AQA Psychology B A2

Anyone doing aqa psychology B?

I am Hopefully we will find some more Psychology B'ers once the term starts!

What topics have you chosen?

Hello! Yes, Im doing AQA psychology B, it seems like there really isnt any of us!

Im doing social development for child development and schizophrenia and mood disorders and forensic psychology for applied options. What about you?

I'm doing moral development/cognition and law/forensic psychology

find it a lot harder than AS for some reason, essays don't seem as simple

I am Hopefully we will find some more Psychology B'ers once the term starts!

What topics have you chosen?

I've chosen cognitive development, substance abuse and forensic psychology. Forensic psychology seems the hardest for me, do we need to know any specific study in more detail than compared to others?

Hello! I'm doing social development, schizophrenia and mood disorders and forensic psychology!



For measuring crime the most specific study we had was the Farrington & Dowds study for official statistics - they found that Nottinghamshire are more likely to record smaller thefts than the neighbouring police forces. For the British Crime Survery in 2004/5 it was found that 5.6 million offences were recorded by the police, but 10.7 million were recorded by the BCS. Finally, for self-report offender surveys, they showed in 2006 that young people revealed that their crimes were usually alcohol or drug related and consisted of violence and theft.

For offender profiling there is the study by Canter that we had to know about - he studied serial killers to see if they were organised or disorganised using the "smallest space analysis" - tested for co-occurrences of 39 variables over 100 cases. Found that serial killers were typical of organised. For geographical profiling, we studied the case study of John Duffy (railway rapist), Jack the Ripper and Peter Sutcliffe and then Lundrigan & Canter, who argued that all criminal spatial decision is influenced by social, cognitive and economic factors (age, intelligence, marital status, job etc)

For the explanations:
Cesare Lombroso (1876) for the physiological explanation
Sheldon (1949) and his somatotype theory (this is still part of the physiological explanation, just the other part)
For twin studies of the biological explanation - Lange (1929) and Christiansen (1977)
For adoption studies of biological explanation - Crowe (1972) and Hutchings & Mednick (1975)
Eysenck's personality theory - also Zuckerman (1969) and Farrington et al (1982) as part of the evaluation
Social Learning Theory - Bandura et al (1963) - also Sutherland's differential association theory (1939), and then Farrington as evaluation
Psychodynamic - Freud, and then Hoffman (1977) as part of evaluation

For treatment programmes:
Behaviour modification - Cullen & Sneddon (1981) and then Hobbs & Holt (1976) and Rice et al (1990) for evaluation
Anger management - Fiendler et al (1984), Ainson (2000) and Law (1997) - all evaluation
Social skills training - Long & Sherer (1985) and then Spence & Marziller for evaluation

For custodial sentencing:
Cullen & Minchin (2000)
Doherty (2001)
Bartol (1995)
Bukshel & Kilmann (1980)
Glaser (1983)
Walker & Farrington (1981)
Davies & Raymond (2000)
Most of these are quite short and used for evaluation, just giving results of experiments and not an in depth method. The biggest and most in depth study you need to know for this is the STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT by Zimbaro (1971)



If you want to know any more information on any of these just let me know - our teacher throws loads of studies at us so we have loads to choose from

Hello! Yes, Im doing AQA psychology B, it seems like there really isnt any of us!

Im doing social development for child development and schizophrenia and mood disorders and forensic psychology for applied options. What about you?

Hey! I'm doing all 3 as well but currently struggling on HOW to structure the exams, any idea???

Our teacher gave us the four different types of essay questions you can get and how to structure your answers. She's currently a PhD student and since I've been using this I seem to be getting better marks

Types of questions:
Outline and compare
Outline and evaluate
Discuss
Describe... Discuss strengths and weaknesses

+ Refer to evidence in most of them.

1) DISCUSS

Describe & explain (A01 marks)
Analyse and evaluate (A02 marks)
Compare to other approach/subject (AO2 marks)

For example:
"The most suitable treatment for schizophrenia is medication, and this treatment should take place in an intsitution." Discuss this view.

- One line explanation of schizophrenia
- Describe biological approach
- How drug treatment works
- Evaluate drug treatment
- Compare to other approaches (social treatments that aren't in an institution)
- Describe non-institutionalised treatment
- How non-institutionalised treatment works
- Evaluate non-institutionalised treatment

And always used evidence of studies & statistics

- 2 or 3 line conclusion

2) OUTLINE AND COMPARE
3) DESCRIBE AND DISCUSS
THESE ARE THE SAME THING.

You must use at least two treatments (usually what these questions ask about) so you can compare them to each other.

- Describe and explain first thing
- How first thing works
- Describe and explain second thing
- How second thing works
- Work through TEARS (treatment, effectiveness, acceptability (is it unethical?), relapse and side effects) one by one, comparing both treatments at each point

3) OUTLINE AND EVALUATE

Usually used for approaches/explanations to things. Still do at least two explanations/approaches so you can compare them to each other in the evaluation.

- Explain/describe first explanation/approach
*you can then follow any of the above plans for this treatment: either describe a second and evaluate or evaluate first and then go on to second

I self taught B last year and took the AS and A2 together. Im resitting AS this summer as I struggled to put an essay together but by A2 I got the hang of it as my results show unit 1-D, unit 2-C & unit 3&4 where B's.

The essay structure seems to be descripe the topic, name a study breifly describe and evaluate then evaluate the study.

Does anyone have any predictions for this years exam or copies of last years papers. I honestly cannot remember what was on the paper last year, its a traumatic blur.

Our teacher gave us the four different types of essay questions you can get and how to structure your answers. She's currently a PhD student and since I've been using this I seem to be getting better marks

Types of questions:
Outline and compare
Outline and evaluate
Discuss
Describe... Discuss strengths and weaknesses

+ Refer to evidence in most of them.

1) DISCUSS

Describe & explain (A01 marks)
Analyse and evaluate (A02 marks)
Compare to other approach/subject (AO2 marks)

For example:
"The most suitable treatment for schizophrenia is medication, and this treatment should take place in an intsitution." Discuss this view.

- One line explanation of schizophrenia
- Describe biological approach
- How drug treatment works
- Evaluate drug treatment
- Compare to other approaches (social treatments that aren't in an institution)
- Describe non-institutionalised treatment
- How non-institutionalised treatment works
- Evaluate non-institutionalised treatment

And always used evidence of studies & statistics

- 2 or 3 line conclusion

2) OUTLINE AND COMPARE
3) DESCRIBE AND DISCUSS
THESE ARE THE SAME THING.

You must use at least two treatments (usually what these questions ask about) so you can compare them to each other.

- Describe and explain first thing
- How first thing works
- Describe and explain second thing
- How second thing works
- Work through TEARS (treatment, effectiveness, acceptability (is it unethical?), relapse and side effects) one by one, comparing both treatments at each point

3) OUTLINE AND EVALUATE

Usually used for approaches/explanations to things. Still do at least two explanations/approaches so you can compare them to each other in the evaluation.

- Explain/describe first explanation/approach
*you can then follow any of the above plans for this treatment: either describe a second and evaluate or evaluate first and then go on to second

I self taught B last year and took the AS and A2 together. Im resitting AS this summer as I struggled to put an essay together but by A2 I got the hang of it as my results show unit 1-D, unit 2-C & unit 3&4 where B's.

The essay structure seems to be descripe the topic, name a study breifly describe and evaluate then evaluate the study.

Does anyone have any predictions for this years exam or copies of last years papers. I honestly cannot remember what was on the paper last year, its a traumatic blur.

This is very useful! Thank you.
Do A2 essays require introductions? Also, are making 'comparisons' an AO2 point?