SPECIFICATION:

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

  FOR THE THREE POINTS BELOW, PLEASE SEE RESEARCH METHODS

• Experimental designs: repeated measures, independent groups, matched pairs.

• Observational design: behavioural categories, event sampling, time sampling.

• Questionnaire construction, including open and closed questions; design of interviews.

  FOR THE THREE POINTS BELOW, PLEASE SEE “CONTROL OF VARIA

• 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.