AQA A2 Psychology PSYA3/PSYA4 Revision Thread 2016

Psychology 😄


Posted from TSR Mobile

To anyone who got an A* in psychology, for your essays did you use methodological evaluation?

I was ill and as a consequence couldn't do my exams this year, so I'm doing them next year. I was told methodological evaluation, e.g evaluating sample and bias etc, was a waste of time.

I won't accept anything other than an A* so want to make sure I'm doing the right thing for next summer!

Looks like someone's trying to get you a D grade...

To anyone who got an A* in psychology, for your essays did you use methodological evaluation?

I was ill and as a consequence couldn't do my exams this year, so I'm doing them next year. I was told methodological evaluation, e.g evaluating sample and bias etc, was a waste of time.

I won't accept anything other than an A* so want to make sure I'm doing the right thing for next summer!

To anyone who got an A* in psychology, for your essays did you use methodological evaluation?

I was ill and as a consequence couldn't do my exams this year, so I'm doing them next year. I was told methodological evaluation, e.g evaluating sample and bias etc, was a waste of time.

I won't accept anything other than an A* so want to make sure I'm doing the right thing for next summer!

Hey so, it is true that methodological evaluation is pointless, unless it is done effectively.

So if you literally write a paragraph after a piece of research stating it lacks internal/external validity or whatever with no comment afterwards that is useless.

What you need is simply a sentence or two which clearly indicates what impact this lack of validity has. So for example in bio explanations of SZ, there's a study by Falkai which claims SZs to have abnormally high levels of dopamine in their brains. But this study lacks internal validity because it was conducted on dead SZs who were taking antipsychotic drugs and therefore there may have extraneous variables which contributed to the high levels of dopamine (which Haracz points out). But when I wrote this paragraph I pointed out that the lack of internal validity reduces our confidence in generalising these findings to all SZs. This therefore weakens the credibility the dopamine explanation (and thus the bio explanation) has in accurately explaining how SZ develops.

So it's just a sentence or two at the end to explain the consequence of this methodological issue.

I'd only recommend doing this once per essay, and not all the time. Don't do it more than once as you are only getting marked if they have seen you've done it once I.e you're not getting additional marks for doing it three times.

I hope that helps and apologies for the long ass letter 😂


Posted from TSR Mobile

In psya3 I used gender bias as evaluation but only if it was a key issue with the theory. I also only used points about sample size if it effected the statistical significance of the results so lowering the credit ability of the research.
In psya4 I used methodological evaluation more as I didn't use IDA's but only if they were relevant, so not just putting them in to make the essay longer, they had to make sense.


Posted from TSR Mobile

I achieved A* in unit 4 and a low E in unit 3, almost a fail. confused as thought both exams went well and have been achieving A's up until yesterday . anyone else experienced this?

Ah congrats on getting into your firm! Which uni is it?

That's still great and you did better than me anyway.

Where are you off to??

After finishing AS with a C in Psychology i managed to get an ----- A* ----- at A2 and i literally cannot believe it!

I got 100% (100 UMS) in PSYA3 and
85 UMS in PSYA4 (which i thought i failed)

Retook PSYA2 and only managed to get 6 more UMS to 70 UMS (b)

Well done to everyone else for their results and i hope you got into your unis x

PS anyone resitting PSYA3 next year can take my model essays that i spent over a year making, they definitely helped 😭