A level combination

Is politics, sociology, and psychology a good combination of alevels?

I'd say yes. I know people who did sociology and politics and multiple topics in sociology link to social policy. I did psychology and sociology and found that they complimented each other really well. For example, both have chapters on research methods, which make up a large part of both subjects.
Hope this helps and I'm happy to answer any questions about psychology or sociology

Reply 2

amanra1

Original post by SB1234567890

Thank you for your reply! Honestly I didn't know whether I should switch out either one of those subjects for history lol

Reply 3

SB1234567890

Original post by amanra1

Thank you for your reply! Honestly I didn't know whether I should switch out either one of those subjects for history lol

You could start with 4 then drop to 3, which a lot of people I know did

Reply 4

amanra1

Original post by SB1234567890

You could start with 4 then drop to 3, which a lot of people I know did

I'll most likely do that, again thank you so much fo replying lmao

Reply 5

University of Portsmouth Student Rep

Official Rep

Original post by amanra1

Is politics, sociology, and psychology a good combination of alevels?

Hey

This sounds like a great combination! If they are subjects you enjoy and allow you to go onto your next steps after A-Levels, then that's great :smile:

I did Psychology A-level and I now do it at University, and I really enjoyed it! There is so much variability in content, and so many different styles of learning (e.g., essays, research methods, experiments), so I really felt like I had learned a lot of skills that I wouldn't have otherwise :smile:

If you have any other questions i'd be happy to answer them,
Hope this helps!
Sian- UoP Rep :smile:

Reply 6

amanra1

Original post by University of Portsmouth Student Rep

Hey

This sounds like a great combination! If they are subjects you enjoy and allow you to go onto your next steps after A-Levels, then that's great :smile:

If you have any other questions i'd be happy to answer them,
Hope this helps!
Sian- UoP Rep :smile:

Hi!

Thanks for replying to my thread.

I also want to study psychology at university and hopefully become a therapist. So I just wanted to know if this is a good combination to study if I want to go on and study psychology further.

Reply 7

esbnothing

Original post by SB1234567890

hi, i’ve chosen chemistry biology and sociology for next year but i’m still debating on psychology or sociology.
Which one did you prefer?
initially i wanted a lighter subject to go with the other two but doing research some people have found sociology really hard and some easy although i know i a level is easy.
Could you tell me more about what you actually do in psychology and sociology.
Thank you!

Reply 8

SB1234567890

Original post by esbnothing

Even though both are essay based subjects, i'd say sociology is more essay based (up to 30 mark questions in AQA compared to 16 for psychology and essays have more of a set structure for psychology whereas sociology essays are more flowy). I'd personally say the sociology content is more interesting interesting overall, a lot of the topics are very relevant whereas for psychology year 2 is more interesting than year one. Psychology questions are more likely to involve marks being gained from having specific words that are mentioned in the mark scheme. Both are quite content heavy but have flexibility in what you choose to try and remember, particularly for evaluation points in psychology. In terms of wanting to do research they both have a large amount on research methods, and both my teachers created lessons where we ould do our own research projects.
If you do AQA for both then the topics for sociology are
- education (theories on its role, differences in achievement between social groups. educational policy), which links to methods in context (researching certain areas of education)
- families and households (the division of labour, childhood, theories on the family's role, changes in family structures and demography, explanations for family diversity and family policies)
- beliefs in society (religion's effect on social change. secularisation, relationship between religion and globalisation, explanations for religious organisations and ideology and science)
- crime and deviance (functionalist/strain theories, labelling theory, marxism and corporate crime, differences between social groups, the relationship between crime and the media and globalisation/green crime/state crime)
- theory and methods (qualitative and quantitative research methods, structural theories, action theories, sociology and science, objectivity abd values, globalisation/modernity/postmodernity and the relationship between sociology and social policy)
For AQA psychology the topics are:
- social influence (conformity, obedience, resistane to social influence, minority influence, social change)
- memory (models of short term memory, types of long term memory, explanations for forgetting, eyewitness testimony, cognitive interview)
- attachments (caregiver-infant interactions, types and stages of attachment, influence on future relationships, Romanian orphans)
- psychopathology (characteristics and explanations of depression, OCD and phobias and definitions of abnormality)
- biopsychology (includes some basic GCSE biology then topics such as localisation of function, hemispheric lateralisation/split brain research- lots of people who did biology found this to be their favourite topic)
- research methods (hypotheses, sampling, averages, types of data...)
- approaches (general theories for explaining behaviour such as biological, cognitive or behavioural)
- issues and debates (nature vs nurture, free will vs determinism, gender bias, culture bias...)
then the 3 option topics we did were
- schizophrenia (characteristics, explanations and approaches to treatment)
- aggression (different explanations such as biological or the frustration aggression hypothesis)
- gender (sex role stereotypes, atypical sex chromosomes, atypical gender development, different theories on gender development)

Sorry if this is really waffly or confusing but I'm happy to answer any other questions you have as I've just finished year 13 so the whole of both course are still fresh in my mind