre-prepared answers as these won’t answer the specific questions.
    
3. Don’t provide overlong descriptions of evidence without using the research presented to support or refute a theory or argument. For example, a common mistake students make is providing a long description of a study when being asked to discuss a theory. Focus on providing a succinct overview of what they did in the study, what they found and whether it supports or refutes the theory. It’s important to link the evidence back to the theory or question.
    
4. So, exploring the ecological validity example and applying it to a recent exam question about the research into the effect of misleading information on eyewitness testimony, it would be better to state:
   
   ‘The experiment by Loftus and Palmer lacked ecological validity because participants were asked to watch a video of a car crash and answer a series of questions, which does not reflect a real-life experience of witnessing a car crash. As such, the level of anxiety and the importance of a witness’s testimony in a real-life situation is far higher and so we cannot be sure that the effect of misleading information will be the same.’
    
5. Do engage with the material in the scenario in application questions. We sometimes see students simply referring to the names of people in the scenarios, which isn’t enough. Consider writing about the relevant theory or concept, then stating ‘this can be seen in the case of X when he/she…’ It’s important to make the links between the theory or concept and the actual context of the scenario.
    
6. Do make sure you elaborate on evaluation points as much as possible. For example, it’s not enough to simply say ‘this experiment lacks ecological validity’ - you need to put it in the context of the question and outline the implication.
    
7. Do shape your answer to the question that’s been set. Pay attention to the command term and the content words. For example, a question that asks students to ‘outline how Lorenz and Harlow studied attachment using animals’ should focus on providing an outline of how they studied attachment using animals. Students who simply outline Lorenz and and Harlow’s studies and don’t focus on the procedure (the ‘how’) for each study will lose out on marks.
    
8. Do recognise the importance of thinking, planning and paragraphing, particularly for extended responses. Plan your essays and think about how the points fit together to make a clear and coherent essay. Remember that providing a clear line of argument is important.