A couple of issues

A couple of issues that have come up in late NABs, prelims etc:

1. Conditions of the IV. Don't get this mixed up with extraneous variables. An IV has two or more values. For example with a memory test, the IV could be sitting it with or without music as a distraction. When participants are then tested, there are two experimental 'conditions'. So the two 'conditions of the IV' in this example would be 1) Memory test with music and 2) memory test without music.


2. Effects of stress. People tend to produce good examples of physical effects, but neglect mental health effects e.g. irritable, unable to sleep, anger, memory loss, paranoia. Long term: greater liklihood of developing major psychological disorder e.g. depression, anorexia.


3. Random sampling - this means that everyone in the population has the same chance of being chosen. A list of names and random numbers can be used, or with a small sample, pulling names from a hat is also random. Picking people off the street or corridor is not random, as you will get a biased sample, with certain people more likely to be chosen. Take these toy soldiers for example:

A week to go

Well, just a week to go folks, I hope the study is going well.

A couple of points about exam technique:

- Look carefully at the mark allocation for each question, which will be divided into K&U (knoweldge and understanding) and A&E (analysis and evaluation). For example, a ten mark question will usually be 6 K&U and 4 A&E. In prelims, many people have included information for the K&U part, but forgotten about evaulation, which is usually necessary for the A&E marks.

- Similarly, remember that an accurate and relevant evaluation point is worth 2 marks. This will usually be a strength or weakness of a theory/study/technique. Research can also be used for evaluation, e.g. by stating that the results of a study supports or does not support a theory.

- Put in detail about research studies. You will pick up marks for accurately stating things like aim, number of participants, percentages in results. Also, don't just include research where it is specifically asked for (e.g. 'Describe a research study...') but use research to flesh out all your extended-answer questions and essay questions.

- You absolutely must answer all the questions. Markers are a nice bunch of people really, they may give you a mark or two for a weak answer but if you write nothing then you are guaranteed to get zero.

- You don't have to answer the questions in order. Consider tackling the essay question in Section C first, rather than leaving it to the end (and yes, you will get an essay question in either Conformity&Obedience or Intelligence. Look at the past papers to get an idea of which is most likely to appear this year!).

Hope this helps, I'll be around on my usual days this week to answer questions, mark practice answers etc. Revision classes 10.30 room A24.

No class on 29th May

The revision class on friday 29th May has been cancelled, as I will not be in school in the morning of that day.

All other classes will go ahead as originally announced, 10.30 Mon, Thu and Fri. We will usually be in A24, but if for any reason there is a conflict or room displacement, just assume that we will find the closest available classroom to A24.

There are quite a few of you I haven't seen so far this exam leave...I realise that you have been busy with other exams, but once those are out of the way it would be a good idea to make use of these revision classes for psychology.

Couple of links

Here are a couple of revision-related links:

Mini-articles from the BBC website on memory techniques - simplistic but useful, and the discussion comments are interesting.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/memory/improve/no_mistakes.shtml

A short video about stress from the same site (there's also a transcript):

Features of a good sample

Another mnemonic...

While teaching one of this year's classes, I noticed that the Marking Instructions (MIs) from 2006 exam paper presented us with a good mnemonic for 'features of a good sample':

The question is: 'State the features of a good sample', and the MIs say:

Is representative of the target population; avoids bias; allows generalisation to the target population.

So we can have:

Generalisable
Representative
Avoids Bias

Or 'GRAB'.

Future posts

Over the next couple of weeks I intend to post about areas of the course that usually cause difficulty/confusion, e.g. reliability & validity in IQ tests, working memory, transactional model of stress, confounding variables... If you have any areas you'd like me to include, please let me know.