AQA A-level Psychology Research Methods: Designing Experiments

A 10-page Year 12 AQA A-level Psychology mini workbook on designing experiments, control groups and scenario-based research-methods practice.

A 10-page Year 12 AQA A-level Psychology mini workbook on designing experiments, control groups and scenario-based research-methods practice. It is aligned to the updated AQA 7182 specification taught from September 2025, with first A-level assessment in 2027.
Students work through one coherent enquiry: whether visible smartphone notifications affect proofreading accuracy. They turn the idea into a precise aim and hypothesis, operationalise the IV and DV, compare laboratory, field, natural and quasi-experiments, and justify independent-groups, repeated-measures or matched-pairs designs. Original text-free visuals are used as active evidence prompts for comparing conditions, interpreting a field setting and reasoning about matched pairs.
The lesson gives particular attention to control groups, which are explicitly named in the updated specification. Students distinguish a comparison group from other procedural controls, then apply random allocation, standardisation, randomisation and counterbalancing appropriately. A design-clinic activity asks pairs to diagnose a deliberately flawed study before repairing its validity, reliability, ethics and conclusion.
The final pages move into original AQA-style scenario practice and an independent study proposal. Detailed Teacher Notes provide a 75-90 minute sequence, live questions, checking points, misconceptions, support and extension. The Answer Sheet mirrors every question and includes indicative mark guidance, model hypotheses, acceptable alternatives and teacher-judgement notes.

Best suited to Year 12 induction, first teaching of research methods, retrieval and application practice, a cover lesson, tutoring or a focused revision session. The Student Workbook is unbranded and uses one shared route with warm scaffolding rather than visible ability labels.