OCR psychology/Sociology vs AQA Psychology/Sociology

Can anyone tell me about their experience of either psychology or sociology with these exam boards?

I did OCR psych in june! I absolutely loved it ask me anything

I'm doing OCR psychology and I'm in yr 10!
It's my favourite subject!!!

I've done AQA Psychology and, during my gap year, plan to complete AQA Sociology. What do you need to know?

I've done AQA Psychology and, during my gap year, plan to complete AQA Sociology. What do you need to know?

I did OCR psych in june! I absolutely loved it ask me anything

How was AQA psychology? Did you enjoy the course did you find it challenging ?


Did you enjoy it as an A Level ? I didn’t do it at gcse so I’m a bit worried taking ocr psychology as an a Level

I absolutely loved it, I'm now doing a degree in it! I didn't do it at gcse and I think out of my class of about 25, only 1 person had. She was no further ahead of us in all honesty. I think the exam board is aware that not many schools offer the gcse.

When it comes to the course, you have to do research methods (which is all about how research is conducted and statistical analysis- sounds terrifying but it's not much worse than calculating means)
then you have to do main approaches

in second year you have to do mental health, then there's 4 different options i think- child, environment, crime, sport. your school picks 2.

How was AQA psychology? Did you enjoy the course did you find it challenging ?

Personally I found it quite easy - and interesting. However, I know a lot of people who hated it, so I'd look at the content a bit before you decide to do it.

The things people struggle with most:
- Evaluations
- Essays
- Research methods

The structure of a 16-marker is something that took me a few months to master, and some people still struggled by the end of the course. However, once you can structure your essays and answers in terms of the marks (e.g. 6 for outline, 10 for evaluate; 3 for outline, 5 for evaluate) you should be fine.

Research methods is worth 25% of the course, and Maths is 10% of that, so make sure you know your stuff. RM can be boring at times, but it's just stuff like types of data, types of observations, writing hypotheses etc.

Topics we study, and my ranking of how interesting they are, 1-5:
Social Influence - 3/5
Memory - 3/5 but its a short topic and easy to revise
Attachment - 4/5
Psychopathology - 5/5
Approaches in psychology 3/5
Biopsychology - 5/5 (this overlaps with some of the Biology A-level, though not in as much depth)
Research Methods - 4/5

Then there are 3 options. Our school chose Gender (boooooring), Aggression (good) and Schizophrenia (short and sweet).

In regards to AQA Sociology, I've done the Year 13 content only so far, and I love it. We studied Crime and Deviance, and Beliefs in Society. Not too hard content-wise, but the 20-markers and 30-markers are initially difficult to get your round. The Research Methods section is basically the same as AQA Psychology, so not too bad!

Hope this helped

Can anyone tell me about their experience of either psychology or sociology with these exam boards?

Hey there. I did AQA A-Level sociology and did all of the popular options: education, families and households, crime and deviance and beliefs in society alongside methods in context and research methods. I personally enjoyed taking the subject at A-Level and now I'm studying a multidisciplinary degree which includes sociology. Btw, I'm more than happy to help with sociology up to A-Level if required.

Thanks for this ! I’m not too sure on whether to take socio or psycho so this helped.

Thank you !!!