Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Spring Term 2022-23 |
This module builds on the material taught in Research Methods for Psychology in Education I during the Autumn term.
It continues to develop students’ methodological knowledge, skills and understanding to a point where they will be fully equipped to identify their own research questions, find and critique the literature related to those questions, design appropriate studies to address them, gather quantitative and qualitative data, analyse that data using appropriate techniques and write reports of empirical investigations in APA style.
Students will also continue to develop their understanding of the ethical issues involved in conducting psychological research and will be able to reflect on ethical issues in their own work.
This module will further develop the knowledge, skills and experience of research methods developed in Research Methods for Psychology in Education I during the Autumn term.
Subject content
By the end of this module students will be able to:
Academic and graduate skills
Students will have gained experience in:
The module content is structured so that it incrementally builds on students’ knowledge of psychological research methods to the extent that they will be in a strong position to design, execute and report an empirical study of their own choosing by the end of term – their final dissertation project.
Students will be taught in weekly lectures and practicals. The following outline is representative of the lectures that will be given but is subject to small changes.
Students will also have access to a weekly drop-in session.
Week 1 – Standardized Psychometric Tests
Lecture
Practical
Week 2 – Experimental Design
Lecture
Practical
Week 3 - Inferential statistics 1
Lecture
Practical
Formative Assessment 2: Research proposal for experiment using classmates as participants.
Week 4 – Inferential Statistics 2
Lecture
Practical
Week 5 – Inferential Statistics 3
Lecture
Practical
Week 6 - Communicating research findings
Lecture
Practical
Additional sessions will be organised as required so that all students have the opportunity to gather data and participate in others’ experiments.
Week 7 – Systematic Literature Reviewing
Lecture
Practical
Week 8 – Psychometrics
Lecture
Practical
Week 9 – Observation Studies
Lecture
Practical
Formative Assessment 3: Prepare a 5 minute presentation of experimental findings to deliver in Week 10 practical.
Week 10
Lecture
Practical
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
None
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
Formative assessment 1 (2 page research proposal) will be submitted in Week 4 of Spring term and returned to students, with written feedback, by the end of Week 5 of Spring term.
Formative assessment 2 (5-minute presentation) will take place in Week 10 of Spring term and students will receive verbal feedback in class, and a follow-up email.
Verbal feedback will be provided on all informal formative tasks conducted during practical sessions e.g. writing up findings in APA style. A weekly drop-in session will also be organised with the leader of these practicals for students who feel they need additional advice, support or feedback.
Summative exam results will be returned to students in line with university policy. Please check the Guide to Assessment, Standards, Marking and Feedback for more information. Face to face feedback on performance in this module will be provided in supervision meetings.
Publication manual of the American psychological association. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2001.
British Psychological Society. (2006). Code of ethics and conduct. BPS.
Coolican, H. (2014). Research methods and statistics in psychology. Psychology Press.
Field, A. (2009). Discovering statistics using SPSS. Sage publications.
Sanders, L.D. (2010). Discovering Research Methods in Psychology. BPS Blackwell.
Silverman, D. (2013). Doing qualitative research: A practical handbook. Sage publications.