The Scientific Process - AQA A-Level Psychology

Scientific processes

• Aims: stating aims, the difference between aims and hypotheses.
• Hypotheses: directional and non-directional.
• Sampling: the difference between population and sample; sampling techniques including:
random, systematic, stratified, opportunity and volunteer; implications of sampling
techniques, including bias and generalisation.
• Pilot studies and the aims of piloting.
• Experimental designs: repeated measures, independent groups, matched pairs.
• Observational design: behavioural categories; event sampling; time sampling.
• Questionnaire construction, including use of open and closed questions; design of interviews.
• Variables: manipulation and control of variables, including independent, dependent,
extraneous, confounding; operationalisation of variables.
• Control: random allocation and counterbalancing, randomisation and standardisation.
• Demand characteristics and investigator effects.
• Ethics, including the role of the British Psychological Society’s code of ethics; ethical issues
in the design and conduct of psychological studies; dealing with ethical issues in research.
• The role of peer review in the scientific process.
• The implications of psychological research for the economy.
• Reliability across all methods of investigation. Ways of assessing reliability: test-retest and
inter-observer; improving reliability.
• Types of validity across all methods of investigation: face validity, concurrent validity,
ecological validity and temporal validity. Assessment of validity. Improving validity.
• Features of science: objectivity and the empirical method; replicability and falsifiability; theory
construction and hypothesis testing; paradigms and paradigm shifts.
• Reporting psychological investigations. Sections of a scientific report: abstract, introduction,
method, results, discussion and referencing.