AQA A2 PSYA4 exam

Has anyone been told how to plan an answer to the last question on the research methods paper?

I'm not entirely sure what they'll want us to talk about. (the one where they ask you to design a study)

Biological explanations came up in the spec, and therapies came up in January. So it could be those again, or psychological, or clinical characteristics, reliability/validity.

Yeah, in bits, but its hard to write coherent essays for, which is why I presume they've split media in the specimen and January. I think the layout doesn't help because a lot of things overlap and it isn't clear cut, well for me anyway..
I'd imagine AIDS would be used because of synopticity, so things like the type of experiment as some is self report, culture (western research) nothing on animals, reductionist (not sure how yet) gender (male participants in some studies) individual differences (some people think about things/messages differently to others) determinist (attitude change/cognitive dissonance).
Hope this helps.

i've been told to include an aim, hypothesis, the method i.e. sampling method, type of experiment/design, ethical issues (if any), the procedure, stats test you'd use and explain advantages, disadvantages and any problems; hope that helps

I'm not trying to cramp your happiness, as obviously 100% is something to really REALLY be proud about, but in that exam, 43/75 was an A. That means much less than 73 or something was an A* and 75/75 definitely was not 100%, 51-55/75 was. The way they do it is not full marks = full UMS, it's all scaled so you could theoretically only get 70% that still gets converted to 100%......

Please correct me if I'm wrong, not knowing issues or debates, from reading the mark schemes and examiner reports, doesn't give you more than 'Basic', which is around about half marks.

I was reading about this....im not complaining at all because i got 98 on this exam...BUT..how come AQA are working grades out like this????

Will they being doing it for this exam ???

That helps SO much! Thank you!! (will rep after midnight )

So do you explain the + and -s of each thing whilst you're going along or do you just do it at the end would you say?

Hi. I don't mean to be cheeky, but i was wondering as you're doing anomalistic, do you have any notes you could possibly give me? I will exchange mine on depression or something if it would help you in return. Or if not, has you teacher told you anything about AO3 for anomalistic? I don't understand it.


Thank you x

I'd be more than happy to but mine are all hand written and very illegible - and no she hasn't, that's why i'm also worrying. I'm guessing they'll mainly be cultural AO3 points though really as well as adaptiveness and perhaps some gender points in women being more likely to believe certain things (like horoscopes) whereas men are more likely to beleive scientific paranormal beliefs (such as UFOs and ESP) - which also links to culture where the men are more expected to do more scientific jobs or be interested in science and maths.

That's all i've got so far :/

Are you using the textbook with the dog on the front? We weren't, but I noticed my school library had a copy of it and it seems there are some good AO2/3 points in there - I think it's Cara Flanagen or something like that and mike davis. But they might be made up names.

We don't have a text book... it's mainly power points/essay plans which are okay. My teacher said that AO3 isn't 'needed' as it will be included anyway in the way the questions are phrased. However i would like to include some just so i know i've hit the points exactly.

I may start it this afternoon... just finishing of my depression revision grid

Thank you xxx

what's your revision grid made up of? sounds good

What i did was wrote out essays for each question that could come up (Theres only about 7) nd then broke them down into the subtopics e.g. biological explanations, psychological explanations, biological treatments, etc with the AO1, AO2 and AO3 to be used for each.

I will send it to you once i have finished it.

Oh wow =| thanks

That helps SO much! Thank you!! (will rep after midnight )

So do you explain the + and -s of each thing whilst you're going along or do you just do it at the end would you say?

I have NO idea why,......I'm guessing because everyone found it difficult/ran out of time/questions are vague (even in this exam). Also the questions allow you more or less to focus on anything you want, within moderation. And many people either go blank when given a choice of what to write, are confused, or can't think of any theories, or can but couldn't relate it to the question. Many many many people also think Psychology's just about theories and don't realise to evaluate (you'd be surprised how rubbish some teachers are) or don't know that if you don't include issues/debates you won't get anything more than Basic in A02/3, which is 8/16.

And it's likely, boundaries have ranged from 55-63% over the past 4 years in January and June, there's not going to be much difference really...


I've attached Jan 2010 PSYA4